Are we witnessing the rise of the New No. 1 Test Team?

I recently wrote a post about whether India deserved to be ranked number one in the world about Test Cricket. Also Star Cricket HD has been re-telecasting the 2011 Ashes Series down under, which reminded me that, at the end of 2010 and beginning of 2011, which is not that long ago if you think about it, England toured Australia, defended the Ashes, for the first time since god knows when, and thulped Australia, in their back-yard, 3-1.

When they last defended their Ashes Crown in 2007, the were white-washed 5-0 by a rampaging Australian outfit. Granted, the 2007 Aussies were great, and the 2011 Aussies a shadow of their predecessors, but it is still something the Indian team has not done. Not only did they beat Australia in Australia, all 3 test matches England won, they won by an Innings and 50 plus runs. It isn't like the Aussie's rolled over, during the first test match at Gabba, Peter Siddle produced a Hat-Trick and destroyed the English middle order. There were Heroics for Micheal Hussey who had been foefully out of form just prior to the Ashes, hit two centuries and score 570 runs at an average of 63.33. His effort seems to be eerily similar to what Rahul Dravid is doing for India in the ongoing series, and for the sake of my sanity in the month of August, i hope his team does not suffer a similar fate to Hussey's team.

Therefore, taking the performance of this England team into context, it is they who are building on momentum, sustained over the same period India was building their momentum. We beat Australia at Home, then Australia went home and got beaten by England. India and England have both been on the path to the top of the rankings, India managed to get there slightly earlier. Are we just a stop-gap between two era's in test cricket, one a brutal period of Australian dominance, and the other an equally unbearable period of English supremacy. I hope once again, that such is not the case. But if India do not manage to take even one test off the Englishmen, even the most ardent of Indian supporters will have a hard time being optimistic, knowing that their number one team, though a tenuous and dispute number one team,  went down without a fight. 

Number 1 Ranking: Deserved or Not?

There was a great amount of hoopla and jingoistic fervour around the time the Indian test team achieved the No. 1 ranking, which seems likely to now be conceded to the English team. However, we need to take a step back and see how we reached the supposed zenith of test cricket.

India is playing its 14^th test series since their infamous tour to Australia in 2007-2008. A tabular representation of their results is as follows:

Opposition	Venue	Result
South Africa	Home	Drawn (1-1)
Sri Lanka	Away	Lost (1-2)
Australia	Home	Won (2-0)
England	Home	Won (1-0)
New Zealand	Away	Won (1-0)
Sri Lanka	Home	Won (2-0)
Bangladesh	Away	Won (2-0)
South Africa	Home	Drawn (1-1)
Sri Lanka	Away	Drawn (1-1)
Australia	Home	Won (2-0)
New Zealand	Home	Won (1-0)
South Africa	Away	Drawn (1-1)
West Indies	Away	Won (1-0)

What jumps out at you from this table is that, India has not lost an away series since mid-2008, for a period of 3 years, India has not been defeated on its travels, which is in itself is no mean achievement. However, they have not comprehensively beaten any of the major test playing nations in their backyard. This current series against England is now reduced to a fight for the number one spot, being 2-0 down in the 4 match series, Indian cannot win, but they can salvage pride. This they may end up doing, but their claim to the number one ranking has weakened considerably.

Despite all the jingoistic rhetoric you get to see regarding the test rankings, there are some things which are quite clear. Previous dominant test teams, have built their dominance upon a world beating bowling line up. The West Indies in the 80’s and early 90’s, and thereafter the Australians, till very recently, produced bowlers of the highest quality. And not just one or two, they produced these bowlers with alarming regularity. This is the point at which I start looking at my Indian team, and realise that the cupboard is pretty bare.

Despite all the negative coverage about the Indian batting in the trent bridge test match, I still maintain that if your bowlers concede 400 runs in one day, there is precious little the batsmen can do to remedy the situation. Our fast bowlers, aren’t really fast, Zaheer is possibly the most skilful quickie India has produced, but beyond him there is really no one else. Praveen has skill, and a big heart and gives it his all, but his lack of pace will ensure that his utility will continue to diminish with time, as high class batsmen will eventually sort him out. Ishant and Sreesanth though brimming with talent, are too erratic and inconsistent in the longer form of the game.

Coming to Bhajji, I have always believed that he is a different bowler when there is a second spinner in the team. When he is the lone spinner, he just cannot pull out the performances required of him. He has had basically 2-3 good years, and many more average ones over his career, and his average of over 32 runs per wicket does not signify a world beater such as the likes of Shane Warne, Muralitharan or Anil Kumble. On parity, after looking at the contributions over a period of the last 2 years to his side, I would not rate Harbhajan Singh as even one of the top 3 spinners in the world currently, those would be Graeme Swann, Daniel Vettori and Shakib Al Hassan.

Coming to the fast bowling reserves, we have Munaf Patel, Jaidev Unadkat, Abhimanyu Mithun etc. none of whom inspire any confidence in a brighter tomorrow for our pace attack. In the spin department, there is Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha on the fringes, and neither has had much of an impact whenever given the opportunity.

Considering the state of our bowling department, no amount of strength in batting can compensate for it. Unless the Indian selectors come up with some young guns in the bowling department and pretty soon at that, the upcoming tour of Australia and other fixtures as well, could be equally disastrous as the current India-England series. 

To Walk or not to Walk

Tendulkar walking after edging a ball through to the keeper in the West Indies game, has generated a large amount of media interest, and a large amount of rhetoric centered around the walking issue. This in my view, is a whole lot of nonsense. You have had Sidhu and Gavaskar giving Sachin immense praise and using the act to demonstrate why he is above all other players etc. etc. Sachin is above all players because he has been at the pinnacle of his sport for a period of 21 years. He is above all others because he has carried his team on those tiny, but immensely strong shoulders for two whole decades. He has been playing for such a long period, because he is still a little boy, playing the game he loves. He has played the game with class and dignity, and has not one black mark against his record. He does not need to walk to show that he is the best, and him walking is not a reason or even evidence of his greatness.

Sachin above all else is a very practical man, his walking was probably based on the fact that, there is a good chance for a review and in the review it may reveal that he has nicked the ball. In the end, the replays were inconclusive, and one would tend to believe that had the West Indies reviewed the decision, the on-field umpire was not going to reverse his decision on the basis of the evidence on display. However, we can say that, sitting and watching the replays, and in hindsight. At that point of time, Sachin could not have been sure that the nick would be that hard to spot, and that is probably why he walked. He has hardly ever walked in the past 21 years, and no one can blame him for that. The number of times Sachin has been given out to wrong decisions, at crucial junctures, is many, then why would you expect him to walk when he the umpire wrongly rules in his favor. The same would apply for any batsmen for that matter. That is the exact reason why the UDRS has been put in place, so that, crucial match changing, incorrect decisions do not affect the outcome of the game.

Now coming to the debate over whether all batsmen should walk or not, there is really no need to go into the moral debate of whether one should walk or not, I think this issue is going to be resolved reasonably quickly and with the improvement in UDRS technology and use of Hotspot the following trends will start appearing wherever UDRS is used (and I sincerely believe it should be used uniformly across all tournaments and series). Batsmen who nick the ball, and are caught cleanly will start walking, because the UDRS (with hotspot off course) will be able to show reasonably conclusively that they have nicked the ball, so there would be very little point in standing around and looking foolish, ala Ricky Ponting in the group game against Pakistan. Unless the technology to judge close-to-ground catches improves (and I don’t see that happening any time soon), batsmen are going to stand their ground in such situations despite what the fielders claim, because there is a very high chance that the camera angles will not show conclusively that the catch was clean. The LBW portion of the UDRS system needs certain minor tweaks, but in all, is a very useful tool for removing really bad umpiring decisions and will soon come to be accepted by most people, if not all. 

And so it begins

As a build up to this world cup, ESPNSTAR through all three of its channels, have been showing day and night previous world cup matches. There has been a similar overload of world cup history and the exploits winning 1983 team lead by Kapil Dev. All this nostalgia may be well and good, but it rings hollow with me to a large extent. As a kid, watching the 1983 Indian team defeat the mighty West Indies at Lord’s used to give me Goosebumps, but disappointment, time after time has even soured the memory of enjoying Kapil Dev running back a mile and taking a tough catch to dismiss Sir Vivian Richards at a crucial point. If you think about it, even if a person gets interested in cricket at a really young age, say 5-7, no one born after 1977-1978 really remembers or knows the feeling of India winning a World Cup. This leaves you with all Indian cricket fans below the age of approximately 33-34 who don’t know what it feels to see their team victorious at this tournament. In fact, it is this very age group of cricket lovers, who can’t really imagine any team but Australia winning the darn thing. They were champions in 1987, finalists in 1996, winners 1999, 2003 and 2007. So barring the 1992 tournament, ironically in Australia itself, the Australian team have all but once kicked everyone’s teeth in. I for one, fear not Pakistan or South Africa in a World Cup, I fear only Australia. So all this talk of the decline of the Australian team since 2007 doesn’t really give much comfort, the memory of the trouncing in the 2003 final is still fresh. The image of Ricky Ponting smashing the ball for a six time and time again into the stands at the Wanderers, has been burnt into every Indian cricket fans mind.

Ricky Ponting is still around, and so are a couple of the bowlers who he smashed to all corners on March 23, 2003. Zaheer Khan who has since become one of the finest fast bowlers in the world, went for 67 runs in 7 overs at an economy rate of 9.57 without a wicket. Ashish Nehra, who has made a comeback and made a good enough one to merit a world cup selection also bowled that day, he was the most economical bowler in the Indian side that day, giving away 57 runs in ten overs without a wicket. Harbhajan Singh, who took both Australian wickets that fell, went for 49 runs from his eight overs at an economy rate of 6.12. Granted Ricky Ponting’s prowess has waned since that fateful day, and the Indian Survivors from that final are now the stalwarts of a fantastic ODI side, yet will they be able to shrug off the ghosts of the past and exact revenge if presented with an opportunity.

Another nemesis of India in World Cups since 1996, Sri Lanka, is one team whom no one should be taking lightly. If both Sri Lanka and India finish at the top of their respective groups, which is likely, they will not have to face each other till the final of the tournament if both manage to get that far. The last time the world cup was played in the Sub Continent it was won by Sri Lanka, defeating the Australians in the final. They were finalists in 2007 as well, where they were thoroughly outplayed just as India was in 2003, however, the core of that team survives in this edition as well, and a follow up performance at home is something I would not be betting against.

There is one thing the all the critics agree upon, that this is the most open world cup since 1999. In 2003 and 2007 it was a foregone conclusion that Australia were going to win, it was just a question of against whom and by how much. This time around, you would have a hard time picking the semi-finalists with a large degree of confidence or certainty. The cynic would say that the quality of cricket will be lower than in 2003 or 1999 due to the nature of the pitches, or the quality of cricket having gone down since then. However it is certain that this World Cup will display many more matches which go down to the last few balls, as there is precious little to choose between the top 5-6 teams. Let the cynic crib about the quality of cricket, but there can be no doubt that there will be high quality entertainment and drama on the world’s largest stage, and that has to be good for the health of the game. Here’s to hoping that the World Cup re-energizes the ODI format which has been taking a severe beating from entertaining T20 cricket and high quality test cricket and ends the debate as to whether all three formats of the game can co-exist side by side.

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There is something fundamentally wrong with cricket telecast in India. The world's largest cricket consuming audience is being given a sub-standard product. Switch over to Star Cricket's telecast of Channel Nine's coverage of the Ashes and the current Australia-England one-day tournament if you don't believe me. In the way cricket is telecast in India we are only seeing one aspect of the game and that is ball by ball action. What we don't see anymore, is the bowlers reaction to a wicket, or a batsman raising his bat on the way out after a fantastic knock. All these moments of the game, which are very much a part and parcel of the game, are cruelly snatched away from us by a LG or Asian Paints advertisement. It has become so bad now, that when the telecast comes back after an advertisement, the bowler is in mid run-up, and when it cuts to advertisement, the fielder has barely gathered the ball before throwing it to the keeper.

 

As a cricket consumer myself I can frankly say that I am pissed off at Ten Cricket and Asian Paints, I wouldn't want to use Royale Play to paint my wall, because you buggers spoilt my match. But what choice do I have, unlike with Royale Play, where I can chose to go with Berger instead, I don't really have that option when it comes to cricket. If ten cricket is broadcasting the match, I have no choice but to pay an extra thirty bucks to Airtel, and ask them to give me ten cricket. And after doing so, what do I get, another advertisement fest, which cuts out at least 20% of the viewable action in each game. It's getting to the point where it seems more ads and less cricket, with the pop up ads jumping onto the screen and destroying the cricket field, leaving me aghast at the tastelessness and the intrusion.

 

Who is to blame for this situation, some would say that it's the corporates who buy these advertisement spots, who want ads in every corner of the television screens, or is it the telecasters for being unscrupulous in creating advertisement spots and robbing the viewing public of a holistic cricketing experience, some would blame the BCCI or other cricketing boards, for selling rights at such astronomical figures leaving telecasters with no other viable revenue option. In my opinion it is the cricketing public in India which is to blame.

 

As a consumer we Indians, are extremely price, rather than quality driven. If the price is right, we usually buy it, quality is not a determining factor. Why Sky Sports in England and Channel Nine in Australia can still provide excellent top quality coverage and keep advertisements down to nothing is due to the fact that their business model is a subscriber driven one. With the advent of DTH and CAS, India is moving towards a subscriber driven revenue model, but this is more of an urban phenomena in India and has not yet penetrated the majority of the cricket viewing audience. Without a subscriber driven model and at the current rates at which cricket boards sell rights, there is no way for telecasters to make money without copious amounts of advertising. This is displayed by the fact that during the IPL, you could get an ad free HD coverage of the action, at an extra cost. This is going to be available from ESPNSTAR even during the upcoming world cup.

 

Some may call this point of view a bit pedantic, in the fact, that how does it matter if we miss a little bit of the reactions of players, celebration of bowlers etc., as long as we are getting a match at a cheap price. Well I would just like to say that, would the enormity of what happened at the Eden Gardens in 1996 against Sri Lanka been the same in our minds, had we not seen Kambli walk off the pitch crying, and instead had gone straight to an advertisement of Lays. The beauty, poetry and artistry of the game, of any game, lies in the human reaction, which at that moment of pure joy or anguish, is as genuine a moment as any of us will witness in our increasingly artificial and mechanical world. The joy and anguish of victory and defeat is something which cannot be divorced from any sport, which is sadly being done with cricket in India, and it's about time that the people, who are supposed to be the guardians of the game, do something about it.

Team India – The World Cup, It’s here

On the 17^th of January 2011, the BCCI announced the final 15, representing India in the tournament of all tournaments in the game of cricket, the ODI World Cup. This Cup seems to have been in Aussie possession for too long and now that the little urn has gone away for a while it seems, the World Cup is the only other Cricket Memorabilia which the Aussie's seem to care about, and it's about time someone took that away as well. But who, is the question, everyone is asking themselves. Australia are chased closely by India, Sri Lanka and South Africa in the ODI Rankings (if that is any indication) and it's not inconceivable to imagine that England and maybe even Pakistan can pose tough questions of the current champions.

The team announced did not surprise too many, barring maybe the omission of Rohit Sharma and Pragyan Ojha and the inclusion of Piyush Chawla out of the blue, the team consists of:

M.S. Dhoni

Sachin Tendulkar

Virender Sehwag

Gautam Ghambir

Yuvraj Singh

Suresh Raina

Virat Kohli

Yusuf Pathan

Harbhajan Singh

Praveen Kumar

Zaheer Khan

Ashish Nehra

Munaf Patel

Piyush Chawla

R. Ashwin

 

There are a large number of spinners in this team, both specialist and part time, and considering that the matches are going to be played in the Indian Sub-continent, the performance of the spinners could be one of the deciding factors during the course of the tournament. In one day internationals, the Indian spinners, especially the part time spinners, like Yuvraj, Raina and Pathan do exceedingly well, especially within Indian conditions. A problem which may occur in team selection, would be whether to pick 3 specialist seamers along with Harbhajan Singh because we have enough variety in the part time spin department, in which case R. Ashwin and Piyush Chawla may never see the inside of a cricket field, other than to bring a bottle of water across, or would they pick 2 specialist seamers as well as 2 specialist spinners.

Another interesting factor this time around, is that the current Indian team set-up, has only 4 slots available within the squad of 15. Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Harbhajan and Zaheer walk into this team without any issues. The selection variables come up in the form of, whether to play 2 specialist batsmen like Raina and Kohli or to play Pathan as a bowling all-rounder at No. 7. If the selectors decide to go with Pathan, it then becomes the question of whether to pick Raina or Kohli. Raina has played well in the past few years for India, but has been found wanting against the short ball, in tests as well as ODI's. Virat Kohli on the other hand seems to be in a rich vein of form, and seems to have shed some of his earlier bad habits and turned his game around. It will be a tough call for the selectors considering Raina is a perennial favorite of MS Dhoni and is a handy part time off-spinner apart from being a fantastic fielder. His potential to contribute in a game is beyond question and would take an extremely bullish and courageous selector or captain for that matter, to drop him from the playing 11. I guess the answer to this question only lies with Dhoni's astrologist.

The question of which seamers to play along with Zaheer Khan may be an issue as none of the other three seamers have really overshadowed the other, whether they pick Munaf, Nehra or Kumar to accompany Zaheer could be dependent on the nature of the wicket as well as how well either of them is bowling in the warm-up matches just before the tournament begins. Whether Zaheer and the other seamers can reverse swing the old ball will be crucial as well and could pose many a problem to batsmen during the tournament.

Another problem which India face is that they do not have an all-rounder, in the mould of Kallis or Shane Watson, but that may not have too much of a role to play in a sub-continental world cup. All this being said, this Indian team in my view, has an excellent mix of experienced cricketers and young cricketers, last seen maybe in the team of 2003. Can they go one better than that team, hopefully in April and not before that, we will know. I for one, can't wait to find out.

Whatta Choke!!!!

It was 12:15 am, South Africa were on their way to an easy victory. At the end of the 31^st over, the score read South Africa 145/4 with Smith batting on 75, they needed 49 runs from the remaining 19 overs at a required run rate of 2.42 per over and Dhoni seemed in no mood to attack and force the issue. It was getting boring, I was just about to switch of the television and start watching an episode of Breaking Bad, but then, South Africa took the batting power-play. Quickly, the field went from a 4-5 field, to a 6-3 field, suddenly the singles didn't seem all that easy, MS Dhoni brought back Munaf, and with his first ball, he knocked over Graeme Smith, it was game on, Breaking Bad could wait.

That was the turning point, from that point on, the Indian team seemed suddenly on top. Granted that they had the rub of the green with the decision against Johan Botha, where he was given out LBW to Zaheer for outside edging the ball in-front of the stumps, but all in all, the wind went out of the sails of the South African ship, the moment they lost Smith. That's when the choking began, there were merely 18 power-play deliveries left, they needed 35 runs from a 102 deliveries, surely they could afford to play out 18 deliveries. But instead they didn't, they went for crazy singles, which led to the run out of Dale Steyn and play extravagant cuts against a attacking off-side field. It was in-explicable, they could take as many deliveries as they wanted, block as many balls, the wicket really wasn't doing much, the bowlers were sharp, but they weren't really bowling wicket taking deliveries, the only thing they were doing better, was holding there nerve.

MS Dhoni once again kept a cool head under pressure, and this is the greatest value he brings to the team. I am still not convinced of MS Dhoni's field placings, which in my view are usually too defensive, especially in test cricket, and neither am I too convinced in regards the team selection, though I am sure he is not the only person who has a say in that. However, the one thing I am convinced about, is that notwithstanding all the above reservations, he is a very capable captain. Nothing seems to faze him, he takes victory and defeat equally in his stride. This is his hallmark and seems to have become the hallmark of this Indian team, they have very rightly earned the title of the bounce-back kings and I hope this trend continues in the future, especially with the World Cup around the corner.