IPL Shift – unfortunate but practical

Yesterday BCCI announced that IPL will be moved to South Africa this year as the Indian Government failed to guarantee top security for the players in India. After the attack on the Srilankan team in Pakistan security has been a major concern for the foreign players in the subcontinent and with the General elections coinciding with the IPL the Govt said that they cannot offer security to the international players.
This was a great setback for IPL and BCCI as the tournament was a huge success in its first year and their negotiations with the Indian Police Department failed repeatedly. Finally Lalit Modi and BCCI decided to host this year’s edition in either England or South Africa.

After lots of deliberation SA was chosen as the venue over England due to logistics and weather being in the formers side. It’s rather unfortunate that the tournament has to be shifted to a different country as the electricity and the enthusiasm of the Indian crowd cannot be matched anywhere in the world. The players and the franchise owners are not that thrilled about this decision but they are left with no choice in the current scenario.

I think the decision was very practical by the BCCI and now the competition can go on without any security concerns. Even though this is basically an Indian tournament the involvement of International stars makes this event marketable anywhere in the world. South African cricket board seems to have been really thrilled to have got this opportunity and also their players and media seem to be really enjoying the same.

I personally did not want this series to go to England for two reasons. First is the weather and pitch conditions and second English supporters do not care about IPL or Twenty20. I am a part of a British cricket forum and I can see that they don’t give a damn about Twenty20 or IPL. So I guess it was a good decision to take it to SA who successfully staged a World Twenty20 just a year ago. Its really sad for Indian cricket that their premier tournament has to be shifted to another country and watching my team “Chennai SuperKings” play in Durban will not be the same as watching them in MA Chidambaram stadium.

But the silver lining is that the tournament at least will happen this year. This will also give players to get a good practice for the World Twenty20 which will follow the IPL. I hope that this year’s competition is as big as the previous year. I am sure that the SACB will do all in their ability to make this event a grand success. But I just hope that IPL is back next year to India where it proudly belongs. I will be back later with the profile of my team Chennai SuperKings next month.

India look to make it 4-0

The Indian team who has already won the series 3-0 would want to keep the momentum going by winning the final ODI at Auckland. The Indians probably will rest few of their key players but still would want to retain the core. Dhoni would probably want to rest Zaheer and give Munaf or Balaji or Kulkarni (If available for ODI’s) a chance as it will help him to decide on the third seamer for the first test.

I guess Ishant will still play as he looked very rusty in the 4th game. The batting though will be interesting but I would assume that Dhoni and Kirsten would not want to make too many changes in the squad. The Kiwis confidence has been dented in the ODI’s and India would want to leave it that way. Any let up in pressure would give the hosts enormous confidence for the upcoming test series. The Indians though would want to guard against complacency which could creep into their games.

In the past year or so they have not been that good in the dead rubbers. In Srilanka last year the Indians were leading 3-1 going into the final game and lost badly chasing a modest target. Earlier this year they repeated the same mistake as after leading 4-0 they let up the pressure in the final game. This series though is not just about the ODI’s but since the test series is just around the corner the Indians would want the New Zealanders to be under constant pressure to win.

This has been yet another great series for the Indians but there have been some flaws which were eclipsed by the batters. The fielding has been very poor, catches have gone down at crucial times, bowling has lacked discipline but in spite of that they have won which should give the team confidence. But to be at the top Gary Kirsten needs to work on ironing out the flaws. The Indian one day team is made of youngsters and should not be having any issues with fielding.

The New Zealand captain though would be looking for a win to end the series. They have been battered to submission by the Indian batting but would want to end the series on a high. The test series is just around the corner and a win here would give the team a lot of confidence. Vettori would know that and would want to reverse the trend a little bit. The key for the home team to win is to bowl with more discipline and get rid of the Indian openers fast which they haven’t been able to do since the Twenty20 games.

Once they do that the Indian middle order will be under pressure and would have to consolidate. Lets hope that this game is also as exciting as the previous ones and I am predicting an Indian win again.

Collection of my thoughts

I have had a frustrating last few months which came to an end yesterday with the visa approval. For all of us here the extension process has been a real long and frustrating journey which controlled our thoughts for all these months. I have decided to put in a summary of the happenings in the last few months about which I was planning to write about.

Indian cricket team’s successful 2008 and the NewZealand tour

I would like to begin with the exceptional season the Indian cricket team has been having since they won the Perth test match last Jan. The only blip being the test series in Srilanka. The Indian team under Dhoni has performed really well and are in top 3 in both forms of the game. The recent series in SL where Dhoni’s men won 4-1 further emphasized their raise in the shorter format of the game. The Indian team has found great bunch of youngsters who are hungry for success and want to win every game. Having said all that Dhoni’s great test is just around the corner, the tour of NZ. This will be his first full tour as a captain of the Indian team. India would be looking to win the test and the one-day series against the Kiwis which will not be an easy task.

The Kiwis have had a good series against the Australians recently where they drew the one-dayers 2-2 and lost the one-off Twenty20 by one run. They will be full of confidence and would be hoping to drive their home advantage to trouble the Indian team. The Indians on the other hand would want to erase the memory of their disastrous 2002/03 tour to the Kiwiland by turning in good performances in the both forms of the game. If India play to their potential they should win the series. The series gets underway with the first of the 2 Twenty20 games next wednesday. Lets hope that the series is competetive and may the best team win.

Slumdog Millionaire and A R Rahman

Musical genius A R Rahman made every Indian proud when he received the Golden Globe award for the best original score for his song “Jai Ho” in Danny Boyle’s award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire. There has been lots of speculation in the Indian media reagrding the movie as well as A R Rahman’s music claiming that both are over-rated. Few people in the media have slammed the movie and some also said that it has shown India in a poor light. As far as I am concerned the movie was just okay and was nothing great but thats my opinion. To be frank its a movie made by a British director in India and if Hollywood calls it as the best movie of the year then so be it. I dont think that this movie showed anything wrong about India.

At least the movie was made in India. How many bollywood directors make movies in the slums of Mumbai? How many Indian directors who commented on this movie can make a movie which will prove otherwise? Actually no one cares. Its just that this movie has become so big that people have decided to cash in on its popularity. The Johars and the chopras have stopped making movies in India and few more directors probably will follow suit. I guess we have to treat SM as a hollywood movie which has been made in India with Indian actors, thats about it. We have made so many substandard movies in US and UK, they dont claim those as theirs and slam it in the their media when we give awards to those movies. So lets just be realistic, Hollywood thinks its the best movie of the year so thats where it ends.As far as the award to ARR is concerned I am really proud of him and his achievements. He has put Indian music on the world map.

Whether this is his best composition is open to speculation but there is no denying the fact that he deserves all the accolades he is receiving right now. Lets not unnecessarily dissect the music and enjoy the success of one of the finest composers in India. Congrats to ARR on his Golden Globe and hope he wins Oscars too.

Tennis in India

Tennis in India received a tremendous boost when Yuki Bhambri won the junior Australian Open title earlier this year. His victory along with the performance of Somdev in the Chennai open gives great hope to the Tennis scene in India. Mahesh won yet another mixed doubles championship, this time with our own Sania Mirza to make this the most memorable Australian Open for the Indians. Sania though continued her horror run in singles when she was beaten in the second round. Hopefully Somedev and Yuki can take the Indian Tennis forward and make a successful transition to the senior level.

Thats all for now from me. Lets hope that India continues to shine in 2009 and we have more awards and titles to add.

India need to regroup after the humiliating loss

Murali and Mendis combination bowled the Indian team out inside two days on a pitch where the home team had piled up 600 runs for the loss of just 6 wickets. The Indians showed no application or patience on a pitch which was not that threatening. Murali and Mendis accounted for 19 of the 20 Indian wickets to fall where as the Indian spinners just managed 2 between them. I would agree to Manjrekar’s comments that Indians are no longer masters of spin which they used to be few years ago.

Mendis had a perfect debut as he captured 8 wickets in the match and Srilanka won by an innings and 239 runs. He was largely helped by the excellent perfromance by the great Murali, who got the ball rolling for the lankans in the first innings. The Indians put themselves under pressure as none of the top 5 converted the starts they got. Sehwag played a reckless hook shot to get himself caught at the square leg boundary to gift his wicket to the home team. It looked like the Indians were still in the Twenty20 mood while at the crease.

VVS laxman tried to save his team from further blushes by getting the score over 200 with the help of the tail in their first innings. Anil kumble will be very dissapointed with this performance as this has become some sort of a habit for the Indian team. The consistancy is something which the team lacks and both the captain and coach would be aware of the same. During the recent test series against the South Africans after matching blow for blow in the first test the team crumbled to a heavy defeat in the second test.

This will really be a hard loss to bounce back from. Srilanka are a very hard team to defeat at home and now with Murali with his tail up the Indians need to do some serious planning to tackle him. The Indians should take heart from the way they bounced back in Australia after a similar performance in Melbourne. Anil Kumble though would realise that things can only get better from here. The coach and captain should work with the players to come up with a plan to deal with the Srilankan spin twins.

Even though all the focus is on Murali and Mendis the Indian think tank should not forget Vaas who might have few surprises up his sleeve for the second test. All in all this is the moment of realization for Kumble’s men and we will know how much this defeat has hurt the team when they take the field at Galle.

A bold move from the ODI captain

Dhoni is one of the few cricketers in the Indian team to feature regularly in all 3 formats of the game. He has been playing non-stop cricket over the last 12 months and was sure in need of a break, a sentiment shared even by the coach of the Indian team. In the last 18 months Dhoni has been involved in 14 test matches, 56 ODI’s, 8 Twenty20 International games and 16 IPL games. Dhoni recently had mentioned during the Asia cup that back to back matches are causing player fatigue.

Even though Dhoni found support in Anil Kumble and Gary Kirsten, the BCCI was not that happy with his comments. Over the last few years players from different countries have complained about player burnout and India is the country who play most cricket every year. Australia’s famous rotation policy evolved due to this very reason.

Dhoni has now decided to pull out of the Srilankan test series a decision which is being scrutinized in the media over the past few days. Former players are providing their opinions, the seniors in the team are being approached for comments on this subject. Personally I feel that the comments by Sourav Ganguly on this subject was unnecessary. Seriously I dont see a reason for such a reaction, its Dhoni’s decision to take a break and everyone knows that he needed one. The one-day captain might have thought that taking a break from test matches where he is more dispensable might be the appropriate thing to do.

The media is after this decision because of the fact that Dhoni has decided to take the test series off instead of the one-day series which is to follow. They are also complaining that IPL is one of the major reasons for the player burnout and fatigue. Frankly for me I would rather see Dhoni take a break in tests rather than in ODI’s and Twenty20 where his presence is more important. I am sure that Dhoni has put enough thought into this decision and needs to be left alone.

Everyone agrees that he needs a break and as far as I am concerned Dhoni’s decision is spot on.
India is playing a lots of one day matches in the coming 12 months and would require a fit and rested Dhoni leading them. Parthiv and Karthik are good test players and I am sure that team would not be missing Dhoni’s services that much in the test series. Dhoni has made a bold statement by skipping this series knowing the after effects of his decision. Now we have to wait and see if this precedence set by the skipper is followed by rest of the members in the future.

Like it or not Twenty20 is here to stay

Whatever may have been the intention, the BCCI have hit the bulls eye with the IPL. The Twenty20 league has been a runaway success accross India and also among the other cricket playing nations. I was rather surprised to see few articles regarding the multi million dollar league in few news papers in America too like Washington Post and Newyork Times. This shows that anything which is packaged and presented well will appeal to the audience. Like most of people I too was little bit skeptical about the launch of IPL due to the glamour of the Bollywood associated with it. I was also worried regarding the quality of cricket to be played in the IPL.

After 21 games into the league I am just blown away by the commitment shown by the players towards this league and the competition has been top notch. The players seem to be enjoying playing with each other and sharing dressing rooms with their so called rivals just few months ago. I was always fascinated by the thought of seeing a scoreboard which reads Smith c Tendulkar b pollock, this can be a reallity in IPL. Yes there has been some controversies in the past few weeks but we can term those as a teething problem for the league.

IPL surely is a boon for cricket lovers. The game lasts only for 3 hours in total and you get to see stars from all around the world under the same roof. The games have been exciting, the players have been wonderful and overall the league has been a success. I just hope that revenue gained from the IPL is channelized in a proper way to improve the domestic cricket standards in India and making that more interesting. Well all in all this has been a successful venture by the BCCI.

So like it or not Twenty20 and IPL are here to stay.

Strike when its hot

IPL is the hottest and most happening event in all of India for the past couple of weeks and as usual politicians have taken this opportunity to grab the headlines. Its always been the case in India where the politicians comment on things which is currently hot in the media to gain fame. This is actually pathetic but for them this is a boon to make a name for themselves.

The recent addition to such attention grabbing comments from the politicians was regarding the Cheerleading squads hired by the IPL franchices to perform in the breaks. Well the accusations from the media and the politicians have been that its offensive and abusive to the Indian culture. The media as we all know has blown it out of proportions since they are frustrated with BCCI shutting them out of IPL. Whoever says that the cheerleaders are affecting Indian culture should just speak for themselves. Being a politician doesnt mean that they are speaking on behalf of the entire nation.

As a person who loves the sport and watch the game just for the action in the middle I dont care who is dancing beyond the boundry line. I dont think that the cheerleaders are affecting or abusing anything in India. Well yeah one thing I agree is that this concept is new for Indian sport and will take time getting adjusted too. India in the past few years has experianced a phenomenal change in its outlook. Take the example of the bollywood movies which we watch with our kids most of times, isnt that affecting Indian culture? One of the comments in the media by a political leader was that Indians respect women as gods, dont we go and see movies in which heroines roam around with skimpy outfits?

So why all of a sudden raise concerns about the cheerleaders in Twenty20? If we are talking about the TV viewing public then wasnt this a part of the Twenty20 worldcup also? Well the reason for all this unnesessary concern about the Indian culture is to make hay when the sun shines. All these politicians know that if we say something while one of most important event in the history of Indian sports is going on they can grab the headlines. They have also used the media’s frustration on the BCCI very cleverly to their advantage.

As a follower of cricket I seriously dont want to be a part of this hypocrisy from the politicians. I dont care if the cheerleaders are dancing or not dancing, covered up or skimpily clothed as long as there is a hard faught cricket match going on. I guess most of the cricket lovers around the world will share my sentiments on this but again this is my opinion I am not speaking for anybody here.

IPL - First Look

IPL began on friday with a match between the Kolkata Knight riders and Bangalore Royal challengers. we all know the hype behind this tournament and everyone was waiting for the big opening to see how the teams square up. The match in itself was not that interesting as it was completely one sided affair. The RC (Royal Challengers) were beaten by one of the greatest innings seen on cricket field by any player on any format from Brendon Mcullum of Kolkata Knight Riders. Mcullum smashed every bowler from the Bangalore team to finish with the highest induvidual score in this format when he made 158 n.o of just 73 deliveries.

The match was one sided as the team lead by Rahul Dravid collapsed to make just 82 and losing the game by 140 runs. I was lucky enough to watch all the games this weekend and also all the teams in action. My first impression was that Kolkata team owned by Sharukh Khan seems to be the team to beat. They have the right balance with the right mix of youth and experiance. The Knight Riders have played two and won two.

The other team which was very impressive was the Chennai Super kings lead by Dhoni. The Super Kings scored 240 in 20 overs riding on another great century in two days this time by an Australian Micheal Hussey. Hussey made 116 n.o of just 54 deliveries ably assisted by Hayden, Raina and Badrinath. The Super Kings have an excellent batting lineup but barring Murali they have a very week and inexprerianced bowling lineup.

The next team which impressed me was the Delhi Daredevils lead by Virender Sehwag. The team has a very good bowling attack lead by the great Glenn Mcgrath who looked like he had been bowling all the while. The batting lead by the captain himself looks impressive too.

The Bangalore RC who had a forgettable first outing came back strongly to defeat the Mumbai Champs lead by Bajji in the absence of Sachin. The RC team which I thought as the weak link in this tournament actually look strong in the presence of experianced Chandrapaul, Kallis, Boucher along with the captain Dravid which came into play against the Mumbai team in a tense chase. The team also contains promising youngters like Virat Kohli who impressed one and all with his batting in the U-19 world cup.

The Kings X1 lead by Yuvraj, looks a strong outfit too inspite of their loss to the chennai team. They have a good balance in team and their bowling lead by Brett Lee looks fine. As I am writing this article they are battling with the Rajathan Royals lead by Shane Warne. The Rajasthan Royals seem like the weakest in the championship with a weak bowling attack apart from the genius Shane Warne himself. Their batting too looked very weak against the Delhi Daredevils attack.

The Deccan Chargers though were undone by a bad pitch in Eden gardens where both teams struggled to score runs freely. We can probably assess their strength and weeknesses in the coming games.

All in all the tournament was an interesting watch with all teams to trying to find their feet in this format. We will probably know about the teams more as the tournament progresses in the coming week. Lets hope that the standards improve and we have more close games in the coming week.