Dude., learn something .. BCCI will never change!

Man, the rant in this blog is going to hit the roof. BCCI selected teams for Bangladesh Tour. I am very sad that BCCI is such a backward looking organization that there is virtually no hope for Indian cricket sans a few brilliant player. The process, logic and methodology of player selection is so crude that it makes me wonder how at all, are we able to even etch a win outside India

After the World cup debacle, senior players were likely to be axed to assure the Indian fans. Why? Indian fans are the most obnoxious, lazy and illogical fan in cricket. Even when their team has no chance (say against Australia), they want their team to score 600 runs, bowl australia out for 25 runs.

Anywayz, BCCI president wanted 'youth' and what he and we got is nothing close to youth? Some critical examination of the 2 squads.

ODI squad: Gautam Gambhir, Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid (capt), Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Dinesh Karthik, Manoj Tiwary, Dinesh Mongia, Piyush Chawla, Sreesanth, Munaf Patel, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh.

• What is Uthappa doing in the squad? His scores in ODI cricket are 86, 12, 0, 70, 28, DNB, 7, 52, 9, 3, 18. The ones underlined are the WI WC 2007 scores. The 5 scores before that happened in the 2007 home series against WI and SL. If you analyze, he made to the WC side on the back of the 70 and has done nothing (as in rested on his laurels). What is he doing in the squad?
• Sehwag - Needed captain's reco for WC 2007 Squad. Needed one more to make it to the Ban tour. Now, let us say he scores 3 centuries in ODIs, what do you do? include him in the test squad? I think Sehwag is the right player on the wrong team. more later.
• Gautam Gambhir - What is he doing in the squad. Do you know who he is? Lemme help. He is the guy who lost out to Uthappa on the WC ticket. He had nearly booked it till his form failed him in the home series in WI. He has never played ODI outside the sub-continent. Outside India, he averages 20.5 in 8 games with 1 fifty. If say he hits a century, are you going to take him to England?
• Dinesh Mongia - So he is youth. got it! You want to know something. Between 2003 WC and 2007 WC, mongia played 12 games and he was recently tried and 'discarded' (as only BCCI can do!) after the SA tour. What is he going to do? You know how 'young' he is? 30 yrs.
• RP Singh - Why was he not there in the squad to the WC? How come the selectors thought of him suddenly.

Correct Decisions - Dravid, Dinesh Karthik, Yuvraj Singh, Sreesanth, Munaf, Zaheer, Dhoni
Debuts: Piyush Chawla, Manoj Tiwary
Wrong Decisions: Sehwag, Gambhir, Mongia
Doubtful: RP Singh
'Replacements': Gambhir by Tendulkar/Ganguly. Sehwag & Mongia by 2 middle-order batsmen (What happened to Ambati Rayadu?)

Test squad: Wasim Jaffer, Dinesh Karthik, Rahul Dravid (capt), VVS Laxman, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wk), Anil Kumble, Sreesanth, Zaheer Khan, VRV Singh, Ramesh Powar, Rajesh Pawar, Munaf Patel.

The test squad is even funnier:

• Wassim Jaffer and Karthik as openers? What happened to Gambhir? What will happen to the England tour in July? If one of these openers hits a century, will you take them to England? Sehwag was the best opener we had on this side of 2000 and we dumped him for ODIs? Why? He had done consistenly well in test cricket (well .. atleast bradmansque in 1st innings!) and has lost form in ODI. So what do the selectors do? dump him for Test and take him for ODI. It happens only in India
• What both Sourav and Yuvraj on the team? There is place only for one. You could have avoided sourav here. 'rested' for tests and picked for 'ODIs'
• What is VRV singh doing in test squad? why the distribution of caps across tests and odis between the 2 singhs? what good is it going to do for either of them, except to sulk around the dressing room? Whichever of these can expliot seaming pitches will make it to England., right? But you dont get those wickets in Bangladesh, do you?
• Ramesh Powar for test cricket. BCCI has sent a strong sign that they will take only kumble for england test tour. Powar, we enjoyed your stay in Bangladesh. thank you very much

Correct: Dravid, Karthik, Dhoni, VVS, Sachin, Yuvraj, Kumble, Sreesanth, Zaheer

Debut: Rajesh Pawar
Wrong Decisions: Gambhir, Ramesh Powar, Ganguly
Replacements: Sehwag for Gambhir, Piyush or powar stays or whosoever - it doesn't matter!, Ganguly - extra opener (gambhir himself) or bowler (piyush/powar) or Kaif/new middle order guy.

Thus we see that BCCI has given a grand total of 3 new caps, has 6 retreads and retained 19 of the previous squad for the tour. This after they promised 'youth'. Neither did they deliver on youth nor did they put together a good team to take to England come july and like every other time, the players have to catch up for the mistakes of the board...

Of Peyton Manning and Cricket!

I love Peyton Manning as much as most Indians love their cricketers at this moment. In short, not much

But his show at the Saturday Night Live, where he was completely open to ridiculing himself was pretty good. Watch it as he pokes fun at himself and at football as well (his joke on his mom would have drawn widespread contempt India in politically correct India, but something tells me that she gave her blessings to him on this one!)



Oh, talking of cricket, i absolutely loved this piece from Mukul Kesavan from Cricinfo. His opening statement is very provocative:

The subcontinental cricket fan is a lazy, pampered know-nothing who thinks he owns the cricket teams that he supports

Read the rest and let me know if you agree.

And the worst thing is the overanalysis from the news channels. i flipped through NDTV, Headlines Today, CNN-IBN, Times-Now, Star News (Hindi), Zee News (Hindi) between 2230 and 2300 and all the channels were mouning India's exit from the world cup. Come on, gimme a break - we lost and life goes on. I want to pray God that we need to show these media people how stressful it is to be in the limelight for every moment of a waking day. Please grant this wish alone.

and please, spare me of linking money, advertisments and cricketers. Do you think that our cricketers are dumb enough not to realise that there is more money in sponsorship than match fees and that sponsorship is directly dependent on the number of wins and big sixes on the cricket ground. Talk of the sterotype Indian cricket fan!

I watched BBC as they showed an clipping of the streets of Dhaka after Bangladesh qualified for the Super-8. Only a heartless person wouldn't have felt happy for the B'deshi guys.

100th Post!

Yipee., i finally made it to 100th post. I was not sure if i could make it to here. Some big time back-slapping. Thank you, Thank you.

Between, some sweet news mixed with some sad ones. On the bright side, in the real and the important world, the 8 accussed of killing Manjunath have been found guilty. Let the verdict in the cases of Priyadarshini Mattoo, Manjunath, Jessica Lall be a reminder to all the criminals that they can buy time but these days, there is no escape from the grip of the Judiciary. Long live Indian judiciary

This is also the week when Cricket lost Bob Woolmer. Frankly, my interest in the Cricket World Cup diminished as soon as i heard the news of his death last week. His loss happened in the real world while India's loss to Bangladesh did not. Please don't insult the Bangladesh cricket team by stating that the Indians played poor, they did not - the Bangladeshi youngsters played out of their skins. They knew not of fear and took the fight to the surprised and startled Indians. As i write now, India has lost to Sri Lanka as well. Once again, only a blind man who hasn't seen the matches would tell that India lost these games, when in reality, it is the superior play of India's opponents that won them the game.

I hope the Indian cricket fans get some maturity and avoid incidents like these.

Oh! Between did someone read my post on the minnows - so prophetic, i know - i am a genius. thank you very much.

Pause in cricketing debates ...

A loss in real world always hurts and to lose a young cricketer right during the biggest tournament is devastating.

Prayers to the family of Manjural Islam - the youngest test cricketer to pass away. I wish this is one record none break.