Of Minnows., seriously

I hope everyone is enjoying the Cricket World Cup through now. I liked the Pakistan-West Indies game and i think that this WC will turn out to be a good one as there are a lot of serious games ahead of us. Yeah! just after we are done with the minnows!

Not so fast., these minnows have some guts. They have always created upsets and it's foolish for the big teams to overlook them as there might be some surprises. Lets recap:

• 1975: None
• 1979: Sri Lanka defeats India
• 1983: Zimbabwe defeats Australia
• 1987: None
• 1992: Zimbabwe defeats England
• 1996: Kenya defeats West Indies
• 1999: Bangladesh defeats Pakistan
• 2003: Kenya defeats Sri Lanka as well as Zimbabwe; Canada defeats Bangladesh

Dravid has supported minnow participation and so have many a captains over the last few years made at least a cursory experience-will-benefit-them remark! However it is sad to note that the cricket administration has done nothing or near-nothing about getting the associate teams into the main fold. Kenya is no closer to the dream of being a full fledged cricketing nation while we have lost Zimbabwe from the test playing fratenity (or nearly!) and the not so great cricket administration sits in meeting across the world's most expensive hotels to just discuss and very little.

Here's my 2 cent plan for the next 8 years (thru 2015):

• All test playing nations to modify their policy that each of their domestic team (or atleast in the Elite division) will have atleast one player from the associate nations and a maximum of 3
• Each of the associate members can have a maximum of 2 international cricketers on the team for the world cup subject to the fact that they should play atleast 2 years in the associate nation's domestic cricket
• Of the 10 test playing nations, the big-8 (leave BAN & ZIM) will send their top domestic team (or 'A' team) on a tour to atleast one associate nation for 5 ODI series (or 3 tests/ 3 ODIs)
• The big-8 will send their national team to tour atleast 1 associate nation for a 5-ODI series, once every 4 years. ICC to plan that it is staggered that there is one tourney every year

I guess my 2 cents above is not too expensive to implement or too radical that the whole cricketing world will feel bad about. So time to stop uttering the sympathy line and time for action.

Ind SA - Third Test Grades (Not pretty if you are SRT or RD fan!)

Oh Man, after the great performance in the first test match, India reverted back to its old habits and lost a test series 2-1 that Sout Africa had no business winning, atleast not the last one.

Wassim Jaffer. Grade: B+
He has a bad habit. He follows a good innings with a bad one. Looks like he is always playing to keep his place in the side. I was disappointed when he lost focus towards the later part of Day 1 and gave away his wicket. That is where the advantage on Day 1 was lost. However, he was the least of India's problems.

KD Karthik. Grade: B
His Batting cannot mask deficiencies behind the stumps. While the official scorecard shows 7 byes, there were a lot more missed keeping chances.

V Sehwag. Grade: D+
Your batting in first innings is in the Lara-Ponting league while the second is more the Afridi league. He single handedly destroyed the coach's great move of having him open with another bone-headed shot

All Dravid/Tendulkar fans to skip this part

Rahul Dravid. Grade: F-
You are officially the first member of F- Club. If someone does not tell you that you singlehandedly lost the game for India, they are lying to you. Also, most of the bowling decisions back-fired and hence this would be one test match, you would like to forget in a hurry. Between, when the runs dry up, why do the Indians not look for singles and twos and rotate the strike.

Sachin Tendulkar. Grade: F-
Second member of the F- club. Who are you? I am sure that you are an imposter trying to ruin the name of ST. 14 runs of 62 balls with 1 four is but a shadow of what ST did in his career.

Maybe the CBI should investigate if ST has been abducted by space alien wanting his batting skills in the inter-gallatic match and replaced him with a poor and shoddy replacement.

On a serious note, i think it is not blasphemy to suggest that Sachin's game has fallen a lot. I don't know why, but someone in the dressing room should tell Sachin that he is but a shadow of the great player that he was. He no longer creates sleepless nights for opposition bowler and has many more bad innings in the last 2 years than the rest of his career combined.

Oh, by the way - i do know he scored a 64 in the first innings.

Sourav Ganguly. Grade: B
I think he made a statement in the overall series on his toughness. Makes me change my mind - i would rather have people with toughness than finesse. I do have to say that he did not help India's cause by exposing the tail in the first innings. How? Ganguly had 7 overs with the tail-enders (Kumble and lower):

• Over 1: Kumble faces Pollock the first ball because the batsmen crossed on the Sehwag dismissal. Kumble is dismissed on the 4th delivery
• Over 2: Ganguly takes a single on 3rd delivery
• Over 3: Ganguly takes a single of the first ball. He also agrees to a single with Zaheer on the last ball. Zaheer is dismissed of the first delivery the next over.
• Over 4: Ganguly gets strike of 3rd ball, gets a four and also a single off the last ball
• Over 5: Ganguly takes single of 3rd delivery, Sreesanth dismissed with the last delivery
• Over 6: Single of 4th delivery
• Over 7: Ganguly dismissed of the first delivery.

VVS Laxman. Grade: D-
How can you give up a wicket in such a situation in the second innings. Outside tendulkar and dravid, you too should owe up for this loss.

Kumble: Grade: C
Bad run with the bat. In a long time, i haven't seen you have an off-match. My first reading was that you were trying too much and that you are not suited to bowl around the stumps (like a left arm spinner!)

Sreesanth. Grade: C
Quiet game, with the bat and the ball.

Zaheer: Grade: C+
Had a good game with the ball though the stats did not do justice to his effort, not in the first innings. In the second, he was to support Kumble in running down the opposition - he kept his side of the bargain

MM Patel: Grade:D
I thought India played with 10 players. Nope, MM Patel replaced VRV Singh. What difference did it make? Made no difference in bowling as he was given ONE over in second innings. In terms of batting, the south african bowlers were relieved that they were not going to bowl to a wild VRV.

Ganguly as captain? Gimme a break!

A sense of perspective has never been a quality that India's cricket fraternity has possessed

I liked this sentence and fully agree with the author (Dhileep Premchand's analysis on India's recent test win) on India's passion / obsession called Cricket. I wanted to blog on this over the weekend by trying to find evidence of over-reaction within Indian media after India's splendid test victory in south africa

Alas, i did not have to wait for long because Ajay Jadeja was the first to mouth-off calling for Ganguly to replace Dravid as the captain for the World Cup. This, inspite of what all of us can now see - Ganguly was thrown off the team because he was getting obsessed with Captaincy that he failed to remember that batting contributions was required to be retained in the team. Now that this has finally dawned on him and he is batting as if every innings is his last, we saw a remarkable amount of freedom & responsibility in his batting - something Greg Chappell wanted and has now gotten.

In this situation, why would the Indian board want to hand captaincy to Ganguly? More over, people should realise and accept the fact that Ganguly's days as captain are over and he is on his last days as an international cricketer (maybe a year or so is the maximum left in him). Let us enjoy these days and not want to upset the already tipsy apple cart called Indian Cricket.

More than anyone else, Ganguly deserves it.