Cover Points : Pakistan

The rest of the story

gchakravarthy — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:45:00 GMT

Not too long ago, India's captain, MS Dhoni, was being hailed for his worker bee grade of professionalism. Now, his team mates, and to some extent he himself, would only be given a B-grade for their work.

Even his famously metronomic coach, whose made run-getting such a chore that Detroit wanted to rectuit him as a robot for their screw-tightening plant, had warned of exhaustion (read: motivational fatigue) before the World T20 ... and surely made it a talking point soon after India's exit from it.

Recently, he left another byte-mark about next year's IPL already.

While the players are fatigued, many have been wondering if the fans themselves are as well. In England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, where the sports seasons are very well demarcated, the followers of cricket seem to be able to maintain some kind of sanity. Many of Australia's internationally active cricket heroes followed their lead by skipping on IPL this time around, but did it help?

If Pakistan and Sri Lanka's 1st Test match in Galle is any indication, the answer might be: Yes!

The match has been very closely contested - well, at least until the fourth day - by two teams which are overflowing with hitherto unseen faces. It might not be a coincidence that this quality of cricket came after a prolonged and forced hiatus for Pakistan and even if not as prolonged, an equally forced, break from Sri Lanka's perspective. Of course, one could see that this break also had its impact on the quality of fielding in the Pakistani side ... but that could be "put down" to just lack of match practice ... after all this is their first Test in ...

But the vigor and drive from both teams was quite palpable and rather refreshing, especially in the face of recent Test series between the West Indies and England where all the hot air surrounding the matches seemed to have evaporated and taken away with it some of the mojo from the cricketers' as well.

In contrast, one Pakistani's mojo seems to be on the rising, and considering its already heliotropic tendencies, one wonders how much room there is to rise further. He has had considerable amount of rest as well.

Semi Final brings Pakistan a full circle

gchakravarthy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:08:00 GMT

A tale of the PowerPak v. the Safferers:

Albie in the Finals!!! Steyn alive, charging like a Jacques ... for one Morkel, made it to Botha Finals" - Younus Khan 23 minutes ago
Will this be Pakistan's Doom(iny)? 29 minutes ago
Wasim bowling to Wessels ... in the commentary box!! Oh! It's a *** comment followed by a *** comment. It's all crappening here ... 31 minutes ago
Akram WAZ a great bowler, but 'IM a crappy commentator. "Suppperb bowling ... supperb bowling ... suppperb bowling ..." 35 minutes ago
Full-of-crap Wessels is silent now!! 40 minutes ago
Says one green to another ... you're blue! ABD falls to AfriD and in comes JPD about 1 hour ago
Said one charger to another ... you're out of juice! But Gibbs checks the ball from Afridi after it has bowled him. Is this a sign of more hapless allegations to come? about 1 hour ago
Pakistan take a catch ... AMIRacle! Graemey innings ends. Maybe just as well for the Saffers! about 1 hour ago
Umer Goal! about 2 hours ago
Empty Wessels is making too much noise. about 2 hours ago
JP TooMany about 3 hours ago
Roll off van Der Nerve !! about 3 hours ago
Can Y. Khan do an I. Khan in the cricket World Cup? about 3 hours ago

Ireland back into nether land?

gchakravarthy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:22:00 GMT

Ireland may have crossed the first hurdle in the current World T20 tournament - one of beating a Test playing nation - to make it to the Super8, but the euphoria of that victory was quelled by a metronomic rather than meteoric performance from the other Test playing team in their group, one whose wont it had been to display more of the latter.

Repeating their Super8 entry in the longer World Cup in 2007, where they vanquished a much more serious adversary in Pakistan than Bangladesh, Ireland may not be strangers to the Ire of subcontinental cricket maniacs nor to the company of hallowed rivals in an elite club.

But they had indeed been strangers to defeat in the shortest version of the sport. Ireland, coming into this World Cup, had not lost a single T20I match. One could argue that with only 5 matches under their collective 28+ belt (apologies to the spring chickens in the team) it was just beginner's luck, but a record it was. Now they sit in the Super8 but only having put in, what some would argue and at their own peril, is their rightful place.

Many might jump the gun and point out that this should put the underground ramblings of Ireland displacing Bangladesh as a Test nation to rest.

But we might not have seen the last of Ireland yet. Pakistan might be keen to avenge their 2007 embarrassment, but New Zealand and Sri Lanka have not yet seen much of Ireland and though it might be unlikely, I wouldn't put it past the Irish to give at least one of those teams a bitter taste of their stouts.

And speaking of stouts, Regan West, one of the handful thirty-plussers in the Irish team proved that being stout and astute might indeed be too much to ask for in the same person as he limbered over the crease after his very first ball ... what a West!

Aver + Age = Average?

gchakravarthy — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:16:00 GMT

A lot had been expressed about the supposed loss of luster of the Australian cricket stars ever since they were beaten by India in India last year.That is just another tribute to the dominance of the Australian cricket team over their counterparts who were reduced to part-counters by them during the past decade. All they have really lost in that period is the sense of invincibility. They have actually not lost too many matches and the ones they have only lost to South Africa and India. And not just ANY India or South Africa, at least in the case of India many are arguing, not without evidence, this is THE BEST Indian team to have ever played cricket!

So when Rhys Thompson "roars" in relief at the "resurgence" of the Australian team, one feels like pinching oneself and him.

Just when we thought the Australian Cricket team, the Goliath of all Australian sporting rep teams had met its own David, waiting for the killer blow, the beast has suddenly re-awakened.

But there are a few Australian cricketers to whom that word might suit much better individually. Soon after the mass exit of some of the Australian greats, various factors led to the exit of some who many thought would be counted among the greats by the time they hung their boots or cast their fishing rods for longer or strummed their guitars louder. Drum rolls please. Enter (or is it "Exit"): Brett Lee, Andrew Symonds, Stuart Clark, Shane Watson, Shaun Tait.

Of these, Binga is certain he belongs in the Australian Team, heck he demands it! The Australian Team Management seems to be certain this averment combines destructively with his aging (at least for a super-fast bowler) body resulting in average performances on the field. Roy, spurred by his agent, is bent upon averting another smash to his image. They will be hoping that it is not just the image that's below average for this otherwise fearsome competitor. "Sarfraz" , for his part, stayed true to that adage "If you love something, let it go and ...". Well, his average ODI overs have not stopped him from getting back into the side. And then there's Watto, Watto ... Watto! He must be wondering Whatto will ever bring him back from the sideline into that very side? In his case, his age might, in fact, be causing him an oppostie problem. His still-growing body a few years ago might have been put through too much resulting in a apge of injuries that possibly gave the Australian establishment that is always looking for stability, a very warm, fuzzy feeling in their collective stomachs. Tinga, who had started with a tingle in his stomach telling him he could be the next Binga, bowed himself out into the sidelineswhere he seems to linga.

All of these talented Ozzies seem to have suddenly seemed average to their national selection committee and at the same time the Australian team seems to be heading that way as well. Will their age, at least on the international cricket pitch, aver their returns to the national side? One can wait and see.

In the meanwhile, Younus Khan is lamenting the lack of Ricky, Mitch, and Mike in his opposing ranks because he feels his inexperienced side could learn a lot from them:

"When you play against the top players like Ponting, you learn different and good things"

A dead rubber.

gchakravarthy — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:05:00 GMT

Most of the debates over the past two weeks have been over the quality of both the pitches on view in the two-Test series. As a few armed men would have it, it was not the pitches alone that ended up being dead in Pakistan. Hafsa, on "The Dawn Blog" seems to be arriving at a conclusion along similar lines, just a couple of hours after the attacks on the cricket convoy from hotel to stadium was reported:

This deadly attack simply means no international team will be willing to come and play any sport in Pakistan.

On wellpitched.com , "Sledgehammer" went one step further or, more appropriately, one foot deeper, and wrote what could be one of the first obituaries for the sport iitself in Pakistan:

I think the title says it all. Today's disgusting and shameful attacks have sealed the deal. There is no reason for any foreign team to tour Pakistan.

Dominic Cork, who was on the commentary team there, had this immediate reaction:

"I won't be coming back here while I'm still living. I don't think international teams should come back to this country, whether it's 10 or 20 years."

The news may sound shocking and seem to vindicate most teams' stance of not even remotely taking a stance on any pitch in Pakistan. But it may well have been the "satisfactory levels of security" repeatedly promised by the PCB and accepted by the Sri Lankan Sports Minister just ten days ago, that seems to have left the Sri Lankan players alive.

But Sanjeev Miglani from Reuter's "FactBox" reminds one and all about the pre-existing security concerns for cricket to be taking place in Pakistan even before this :

Sri Lanka's cricket team were touring Pakistan after India pulled out in the wake of the Mumbai attacks
Until the Sri Lankan series Pakistan had gone without test cricket for more then a year and was keen to have international cricket at home.
Australia postponed a test tour in April 2008 and the International Cricket Council also put off the Champions Trophy after South Africa raised security concerns about playing in Pakistan.
In 2002, a bomb exploded in Karachi while the New Zealand cricket team were touring, killing 13 people including 11 French navy experts.
The ICC last month asked the organisers to plan alternate venues due to security concerns.

Two other, much-publicised, assumptions seem to have also been gunned down by this incident. The first of these having been initiated by Imran Khan in the aftermath of the myriad cancellations of international cricketing events in Pakistan in 2008:

There is no problem about the security of cricketers in Pakistan.

his logic being

The terrorists will never target cricketers knowing that they will then lose the battle of hearts and minds of the people. Cricketers are safe in Pakistan

The second of those assumptions was that Sri Lanka being one of those seemingly rare friendly nations, especially one that chose to prove this friendship by defying what had almost become as commonplace a tenet in cricket as "bowling within oneself" or the more annoying "it ain't over until the last ball is bowled", was immune to the ire of any lurking attackers.

As far as assumptions go, chances are Samaraweera would have assumed that his double double would not be followed by so much trouble. Chances also are that he would gladly give up those four tons of runs for never having to face the predicament of him ending up on the wrong side of four kilograms of explosives. But chance is a funny thing and many know it better than an international cricketer, those many being the rest of the citizens of the subcontinent, because and brace yourself ... "after all, cricket imitates life itself".

And then there were (n)one - Part 1 - The wins

arvi — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:10:00 GMT

Agatha Christie's famous novel did have one left in the end though the readers find that out only in the end. Similarly, when Edwards walked in,walked in the latest thriller @ ARG(ggg), England could have been forgotten for thinking that it was a...(read more)

Pakistan and English reverse swing

dcsiva — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:18:00 GMT

The Champions Trophy has been "postponed" until October next year. There goes the end of non-South Asian teams touring Pakistan. Meanwhile, with some big doses of help from his seam bowlers, Dhoni continues to carry the Indian batting line-up:

His critics keep asking why he is shy of batting higher up the order – as if he were afraid of taking up responsibility. And each time he hears such a refrain, Team India's captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni keeps offering them many reasons, the most important of which happens to be taking up greater responsibility.

On Sunday at the Premadasa Stadium in Colombo, by holding himself back until the fall of the fourth wicket, Dhoni showed yet again that he is ready to bear the cross of marshalling the resources in the latter half of the innings. And he came up with another fine exhibition of his mature approach to keeping India's innings together.

And some big news from the 2005 Ashes, as Marcus Trescothick admits to drug mint use during the series. If it had been a Pakistani admitting to cheating with reverse swing...? Nestaquin expects that the MBEs to be returned at the very least:

In his new tome, Trescothick writes that he was in charge of a conspiracy to use mints to manufacture the shine on the ball to increase the efficiency and longevity of the deadly reverse-swing that rattled the Australian middle-order. No wonder McGrath and co. could not replicate the late swing that Flintoff and Jones regularly produced in the same conditions. The Australians played within the rules. The English did not.

Fletcher and Vaughan encouraged the ball tampering and Trescothick admits in his book that he even experimented before the series began until he found the right brand of mint. He also writes that the English team tried using sugary sweets to create a false shine during the 2001 Ashes series. Logic suggests that in the years between the English tampered with the ball against every opponent at home.

To put this incident in perspective for our loyal English readers I offer an analogy. Maradona’s hand of god goal was a spur of the moment decision. The English fraud was planned and executed by the coach, the captain and his deputy over many years, many matches and hundreds of net sessions.

Lastly, I may have suggested that he really should be the next great Jamaican fast bowler, but JC brings news that the person Usain Bolt most wants to meet in life is...Matthew Hayden. Perhaps he meant by "meet" something like "knock his head off with a 100mph bouncer"?

Champions, but not in Pakistan

dcsiva — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:45:00 GMT

Much electronic ink has been refreshed on the topic of the Champions Trophy and playing in Pakistan. Here's Amit Bajaj's take on the contrast between the BCCI and ACA:

The ACA has given more weightage to the report given by Reg Dickason, based on his short stay in Karachi. You can't blame the PCB for being unhappy as the ACA has largely ignored the more comprehensive report provided by Nicholls Steyn, the security experts hired by the ICC.

The BCCI's stand is not any show of bravado - it just shows a more intelligent understanding of the situation in Pakistan. Imran Khan does have a point when he points out that no cricket team or player has been the target of any terrorist activity ever. With the Australian players, it looks like their wives, girlfriends and the ACA have a bigger influence on their decision than an official ICC report. What remains to be seen now is how Cricket Australia reacts. Or will it be ICC that comes to its rescue?!

Here's Ottayan on the relationship between the ACA and the Players' Association in Australia:

However, yesterday’s statement from the Player’s Association that they will not play in Pakistan has added a new twist to the story. ICC feels that Cricket Australia is using the Players Association to escape making a decision.

In fact, an ICC source, who refused to be named, questioned whether the governing boards were hiding behind their "players" so as not to further antagonise India and the powerful Asian bloc which effectively rules the game.

This seems disingenuous to me at best. What on earth is wrong with having a Players' Association that wants to look after its members? There argument is wrong-headed, but they should have some input into the process surely?

Ottayan also links to an article by Mukul Kesavan on Indian batsmen and Ajantha Mendis. And, finally, Kartikeya also on the Fab Four as media project.

Risk, reward, ruin

dcsiva — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:18:00 GMT

When can you travel somewhere safely? Cricket Australia say they just follow expert advice:

It is a charge from the subcontinent and the International Cricket Council that has already been laid against players from several countries who stayed in India for the lucrative Indian Premier League after a devastating terrorist blast in Jaipur during May, but are now refusing to tour Pakistan for the Champions Trophy in September.

A CA spokesman claimed that every tour was assessed on its merits. "We only go where security advice tells us is safe," CA's general manager of public affairs Peter Young said yesterday.

"The same question was asked about the London bombings during the '05 Ashes tour when we did not go to Pakistan in March.

"As far as London was concerned we kept the team out of there until security advice was emphatic that it was safe.

"We go through the same process every tour. It's as simple as that."

Ducking Beamers highlights one important consideration, the obvious one really. Money:

There’s no arguing that Pakistan is, on its face, a tad more unstable. But then, so is India: during the Indian Premier League, a series of blasts rocked Jaipur (and a number of explosions did so just recently), but the resident team vowed to stay on and play (a good thing, since they went on to win the tournament). When money is involved, it appears, fears tend to disappear.

And Mike Selvey makes much the same point. Hypocrisy and money:

Meanwhile I await further evidence of what might at best be viewed as double standards by the players, and at worst hypocrisy. In 2005 Australia and England played one-day internationals at Lord's and The Oval just days after the July 7 atrocities in central London. If memory serves, there was no clamour to leave. Last winter England toured Sri Lanka even as bombs were exploding in Colombo and its environs. My family and I remained in Sri Lanka after the tour to enjoy a memorable Christmas and to appreciate that sometimes the reality outweighs the perception.

jno50, in the first comment to Selvey's post, argues interestingly that it's not hypocrisy, just a cost-benefit analysis that all professional players should make.

Nations and private clubs

dcsiva — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:01:00 GMT

Where goes nationalism? The Business Standard carries the big story about the IPL:

The successful launch of the Indian Premier League by the Board of Control for Cricket in India on Friday at Bangalore marks a watershed in the history of the game, and could well re-define its future. On the sub-continent, at least, cricket has been an 'Empire strikes back' kind of phenomenon, which is not surprising given the colonial provenance of the game. It looks as if IPL may change that.
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Friday's match shows that people are willing to watch a match that has no nationalist sentiment attached to it; indeed, it became clear that it is has become more important to get 22 top performers to play against each other, never mind the banner under which they are playing, than to wage surrogate nationalist wars. All that the new generation, which has no memory of being a colony, wants is a good game of quality cricket. This is not unlike soccer, where loyalties are to clubs rather than countries, except when a World Cup tournament is staged.

Here are some of the reasons why Q likes Twenty20:

Ganguly informing McCullum to be careful against Praveen Kumar as he nips the ball sharply.
Boucher's stares at Kumar and Noffke when they bowled wide ones down leg.
Zaheer subtly showing Ganguly the way and celebrating with Kallis.
...
Ganguly getting his revenge and bowling Zaheer and celebrating with Ponting.
...
Hayden back slapping Murali after the Sri Lankan made an amazing attempt at a catch at mid off.

And Ankit's take on the conclusion of the Pakistan--Bangladesh ODI series:

These days, we love the slam bang stuff. We love the ‘lesser’ teams stand up and challenge the giants. There is a romantic in everyone who wants Kenya to beat the West Indies (oops, this was a bit obvious).
The bottom-line being, sometimes people do not realise the prematurity of a situation, and that’s when we get a 3-0 green-wash (Pakistan v Bangladesh ODI Series, April 2008), and lots and lots more similar happenings preceding it. What do you guys think about it?