welcome to the first edition of the pitch report christmas unawards (PRCU), an annual feature that's likely to cause about as much of a stir as the news of another cloudy day in london.
THE JONTY RHODES FIELDING PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR UNAWARD
few teams have worked harder than pakistan to lower the standards of fielding in world cricket. nothing epitomized this better than their performance in the just concluded series against india, in which pakistan came to the party with one and a half bowlers, a handful of batsmen and 11 fumblers.
THE 'LOOK AT ME' UNAWARD FOR STYLE MINUS SUBSTANCE
should it be ravi shastri for his testosterone addled attitude? should be dilip vengsarkar for his petulance? should it be daryl hair for his self-righteous manner? perhaps it should be daryl hair for his stand-out services to the cause of cricket umpiring. not. there was one man who called more attention to himself than even hair. (no, not rameez raja and his hair.) for providing us with an unending supply of newsworthy stories and for drawing more attention to himself than a peacock in heat, the honour goes to shoaib akhtar.
SOUR GRAPES UNAWARD OF THE YEAR
to shane warne for not giving adam gilchrist his due in his list of top 50 cricketers of his generation. all because the aussie selectors overlooked warne for not just the captaincy but also the vice-captaincy of the australian side.
TEAM OF THE YEAR
to the once-mighty west indies for continuing to enrich world cricket with the one quality so essential for great entertainment: tragedy. as we all know, there can be no drama, no excitement and nothing to lament about without a great tragedy.
THE TOKEN CRICKET UNAWARD FOR WOMEN
mandira bedi for proving, once again, that men will be men and women will be decorative pieces.
THE JOHN BUCHANNAN UNAWARD
handed out to people who have performed outstandingly in their role as coach, the john buchannan unaward for the year goes to john bracewell and greg chappell for proving to be even less useful than a transportation vehicle to their respective teams.
COMEBACK OF THE YEAR
this unaward goes to the just-recovered munaf patel for being asked to go back to domestic cricket so that he may work hard enough of his fitness and make yet another comeback next year.
THE GHOST UNAWARD FOR SERVICES TO CRICKET LITERATURE
to all the cricket writers of the world that the players strenuously insist they never read but make it a point to cultivate to get puff pieces written about them.
THE AUSSIE LEE UNAWARD FOR BEST BRAWL
to the australian team that was waiting eagerly for sreesanth only to find out that the speedster has been ruled out of the tour down under on account of injury.
THE HARRY HOUDINI UNAWARD FOR GREATEST ESCAPE
to the indian team for having managed to come away from the test series against pakistan without a 3-0 result in their favour; despite the pakistanis doing everything they could to make things easy for india.
AND FINALLY, THE SIDESHOW JOHNNY LEVER UNAWARD FOR MAKING UP THE NUMBERS
all the teams in world cricket that line up for their turn at being thrashed by the aussies.
Showing posts with label parting shot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parting shot. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Unlucky Sehwag makes the cut
after this and this from two of the more highly regarded cricket writers in the business, it's time for this: Sehwag should consider himself very unlucky to have been picked for Australia. yes, you may gasp audibly. (much in the manner the scribes apparently did when the name 'Virender Sehwag' was mentioned in the list of 15 selected for the tour of australia.)
ever the contrarian, we're of the opinion - contrary to popular belief, of course - that sehwag will be ruing his luck that he didn't get a chance to pad up (and pad his averages) in the just concluded run-fest against pakistan. instead, he has been handed the - mostly - unwanted and unequivocally unenviable task of facing a bowling attack that few batsmen in the world relish the prospect of going up against; and more than a few of the widely read mouthpieces in the world of cricket writing consider 'frighteningly fast'. indeed, so truly blessed must be the bloke who is told that his career depends on how he tackles one of the toughest assignments in world cricket.
we'll tell you what we think is really 'lucky'. 'lucky' is being asked to open the innings against an attack that is so docile it ought to be called a 'defense'. 'lucky' is being secure in the knowledge that the guys behind the wickets waiting to snaffle any of your edges will, most of the time, not manage to do so. 'lucky' is when as an opening batsman all you have to do is see off one quality bowler who will, more often than not, do the job for you by giving up after a few overs of trying. 'lucky' is dinesh kartik who somehow managed to score a fifty when the pressure was off. 'lucky' is sourav ganguly who just about managed to get through the kotla test and lived to fight another day. 'lucky' is every indian batsman who is given an opportunity to play in india. 'lucky' is not sehwag.
fortunately for sehwag - and this is lucky - his first test will not be against the 'fremantle doc', australia and the fast waca wicket in perth. it will be in melbourne - one of the happier hunting grounds down under for india. we're well aware of what virender sehwag did to the australians the last time he played against them at the mcg. and on that upbeat note, here's our proposed XI for the boxing day test match: jaffer, sehwag, dravid, tendulkar, ganguly, laxman, dhoni, kumble, harbajan, pathan and zaheer khan.
here's wishing sehwag a verry merry x'mas and all the luck he now deserves. unfortunately for him, he's been asked to prove himself against australia. in australia.
ever the contrarian, we're of the opinion - contrary to popular belief, of course - that sehwag will be ruing his luck that he didn't get a chance to pad up (and pad his averages) in the just concluded run-fest against pakistan. instead, he has been handed the - mostly - unwanted and unequivocally unenviable task of facing a bowling attack that few batsmen in the world relish the prospect of going up against; and more than a few of the widely read mouthpieces in the world of cricket writing consider 'frighteningly fast'. indeed, so truly blessed must be the bloke who is told that his career depends on how he tackles one of the toughest assignments in world cricket.
we'll tell you what we think is really 'lucky'. 'lucky' is being asked to open the innings against an attack that is so docile it ought to be called a 'defense'. 'lucky' is being secure in the knowledge that the guys behind the wickets waiting to snaffle any of your edges will, most of the time, not manage to do so. 'lucky' is when as an opening batsman all you have to do is see off one quality bowler who will, more often than not, do the job for you by giving up after a few overs of trying. 'lucky' is dinesh kartik who somehow managed to score a fifty when the pressure was off. 'lucky' is sourav ganguly who just about managed to get through the kotla test and lived to fight another day. 'lucky' is every indian batsman who is given an opportunity to play in india. 'lucky' is not sehwag.
fortunately for sehwag - and this is lucky - his first test will not be against the 'fremantle doc', australia and the fast waca wicket in perth. it will be in melbourne - one of the happier hunting grounds down under for india. we're well aware of what virender sehwag did to the australians the last time he played against them at the mcg. and on that upbeat note, here's our proposed XI for the boxing day test match: jaffer, sehwag, dravid, tendulkar, ganguly, laxman, dhoni, kumble, harbajan, pathan and zaheer khan.
here's wishing sehwag a verry merry x'mas and all the luck he now deserves. unfortunately for him, he's been asked to prove himself against australia. in australia.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Let's wrap
since we're making grand plans to go on a holiday longer than anything a workaholic like us might make the time to even consider, we thought it best to share some of our parting thoughts on the year 2007 that was for indian cricket.
in an unfair world, the year would belong only to sourav. but since that would mean an unacceptably short review for the powers-that-be who pay us our peanuts for monkeying around in the hallowed precincts of this rag, we're going to have to be a lot fairer and take stock of all the people who bothered to make their mark in 2007 - mostly for the right reasons.
towards the end of 2006, all eyes in indian cricket - and, to an extent, even australian - were on one man. eyes that were trying to reconcile with a doubting mind harbouring sobering thoughts on whether the ageing body of this man could still call upon the skills required to keep pace with his never-say-die spirit. one year later, that man has provided an answer more conclusive than any of us thought he was anymore capable of delivering. with almost 950 runs at an average of over 60 runs per innings, sourav ganguly is our mega-star for 2007. (and no, we will not qualify it with uncharitable comments on the dubious quality of some of the opposition bowling attacks he made these runs against.)
in other people who make it to this much-anticipated and widely dissected annual, global and world famous news bulletin: we have wasim jaffer who has taken huge strides in his journey towards cementing a place at the top of a star-studded batting order in which nobody had the moxie to step forward and do the most difficult job of opening the innings with him. which is an all-important reason our next star of the year 2007 is the little dinesh karthik.
living in a country of a billion people who stoically tolerate an acute paucity of opening batsmen, fast bowlers and time for those who haven't been touched by the much-ballyhooed 9% rate of growth in gdp, it behooves us to make a little space for...a man who is so hungry to be in the indian team that he is willing to do much of the dirty work that far more established players have blithely turned their backs on. for his can-do spirit and not-so-inconsiderable skills as a batsman - that were on display for the most part of 2007 - we rate dinesh karthik as an 'outperformer'.
the other players whose stocks have risen through 2007 would be the 'almost very very special' laxman, gautam 'very intense' gambhir, irfan 'comeback' pathan, zahir 'comeback' khan, robin 'the mouth' uthappa, rohit 'the kid' sharma, rudra 'dreamboat' pratap singh and the devsaab of indian cricket, sachin 'evergreen' tendulkar. very honourable mention: anil 'tireless' kumble for bailing his country out of a tight spot and taking on the poisoned chalice of the indian test captaincy.
taking...erm, stock of the picks we have put together so far, we're wondering who we might have left out? immediately after doing so, it dawns on us that we haven't done what we're best unknown for: taking the laggards to the cleaners. well, there's a very good reason for it. seeing that we're so happy with the way things have panned out for us the past year, we didn't want to leave 2007 with any kind of negative bias. and so, we won't.
there's one or two things though we will say before taking the high road out of these parts. ms 'nothing to do with bill gates' dhoni and yuvraj 'my father's dreams' singh were, for us, the two people who kept the established 'stars' on their toes, the young guns in high spirits and the demanding advertisers coming back for more. without them the indian cricket circus of 2006-07 might only have been remembered for the world cup debacle, the utterly shambolic, depressing, tragicomic shenanigans of the bcci and a certain greg chappell, mbe, vec (very emotional coach). that said, dear unreaders, we're off.
ps: you may violently disagree with all or many of these carefully calibrated assessments we've taken little trouble to cobble together for your read. but for that you'll have to read, at least, some of our drivel. good luck. (you'll need it.)
in an unfair world, the year would belong only to sourav. but since that would mean an unacceptably short review for the powers-that-be who pay us our peanuts for monkeying around in the hallowed precincts of this rag, we're going to have to be a lot fairer and take stock of all the people who bothered to make their mark in 2007 - mostly for the right reasons.
towards the end of 2006, all eyes in indian cricket - and, to an extent, even australian - were on one man. eyes that were trying to reconcile with a doubting mind harbouring sobering thoughts on whether the ageing body of this man could still call upon the skills required to keep pace with his never-say-die spirit. one year later, that man has provided an answer more conclusive than any of us thought he was anymore capable of delivering. with almost 950 runs at an average of over 60 runs per innings, sourav ganguly is our mega-star for 2007. (and no, we will not qualify it with uncharitable comments on the dubious quality of some of the opposition bowling attacks he made these runs against.)
in other people who make it to this much-anticipated and widely dissected annual, global and world famous news bulletin: we have wasim jaffer who has taken huge strides in his journey towards cementing a place at the top of a star-studded batting order in which nobody had the moxie to step forward and do the most difficult job of opening the innings with him. which is an all-important reason our next star of the year 2007 is the little dinesh karthik.
living in a country of a billion people who stoically tolerate an acute paucity of opening batsmen, fast bowlers and time for those who haven't been touched by the much-ballyhooed 9% rate of growth in gdp, it behooves us to make a little space for...a man who is so hungry to be in the indian team that he is willing to do much of the dirty work that far more established players have blithely turned their backs on. for his can-do spirit and not-so-inconsiderable skills as a batsman - that were on display for the most part of 2007 - we rate dinesh karthik as an 'outperformer'.
the other players whose stocks have risen through 2007 would be the 'almost very very special' laxman, gautam 'very intense' gambhir, irfan 'comeback' pathan, zahir 'comeback' khan, robin 'the mouth' uthappa, rohit 'the kid' sharma, rudra 'dreamboat' pratap singh and the devsaab of indian cricket, sachin 'evergreen' tendulkar. very honourable mention: anil 'tireless' kumble for bailing his country out of a tight spot and taking on the poisoned chalice of the indian test captaincy.
taking...erm, stock of the picks we have put together so far, we're wondering who we might have left out? immediately after doing so, it dawns on us that we haven't done what we're best unknown for: taking the laggards to the cleaners. well, there's a very good reason for it. seeing that we're so happy with the way things have panned out for us the past year, we didn't want to leave 2007 with any kind of negative bias. and so, we won't.
there's one or two things though we will say before taking the high road out of these parts. ms 'nothing to do with bill gates' dhoni and yuvraj 'my father's dreams' singh were, for us, the two people who kept the established 'stars' on their toes, the young guns in high spirits and the demanding advertisers coming back for more. without them the indian cricket circus of 2006-07 might only have been remembered for the world cup debacle, the utterly shambolic, depressing, tragicomic shenanigans of the bcci and a certain greg chappell, mbe, vec (very emotional coach). that said, dear unreaders, we're off.
ps: you may violently disagree with all or many of these carefully calibrated assessments we've taken little trouble to cobble together for your read. but for that you'll have to read, at least, some of our drivel. good luck. (you'll need it.)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Sourav survives Kotla test
so we started writing this match report a few hours ago until we asked ourselves what's the big idea writing something that dilip, over at the doosra, will do a predictably evocative job of. and so he has.
dilip has said almost everything that needs to be said about india's gabbaesque record at the kotla. almost. thankfully, he has left us with one or two things more that are worth writing home about, one of which - the sourav show - we will proceed to dwell upon in some detail.
after a typically loose dismissal through the gate in the first innings, a typically chancy contribution with the ball and the bat in the second effort ensured that the 'long in the tooth but far from short on determination' bengal tiger lived to fight another day...and two more test matches. good on him.
luckily for captain kumble and sourav, the latter managed to somehow successfully negotiate shoaib's thunderbolts during a most crucial time of the match last evening. where a more adventurous captain might have considered sending in dhoni at the fall of dravid's wicket, kumble, as is his wont, did what was expected of him.
against a more inventive and better endowed team than malik's pakistan, kumble will have to demonstrate more initiative in order to deal better with challenges involving the likes of brett lee, mitchell johnson and company. it'll be interesting to see how much extra over the ordinary our new captain is likely to be. or not. we think not.
the next test is going to be held at the eden gardens. we wonder what sourav, laxman and dravid, all of whom have fond memories of this one of the world's more dramatic cricketing venues, will serve up for us.
the last time the indian's played pakistan here, it took shoaib akhtar two balls to change the complexion of the game. two magic balls. balls even more magical than the one he bowled to breach the wall's defenses in the kotla test. a feast awaits us.
dilip has said almost everything that needs to be said about india's gabbaesque record at the kotla. almost. thankfully, he has left us with one or two things more that are worth writing home about, one of which - the sourav show - we will proceed to dwell upon in some detail.
after a typically loose dismissal through the gate in the first innings, a typically chancy contribution with the ball and the bat in the second effort ensured that the 'long in the tooth but far from short on determination' bengal tiger lived to fight another day...and two more test matches. good on him.
luckily for captain kumble and sourav, the latter managed to somehow successfully negotiate shoaib's thunderbolts during a most crucial time of the match last evening. where a more adventurous captain might have considered sending in dhoni at the fall of dravid's wicket, kumble, as is his wont, did what was expected of him.
against a more inventive and better endowed team than malik's pakistan, kumble will have to demonstrate more initiative in order to deal better with challenges involving the likes of brett lee, mitchell johnson and company. it'll be interesting to see how much extra over the ordinary our new captain is likely to be. or not. we think not.
the next test is going to be held at the eden gardens. we wonder what sourav, laxman and dravid, all of whom have fond memories of this one of the world's more dramatic cricketing venues, will serve up for us.
the last time the indian's played pakistan here, it took shoaib akhtar two balls to change the complexion of the game. two magic balls. balls even more magical than the one he bowled to breach the wall's defenses in the kotla test. a feast awaits us.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Marvelous Marvan
one of the hardest things to do is say goodbye when you're still at the top of your game. it's even harder when you feel you have something left to prove and know you can. tpr of course had no such problems when saying goodbye to copywriting. marvan atapattu has done just that. tpr would like to take a little time out to salute him for it.
in a cricket world where old warhorses find it increasingly hard to listen to their creaking bodies, marvan has chosen an almost perfect time to put in his papers. at 37, the 'all or nothing' batsman has lambasted his detractors, proved them wrong with his performance and, better still, not given them another chance to get even by disciplining him. now that's what we call superb timing. (something marvan didn't have in spades as a player.)
marvan, the player was an athertonesque-performer who personified determination, determination and...more determination. initially, and still, remembered for his incredible, zero-filled debut series, marvan went on to make more, and bigger, double hundreds than rahul dravid and sachin tendulkar. which just goes to prove that it's best not to lay too much emphasis on first impressions.
what are the odds of an indian player with a similarly horrifying run of ducks, going on to have a career as long and illustrious as marvan's? most likely, zero.
in passing, tpr would like to draw the readers' attention to a certain sourav ganguly, a player infinitely more talented than marvan and blessed with a superb sense of timing, which seems to have sadly deserted him.
happily for sourav, in recent times, he seems to have buttressed his always silken skills with a healthy dose of marvanesque grit. we sincerely hope the great man will give us an opportunity to do a 'marvan' for him. after all, the last thing we'd want to say is something heart-breaking like 'enough sourav'. enough TPR.
in a cricket world where old warhorses find it increasingly hard to listen to their creaking bodies, marvan has chosen an almost perfect time to put in his papers. at 37, the 'all or nothing' batsman has lambasted his detractors, proved them wrong with his performance and, better still, not given them another chance to get even by disciplining him. now that's what we call superb timing. (something marvan didn't have in spades as a player.)
marvan, the player was an athertonesque-performer who personified determination, determination and...more determination. initially, and still, remembered for his incredible, zero-filled debut series, marvan went on to make more, and bigger, double hundreds than rahul dravid and sachin tendulkar. which just goes to prove that it's best not to lay too much emphasis on first impressions.
what are the odds of an indian player with a similarly horrifying run of ducks, going on to have a career as long and illustrious as marvan's? most likely, zero.
in passing, tpr would like to draw the readers' attention to a certain sourav ganguly, a player infinitely more talented than marvan and blessed with a superb sense of timing, which seems to have sadly deserted him.
happily for sourav, in recent times, he seems to have buttressed his always silken skills with a healthy dose of marvanesque grit. we sincerely hope the great man will give us an opportunity to do a 'marvan' for him. after all, the last thing we'd want to say is something heart-breaking like 'enough sourav'. enough TPR.
Salman Butt - Power Pak'd Performer
now that the odi series between pakistan and india is over, it's time for us to quickly say what we don't get an opportunity to say as often as we'd like to. we told you so.
we told you salman butt was going to perform well in the just finished odi series against india. the minute we saw him compile that little gem of a fifty in the first odi, despatching pathan, sreesanth and gang with minimum fuss through cover and other areas in the V, we knew this was going to be a special series for the handsome young man with shots that look almost as good as him.
shoaib malik would be well advised to cultivate this man and lean on him. for salman butt has a smart head on those broad shoulders of his. and it shows. most of all, it showed in his decision to give up the vice-captaincy to concentrate on his batting. it takes a courageous, ruthless, mature and ambitious young man to deny himself the quite significant honour of being second-in-command at such a young age - he's only 23.
consider very carefully the adjectives we are pinning on him. for these are the very same qualities that will stand him in good stead when he is one day offered the poisoned chalice of leading pakistan, as he most certainly will be.
the thing is, we somehow don't believe the gentle, simple and immensely talented shoaib malik is cut out for the job he has currently been entrusted with. if you were to ask us who we think will be leading pakistan in a year or two from now, we'd be inclined to plump for the shrewd butt.
and when (not if) that happens, we'll, once again, eagerly say what we don't get an opportunity to say as often as we'd like to. we told you so.
we told you salman butt was going to perform well in the just finished odi series against india. the minute we saw him compile that little gem of a fifty in the first odi, despatching pathan, sreesanth and gang with minimum fuss through cover and other areas in the V, we knew this was going to be a special series for the handsome young man with shots that look almost as good as him.
shoaib malik would be well advised to cultivate this man and lean on him. for salman butt has a smart head on those broad shoulders of his. and it shows. most of all, it showed in his decision to give up the vice-captaincy to concentrate on his batting. it takes a courageous, ruthless, mature and ambitious young man to deny himself the quite significant honour of being second-in-command at such a young age - he's only 23.
consider very carefully the adjectives we are pinning on him. for these are the very same qualities that will stand him in good stead when he is one day offered the poisoned chalice of leading pakistan, as he most certainly will be.
the thing is, we somehow don't believe the gentle, simple and immensely talented shoaib malik is cut out for the job he has currently been entrusted with. if you were to ask us who we think will be leading pakistan in a year or two from now, we'd be inclined to plump for the shrewd butt.
and when (not if) that happens, we'll, once again, eagerly say what we don't get an opportunity to say as often as we'd like to. we told you so.
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