Desperate or just plain dumb ?

There are players who make the ball play to their whims, and then there are some whose whims make them play with the ball. 


Shahid Afridi, in a single stroke of idiocy, has gone where no cricketer has been before. 


The acting pakistan captain, apparently in a fit of utmost stupidity, was caught on camera(s) literally biting the match ball in the 5th one dayer against Australia. It wasn't a nibble or lick, in which case we would have leniently concluded that he was rather hungry (for a win) after seeing his team lose 7 in a row on the tour and heading for the 8th straight. In an attempt to sink his teeth into the matter of winning the match, (and I feel rather stupid even to write this), Afridi decided to give a voracious chomp on the poor ball. It was indeed one of the most disturbing sights on a cricket field. SEE FOR YOURSELF

This man had to be either very desperate or is just plain dumb to something so ridiculous. In any case Afridi now stars in what could be the most explicit acts of ball tampering ever to go on record…and the already controversial player will now have to live with this for the rest of  his life sans redemption. 


Further, in one of the most hilarious cover up attempts of all time, Shahid Afridi claimed he was ''smelling' the ball. If you want first class entertainment, listen to THIS  this interview in which Afridi claims that sometimes one can smell the ball with the mouth, and then requests no further negative questions from Peter Walsh. Pray what was he smelling? Trying to find out for himself how much the paksitan team stunk on this tour ? 


Ball tampering is one of the black arts of cricket, just like sledging.  But in the case of Afridi above, he leaves nothing to imagination. His act of profound stupidity takes the cake. This is probably the ugliest shot of his cricketing life that is already a platter full of odious hits. A stroke that will haunt him forever, and it should.  


He has apologized for it, but his subjugated defense for this act is indicative of his remorselessness. Afridi states on IBN-Live that "There is no team in the world that doesn’t tamper with the ball but my approach was wrong".  "Approach was wrong"...? It's like a convict stating on hindsight that he should have committed the murder by a knife instead of a pistol because the pistol made too much noise ....the crime itself was alright ! 


I have a consipracy theory. Pakistan was 0-7 before going in to this last ODI  match at  Perth. Me thinks some stakes outside of the cricketing ground must have been resting against a pakistani whitewash. With Australia at 7/178 and the match staged precariously in no man's land,  Afridi may have thought of taking matters in his hand (or mouth, as the case may be) to tilt some 'balance' in his 'account'. Far fetched ? Maybe, may be not. But then until last night did we imagine anyone would bite a ball in front of 15 cameras ? Cricket is indeed a game where anything's possible :) 


Of course, for now it will be interesting to see how Afridi handles the next few days with his foot in the mouth.

The Pink Panther is but a flawed diamond....

Cricket is a straightforward game for the most part. Great players perform great acts, they make good of their opportunities, prevail through the bad, accumulate hefty balances in their Cricketing banks, and later use these balances to retire on top of tables, purchase spots in almanacs and record books and in general gather enough warmth of public adulation to bask in it for the rest of their retired lives.

But like a sly game-show host, the God of Cricket also throws at us an occasional surprise question that does not yield to a straightforward answer.

Every once in an extraordinary while there appears a cricketer who seems too good to be true, and yet who does not fit into the usual templates of greatness. A cricketer who makes us re-visit our constricted perspective on the judgment of 'greatness' - a perspective in which we attribute success, superiority and achievement over class, style and artistry.

It is possible that a composer more talented than A. R. Rehman is perhaps rolling around in a local music circles in rural Kerala...an actor better than Amitabh Bachchan may perhaps be grazing on nightly wages in a Mumbai drama house. VVS Laxman a similar case of God’s cruel ironies. An artist second to none, yet with nothing much to show for it in worldly terms. A paradox in human form. A batsman whose ease and poise can make the most glorious of his contemporaries look mediocre, and yet at the same time a batsman unlikely to appear in anyone’s fantasy XI.

In this age of extra fat bats with computer designed contours that increase the size of the sweet spot on the blade and maximize the punch on the ball, one gets a feeling that VVS Laxman's batting would still be the same if he were thrust a dead plank of crate-packing wood in place of a bat. When he gets on the go, there is seemingly no effort in his bat, not an ugly twitch in his body, not a grotesque jerk in the entire locus of his motion. The fluency is divine. An in-form Laxman at work on the crease feels like a warm cup of tea nested between your palms on a cold rainy day. 

Laxman’s bat is bereft of the blue collared obstinacy of a Steve Waugh or a Shivnarine Chanderpaul. It does not have the grim resolve of a Rahul Dravid or a Jacques Kallis. It is devoid of the explosion of a Brian Lara, a Virender Sehwag, or an Adam Gilchrist. It doesn’t have the cocky aggression of a Matthew Hayden or a Ricky Ponting. It is far removed from the grotesque effectiveness of a Chris Gayle, a Kevin Pietersen, or an M S Dhoni. It lacks the scientific perfection of a Tendulkar. And yet it is the most sublime of sights in the business of bat and ball. 

If bats could talk about their day, Sehwag’s bat would probably moan from the bruises coming from the rapacious hiding its master gave to the poor ball. The one in Laxman’s locker on the other hand would be fresh and grinning from a blissful day of massage.

The ball dispatched disdainfully from Hayden’s bat would grimace in pain like a half dead boxer who just lost his front teeth from a punch to his face. The ball coming off of Laxman’s bat would be like a joyous dog sent scampering behind squirrels in a park by his master on a cheery sunny day.

For all the praise above, Laxman is also the most disappointing batsman to ever play cricket. Is there another cricketer with a bigger contrast between talent and tangible results ? Had he been more human than heavenly, had his art been a tad more rational and tad less romantic, he would doubtlessly have ended up quite high on most of Test cricket's numerical charts. The dozens upon dozens of fluent starts that went unconverted into bigger scores are a testimony of the floundering nature of Laxman's batting.  Had there been an eccentric trophy for the most effortless 40 runs scored by a batsman, Laxman would have laid his hands over it tens of times through his career.

A rather unjust 14 hundreds and 43 fifties in a career spanning 108 Tests and 180 innings makes Laxman the poorest converter of a fifty to a hundred among all batsmen who have over 6000 Test runs, bar Stephen Fleming. It is perhaps this inability to rack up big scores with consistency that was, and is, the prime reason why Laxman could never become a singular backbone of a middle order batting line up the way Dravid or Kallis have held their teams over the years. He isn’t an all out aggressor, neither is he an anchor. He is a natural who goes about mixing and splashing colours on canvas in a state of trance, oblivious of the surroundings. This quandary may be the reason why he wasn't the fulcrum around whom a middle order could be rested and built.  

I leave with my memory of VVS Laxman. Night after night my friends (shout out to Prafulla, Prasanna, Rajesh...good ol’ days guys !) and I watched with timid hearts and shivering faith as Sehwag, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Laxman and Dravid battled Lee, Gillespie, McGill and Bracken on India's tour of Australia in 2003/2004….a series in which the Indians were more determined than ever to come out of their shadows and make a mark against the best Test team on its own home turf. Session after session a grim battle ensued between the two teams. Each Australian delivery hurled at Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly was unfailingly prefixed with a small prayer from me... “Please help them get Laxman on the strike”. 


It would indeed take a very very special batsman at the other end to make Tendulkar and Dravid look mortal. 

Enjoy: Laxman on Youtube

Run Gautam Run

Gautam Gambhir is having the run of his life. 

Already the top ranked Test batsman in the ICC evaluation table, he missed out on equaling the great Don Bradman in the recently concluded second Test against Bangladesh at Mirpur. 

Bangladesh gave just 2 runs for India in the second innings to win the Test, and left Gambhir stranded for a shot at his sixth consecutive Test match with an individual century score.

Gambhir set off on a remarkable batting drive in October 2008, and is still running on top gear as I write this. 

October 2008, 15 months and 11 Test matches ago, was the last time that Gambhir failed to score at least a 50 in a Test match. 

Since the first Test in the series against Australia at Bangalore, Gambhir's string of scores reads like this:

67+104 ... 206+36 ... 19+66 ... 179+97(ouch) ... 72+30NO ... 16+137 ... 23+167 ... 1+114 ... 167 ... 23+116 ... 68+0NO.

A total of 11 Test matches, 23 innings in which he has accumulated 1708 runs with 8 centuries (almost 9) and 5 fifties at 81 runs per innings.

The reason for talking about this string ? Gambhir may have lost out on the opportunity to equal the great Don Bradman's record of most successive Test matches with a century score, however he is now in a tussle with another great for another record. Gambhir is now on the brink of breaking a relatively unpublicized but significant record set by Sir Viv Richards.

Sir Richards and Gautam Gambhir, both now have 11 consecutive Test matches with at least a fifty score in an inning. If Gambhir manages a fifty in the first Test against South Africa, he trumps this record.

Go Gambhir !

The curious case of Bangladesh

For a nation that is about as fanatic about the sport of Cricket as any of its sub-continental neighbours, Bangladesh presents a rather curious case.


10 Years and 64 Tests matches as a recognized Test playing nation, this team still refuses to get out of infancy, and still continues to remain in awe of its opponents. 


The reverence and devotion that the Bangladesh viewers and players have for foreign superstars of the game is understandable. The sheer genius of the Tendulkar's, Akram's, Lara's, Warne's, Gilchrists's and McGrath's of the cricketing world has nourished and raised entire generations of cricket lovers and players all over the world, Bangladesh included. These once in a life time players have inspired millions to swing the bat or throw the ball, given a new facet to otherwise 2-dimensional lives, delivered an additional passion in life for countless many. People and players from Bangladesh too, as from anywhere else, must have been raised on fairy tales of these heroes.  


Uunfortunately for the Bangladesh team its homage, भक्ती , for these superheroes seems to spill itself on the cricketing field too. It acts like a side dish that they are unable to resist, which takes away the hunger that they rather keep for the main course. Their players seem to watch in joy and reverence their heroes in action, forgetting voluntarily or involuntarily that the Tendulkar's and Dravid's whom they grew up fantasizing, and who are wresting the game away from them at this moment, are not deities but foes and should be treated so at least for those 5 days on the field. (Just my theory).


Of course, there must surely be more pertinent technical reasons for Bangladesh's drought in ranking. But of the non-technical one's the one above stands out, at least so in my eyes.


Of the 64 Tests Bangladesh has played to date, it has lost 53. They have not managed even a single drawn match in 34 attempts against  Pakistan, England, Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka.


An overnight miracle would be too fantastic to expect but for the near future if Bangladesh even progresses from losing invariably to showing some consistency in achieving drawn games, it would be a reasonable achievement. 


It is time Bangladesh played with purposefulness. They do not lack the skills or resources to be more successful than they are. About time we saw a few international Cricketing heroes  from Bangla-land. 

Opening...

Opening this blog with a quote by Sir Neville Cardus, a human whose romance for the game of Cricket has had no equal -

"There ought to be some other means of reckoning quality in this the best and loveliest of games; the scoreboard is an ass."

Some of my best memories of the game are not in the numbers, but in singular and random instances of a batsman's shot or a bowler's delivery or a fielder's attempt.

There is an occasional resort to argumentation and justification by numbers on my part, indeed so. After all numbers are an indispensible by-product of quality. But numbers are like wall-paint. For the paint to come out with the right effect, the building has to have some aesthetic fortitude in the first place.

This blog is about cricket and cricketers from the eyes, heart and brain of a viewer.


 As a spectator and partisan of the sport for 3 decades and running, I, just like any other viewer, have been in the quest for people and performances on the Cricket field which make you feel like a warm muffin inside, which prescribe to you yet again that "all izz well" in life.


There is as much fun in witnessing a great act on the field as is in the lure of finding one.

Let the innings begin.