Poor Organization

Would you care about emotions, history & blah blah blah and downsize the stadium capacity to ~32000 or built a brand new ~90000+ seat stadium in a city like Mumbai where people are absolutely crazy about cricket? I would have done latter simply because cricket is not for classes but for masses in India. How do you expect 32000 capacity stadium to hold a WC final & only 4000 tickets to general public is beyond my understanding. Holding a World Cup Final is a matter of pride but I am afraid most of general public will not see it that way. I do not have lot of nice words to say about people who are running the show for being so inconsiderate to common man. I am sure come on the Final's day and who's who of the tinsel-town from ministers to corporate biggies to bollywood stars will be in the stadium and all the courtesy will be extended. How did ICC allocate finals to Mumbai without knowing the grounds capacity and not think about the fans?

I also would have liked to see fewer teams in the World Cup so that each match is a competitive game rather than too many one-sided games, lengthy round robin stage and empty stadiums (Non-India games) which just devalues the World Cup. I do feel for Associate members but do not think this is the right platform, you don't learn anything if you are trashed by a strong team. Twenty20 is the ideal format for them to compete with top teams rather than ODI. The current format is drawn in such a way that all top teams will make it QF even if they have an odd bad day in round-robin stage. I would have liked to see top teams play each other more at WC league games before knock-off starts(similar to 1992 WC). I am sure ICC will term this WC as huge success for monetary reasons because India & Pakistan will reach QF for sure.

2015 WC will have fewer teams, I will be keenly following if they change their minds in future or not. But in the end to my mind this WC will be another poorly organized event by ICC.

First Choice Eleven

Picking up first 11 from a pool of 15 players is always a tough job for captains, narrowing from 15 to 12 is still relatively less hard but from 12 to 11 is much harder, speaking from personal experience. Well to get to 11, most important thing to look at is the recent form of player in contention and match situation (opposition & ground condition) but if all things equal then it is the gut instinct which you fall on. It comes from past performance, amount of confidence you have on a player, attitude & body language of the player.
Here is my pick.

Batting:
Sachin & Sehwag to open with Gambhir at one down. My choice would be Kohli simply for the progress he has made in last one year and his form, he is full of confidence. Yuvraj & Raina's recent form also helps in picking Kohli a bit easy too. We all know Yuvraj & Raina thrive in such conditions and they can quickly start firing. Dropping Yuvraj is out of question at this time hence would keep Raina out. 5 & 6 can be interchanged between Yuvraj & Dhoni. Pathan at no.7, I think it is foolish to expect Pathan to take on attack successfully every time since most of the quality teams will sort him out quickly hence importance of 4, 5 & 6 increases significantly.

Bowling:
Zaheer is definitely the leader of the bowling attack but if he is still not 100% I would not risk him since plenty of cricket is to be played at latter stage and also I have confidence in other bowling resources to do the job, I will pick Nehra since he has lead bowling attack in the past. Shreesanth would be my other fast bowler just going by his recent form. Harbhajan as a first choice spinner. If we decide to play two spinners depending on the pitch condition then Chawla would be my pick, leg spinners can go for runs but they can also get a lot of wickets.

Fielding:
We will not be the best & agile fielding team on display for the WC but our strong batting & bowling will cover it up. Still taking regulation catches and not misfielding will keep us in good stead.

Lets see if my thinking matches the Indian team's think-tank, come day 1 of the WC.

World Cup Memories

World Cup starts in a couple of days and I am really looking forward to it but I paused briefly for a moment to look back at all the previous editions & thought about my memories which stand-out from each one of them.

1975 & 1979 edition-
I have no recollection of these editions since I was not born but all I new was West Indies were a real dominant force under the stewardship of Sir Clive Lloyd and had one of the finest players to play the game.

1983 edition-
My memories for this WC is via old footage of WC finals since I was a toddler back then . What stood out was Kapil paaji running behind catch to dismiss Viv Richard at mid-wicket & Kapil Dev lifting the trophy which changed the way people looked at cricket in India. Also 175 versus Zim which was scored by Kapil Dev when India were in doldrums but sadly no one except for spectators on the day got to watch it since BBC was on strike that day.

1987 edition-
Well I really do not have any memories for this one except Aussies won 1987 edition.

1992 edition-
This was the time when I started understanding cricket, catch by Ajay Jadeja in the deep vs Australia was truly a brilliant one which was not common for an Indian in those days. Wasim Akram's deadly around the wicket spell and specially Wasim's celebration run after the wicket of Chris Lewis in which he knocks off Moin Khan. Imran lifting the Crystal. Kiran More Vs Miandad incident.

1996 edition-
The match in Mumbai which I did not go for and missed crafty inngs from Mark Waugh & 90 from Sachin where he took on McGrath. It was all about Sanath, destroyer of bowling attacks, he finished off Prabhakar's career in style, never saw a fast bowler switch to off-breaks. Crying Kambli. Great collapse by WI in Mohali to award Aussie Final spot and yes Kenya shocking WI in Pune. How can I forget the sweet win vs pakistan in Banglore. Prasad vs Sohail, Jadeja destroying Waqar & curtains to Miandad.

1999 edition-
India again beating Pakistan but this will be remembered for great Aussie fighting spirit particularly by Steve Waugh and stupidity from SA during the super six game (Gibbs) and Semi-Final (Donald). Perfect balls from McGrath to dismiss Lara, Tendulkar & Dravid at various stages. Pakistan for denying fans of a worthy final.

2003 edition-
India's brillaint performance apart from two bad one's vs Aussies (group stage & finals). The great blunder from SA on Duckworth Lewis. Ponting & Martyn toying with India's attack in the Final but the winner has to be beating Pakistan, Sachin's brilliant 98, awesome drives to Wasim, Waqar & third man six to Shoaib. The best Sach inngs.

2007 edition-
Disaster, even if we had 15 Sachin in the sqaud we were destined to loose since we had the wrong coach.
Boring and forgettable WC, Aussies were all over and no other team seemed to compete. Pakistan & India getting knocked out. Sad turn of events in Pakistan camp with the death of Bob Woolmer.  

Looking forward for an exciting WC'2011 with closely fought matches and truly classic performances to remember. Hope Sachin has enough in the tank for one last one. Want to see him play in Wankhede.

First One

Always wanted to write with so many thoughts always flowing in my mind but never took time out to write, well finally today I created a space on the net for myself with the help of some inspiration. Well the blog which I am going to post below was written back in Dec 2010 (yes this was the 1st written blog) and thought this one should be logged.

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Winter League with Split Innings format.

Winter league (WL) 2010 kicked off on November 20^th weekend after exciting FLT tournament. This WL is a bit different than the previous editions; home teams will have an option of playing split innings format or conventional 20 over format. It certainly seems an exciting format & I was keen on playing the format to see how different it is. I was aware about the format but never witnessed it. It was an idea which came out of Little Master when asked about the health of 50 over ODI with the soaring popularity of Twenty20 and 50 over ODI termed as boring by various quarters. The next we know is Cricket Australia introduced the format in its 2010 domestic season against a lot of resistance from former and current players. I did not follow much on how split innings turned out in Australia. TCA decided to experiment about implementing split innings format during WL which is the best place to try out the format before we bring it to the other tournaments.

WL Split innings format:-

a) Home team will decide if they want to play the regular 20 over format or the split inning    format.

b) Split innings format will involve the two teams alternating every 10 over’s instead of switching after 20 over’s.

c) The innings will continue from where they left off in the first 10 overs with the batsmen who were at the crease at the end of 10 overs coming back to bat in the 11th.

     d) There is no double batting. Once a batsman is out, he is out.

     e) Each bowler has the same limit of 4 overs per bowler which can be used however they   want, a bowler could bowl all his 4 overs in the first 10 overs and then not bowl any in the last 10 overs.

The rules seem fairly simple. I would have liked to have a follow-on rule too incase of one-sided games to avoid boring last ten overs but hopefully we wish not to have one-sided games.

Split innings makes the contest between two teams more even since one team does not runaway with the momentum and allows other to come back in the game, a quick example is team batting 1^st scoring rapidly if allowed to bat for 20 overs can score huge & deflate the bowling team versus in split innings it breaks the momentum of the batting team at 10 over mark. During overcast conditions in the morning team batting 1^st is at clear disadvantage in a regular 20 over game whereas split innings makes it even. There are also more strategies involved in split innings format versus conventional 20 over game which makes the format more interesting.

I happened to play the split innings format last week and thoroughly enjoyed the format.

When Twenty20 format was introduced there was a lot of resistance and question marks from BCCI but it all changed with Twenty20 WC title and then the success of IPL. On similar grounds we should give split innings format a chance and discover if it here to stay or not.

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Just an update on the Split format is that TCA (Bay Area Tennis Cricket League) has decided not to pursue with it, I am sad to see it but hopefully we haven't heard last of it.

Hope the next one is more current and I write more frequently.