The IPL is going to be followed by the T20 World Cup in West Indies. As per some “hard to understand” ICC rules, all countries had to announce their teams one month before the tournament starts. As a result, many players who are out of form in the ongoing IPL have been selected and many in-form players have been left out. Kris Srikanth, chairman of selectors, has also remarked recently that it is unfortunate that some of the players in good form in IPL have to miss out of the World Cup T20. I am trying to list below a team “Indian IPL XI“, which will include only those Indian players from the IPL who have not been considered for the World Cup. My contention is that if this team enters the World Cup, they would perform as well as the national Indian team.

The team follows -

1.   Murali Vijay* – Opener
2.   Naman Ojha – Opener / wk
3.   Robin Uthappa – Batsman / Captain
4.   Saurabh Tiwary – Batsman
5.   Virat Kohli – Batsman
6.   S. Badrinath – Batsman
7.   Irfan Pathan – All Rounder
… Read the rest

The year was 1998, and the Australian cricket team was touring India. They were led by Mark Taylor, and had players like Mark and Steve Waugh, Ponting, Warne, Slater, Healy in their team. That was the time when Navjot Singh Sidhu was on the cricket field and not in the commentary box or TV studios. India was led by Azharuddin, and the team had players like Mongia (Nayan, not Dinesh), Srinath, Kumble, and others…. This series had been termed as the “Sachin v Warne” series already. And what was going to happen in the forthcoming weeks was something special.

Australia first played a 3 day game against a Mumbai team featuring Sachin Tendulkar at Mumbai. The world beaters v an Indian Ranji team. Well, Sachin had other plans. There were reports that he made local legspinners bowl to him turning leg spinners outside his leg stump before the Aussies arrive to prepare for the Warne onslaught. Coming back to the 3 day match, Australia lost it by 10 wickets inside 3 days as Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar slammed his maiden first class double century. Warne had been taken for 111 in his 16 overs without getting a wicket. The same… Read the rest

The IPL has taken the country by storm for the third year in the running. But more so, it has taken cricket by storm. If you ask somebody what is IPL and he replies – “It is India’s domestic T20 cricket tournament”, you can’t be more wrong. IPL is the perfect mixture of glamour, fun and entertainment making it a complete package for cricket and bollywood crazy Indians. No doubt it is such a success in a country like ours, where cricket, apart from being a sport, also unites Indians like nothing else. T20s will continue after the IPL too (for the rest of the year), but an IPL match will only come back next year.

Here are the list of 7 top innovations which make an IPL match stand out from (normal) T20 matches -

1. Cheerleaders – Cheerleading is basically an US phenomena that include elements of tumbling, dance, cheers, jumps and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer. The cheerleaders in IPL have also been imported from US, and dressed in “attractive” dressing, are as much an attraction in the stadium, as the match itself. As expected, some self-righteous Indians have made a controversy out of their… Read the rest

South African cricket team is on tour to India these days. This included a 2 test series which just concluded 1-1. South Africa won the first test by an innings and 6 runs, threatening India’s number 1 position in the ICC rankings. But India came back strongly in the second test to defeat South Africa by an even bigger innings margin, thus retaining their ranking at the top of the table. My point is how can two teams playing cricket with the same players, under same conditions and within 3 days of each other, produce totally opposite results in the two matches. And this had happened many times before and continue to happen in bilateral series, two matches held closely bringing very contrasting results.

So what factors decide which team wins a game. The team composition and the form of the players, the ground and pitch conditions, the home-away factor or is just about the team who handles the pressure and the mind game better. In the aforementioned India-SA series, the players were same, their form could not have changed much in 3 days, the conditions at both the venues were very similar, Graeme Smith (SA’s captain) won the… Read the rest

It is often said that politics and sports should not be mixed. I have heard this a lot during the last two decades in terms of Indo-Pak relations and cricket. Needless to say, Indo-Pak relations are not exactly like bread and butter after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. Pakistan players were not allowed by the Pak government for IPL 2009, nor would Indian government have given them issues if Pak government would have allowed them.

Coming to IPL, it is big money and no player would want to miss it, whatever the reasons given. So when the auction for 2010 IPL was announced, Pak players wanted to be a part of it. After getting clearances from their government and as per expressed shown by IPL franchisee teams, 11 Pakistan players were included for the auction. The list included big-ticket players like Shahid Afridi, Sohail Tanvir, Mohammad Aamer, Umar Gul and Umar Akmal. Many of them were part of the world cup winning Pak squad and Afridi was the top runner for the most-expensive bid this time.

But what happened at the auction surprised one and all. There were no takers for the Pakistani players and they were not touched… Read the rest

India is a huge country, and not only in terms of area and population, but also in languages spoken, cultures followed, religion, and caste. The various castes, subcastes and languages make people living within these divisions very different in the way they live their lives. The festivals are different, rituals are different, food is different, language is different, and so on…

As you travel across this vast country of ours, you will find Pahadi people in J&K, Himachal and Uttranchal, Punjabis in Punjab, Haryanvis, Jats, Rajasthanis, Biharis in the north all speaking different dialects of Hindi. You will find Bengalis, Oriyas in the east. There are Gorkha’s in Sikkim, in the north east you will again find different kinds of people. Going down, you will find Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu speaking people in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, respectively. Within these states, again you will find more languages and dialects within smaller communities.

However, there is one thing which is almost constant across the depth and breadth of India. You will find children playing cricket almost everywhere on streets and open grounds. Cricket stars are treated like heroes similarly by the different… Read the rest

Australia had their best team ever in 2001 under Steve Waugh. They had won the previous 16 test matches on a trot, including the 1st test against India at Mumbai. The 2nd test match was to begin on 11 Mar at the Eden Park, Kolkata and Steve Waugh was finally going to conquer the final frontier. Australia batted first and started in trademark fashion, reaching 193/1 at tea in 53 overs. But a very young Harbhajan Singh had other plans. After tea, his deliveries were like bombs for the Australians. Ponting, Gilchrist and Warne fell in successive balls, giving Bhajji a hat-trick and Australia slid to 291/8 at the end of play.

India would have thought (and wanted) to get them out early 2nd way, but Steve Waugh, the captain was still batting with Jason Gillespie. India’s hopes faded out soon, as Waugh got to his century and Australia to 400. He kept full confidence in Gillespie and McGrath and rotated strike with them, unlike other players who try to take full strike with tail enders. The partnership of 133 for the 9th wicket and 43 runs for the last wicket showed the world his confidence in his men…. Read the rest

I went to see a Champions League T20 Match between Delhi and Bangalore at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore in 2009. What I saw there was a confirmation of what I have always heard – “India is a Cricket Mad Nation and Cricket is a Religion“. But the extent of it even surprised me. It was like seeing a pothole in the middle of Indian roads, you always knew it was there, but were still shaken by it!

Cricket!! This word means a lot (I mean “really LOT”) to cricket crazy Indians. In fact, how cricket unites India is amazing. And to me too. My earliest memory of cricket is watching Kapil Dev playing on my black and white TV set with my father sometimes. It was before Sachin Tendulkar came onto the scene in 1989, but I dont remember the exact year. My first properly followed cricket tournament was the 1992 world cup in Australia. Those were the days when pitches still used to be green, bowlers still used to get batsmen out by bowling amazing deliveries and a test matches series consisted of 5 matches. In other words, there used to be contest between bat and ball. Today, batsmen and… Read the rest