Faded Blue - The conclusion!

You got to admire Indian skipper for admitting the fact that from here on it gonna be a real test of character not only for him but the team as whole. A team that supposed to defend the title got out from the tournament prematurely was extremely embarrassing for every inidians not only for the portion of the crowd which booed the England players in their own home ground but also every Indians around the globe who watched the match in television channels! Nobody could have imagined it would be this bad when Sourav Ganguly said before the T20 World Cup in England real test for Dhoni will come very soon, first it was West Indies and now England tried and succeeded to defeat India with short balls, as they said “ perfume balls”! The whole Indian team including coaches and other staffs need a reality check for hyping it up instead of pumping it up! Let Sachin’s tongue turn gold as he is the first one to predict this Indian team will win the cup again! The Indians couldn’t win even a coffee cup if that is what Sachin meant in any stretch of imagination; instead they looked up and panicked to see the short balls going like meteoroids! I heard Suresh Raina complained to the captain and coach for being targeted by short balls; don’t be surprised if he files a case to ICC against England players for throwing short balls at him!

It was like " a midsummer night's dream" the victorious Indian team arrived in Mumbai after winning the inaugural T20 cup. Well, a lot of water had flown under the bridge after those happy days of 2007 when Dhoni lead a bunch of youngsters to triumph in South Africa, now even Dhoni’s strongest supporters in the team are having two minds to support him!

Dhoni hailed as a thinking captain, always seemed to have the Midas touch about him, everything had taken for granted that he simply can’t do wrong, even his miscalculation became right calculated and swept on by the euphoria in the wake of his stunning deeds. However his recent inability to carry Cehnnai Super Kings in IPL-2 despite of having a boasted team besides his repeated failure as a big hitter in slog overs contributed to a sharp decline in his cricketing fortunes if not endorsements.

Dhoni will come under increased scrutiny in coming days, the Captain who can’t do wrong did everything wrong in this T20, rather strange decisions one should say like how he promoted Jadeja ahead of himself or Yuvraj, omission of better all rounder Irfan Pathan to replace with RP Singh who just can’t bear to stand in front of the stumps for batting etc. I am sure Dhoni would know his team is ill-prepared for the tournament after the wretched issue over Sehwag that cast a shadow besides back to back cricket that drained player’s body and mind alike.

When the billions of Indian cricket fans were shell shocked over their team’s premature exit from the T20 World cup, it was no surprise for former England captain Nasser Hussein. In his view the Indians exposed in conditions that afforded movements besides their notorious inability to handle short pitched balls. In short India had succumbed under unfriendly pitch that behaved like a drunken bitch!

For sure Dhoni had made some blunders this time, sending Jadeja for stabilizing the innings as he said in presentation party is a good thinking, but he failed to measure a most important fact, how long Jadeja would take to stabilize the innings?! By the time he stabilized the innings the game was over, the opposition won the match! The batsmen who came after him were under tremendous pressure to score the runs. Yuvraj bored of standing inside his crease and came out for a change, wicket keeper rattled his stumps in a flash, Dhoni came and hit hard squire cuts and powerful lofted shots to score some singles when a four or six was the order of the moment! Sticking the bat out of the off stump hoping for the ball to come and hit is not a crime, but you can’t expect that ball to go for a six! It is undoubtedly a big crime that deserves capital punishment! Finally Dhoni gave up and took singles to give the strike to Yousef Pathan hoping he would hit three consecutive sixes to win the game!

Despite of odd victories in abroad the stirring performance in Australia and few outstanding batting displays; Indians are still ill-equipped to bat in conditions other than at home. The Indian performance in abroad was never been consistent enough for us to believe that the Indian cricketers have come of age!

Take a leaf out of Australians!

Indian cricket team had a big issue over the team selection over a period of time, till former Australian captain Greg Chappell has taken over the most difficult work in the world as Indian cricket coach! He re-wrote the rules and regulations for choosing the players for the national side. Later on his larger than himself ego had clashed with even bigger egoist former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly resulting omission of both!

Nobody knows the yardstick for a good cricketer before when a player get selected for national team, now every body became selectors; courtesy to IPL. Public knows who is better spinner than who, and who is better batsmen to play at No.3! Even they can advice you which player is suitable for all three format of the game and who is the best only for T20! The biggest problem here is how to get rid of an established player from the team based on his current form not the sky touching past credentials of a player. India always struggled in this part; they are just not capable of doing it due to the public erection of emotions and strikes that may take place in India. Thanks to the fabulous four for stepping back from T20 by identifying the game as new generation’s cricket!

Let me introduce you a country that can throw away any cricketer, regardless of their status, stardom or experience, criteria is just simple, current form! There are no strikes in the country because of selectors sacking the players, no slogans and no burning effigies. Andrew Symonds gone for fishing instead of attending a team meeting and Cricket Australia asked him to continue fishing. When Symonds had done enough fishing he came back to CA to apologize to take him back to the team. CA has taken him back with one and only warning, the repetition of the mistake can cause him elimination from the national team forever!

Symonds can skip a meal, sex, and Play Station, but not liquor. So when he has been asked to chose from two - play cricket or have beer - the obvious pick for him was what you guessed; the second one! One can easily justify his decision if you are following his career in recent times, he still can play cricket in IPL or Lancashire if he wanted to but unfortunately there is no substitute for alcohol.

Now there is another established player under fire for not scoring runs and bad strike rate. Micheal Clarke – Australian vice captain! He is one player who got a lot of female fans in Australia and England; his innocent blond lady look earned him a lot of male fans too. This amazing feat doesn’t seem to be affecting him at least in his professional life; he wasn’t good enough for T20 from the beginning when he started playing T20 and does he now?! So there is a consistency through out his T20 life. Well done boy. I remember a story of an ex-military man who always claims he is still strong as before. When someone asked him how he could be as strong as before, the 80 plus ex-military man answered he couldn’t lift a rock weighed a tone that located in front of his house and still he can’t!

In 18 Twenty20 internationals, Clarke has scored only 189 runs for an average of 17, but the bigger worry is his strike-rate of 106. This compares to Andrew Symonds (strike-rate 169), Simon Katich (146) and Mitchell Johnson (164).

Even Mike Hussey, hardly a dasher, has a strike-rate of 134.

Australia has always struggled in Twenty20 and Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland admits the time has come for a major overhaul.

India got to learn a lesson or two from Cricket Australia, not the batting or fielding this time for a change, to take a firm decision on player’s selection and rejection!

"Dhoni v/s Sehwag" Assumption or Real?

There are a lot of speculation over MS Dhoni’s statement to the media when media asked him about Sehwag’s recovery from the injury that he developed during the IPL; Dhoni’s reply was as cool as cucumber

"May be you should ask his physio to issue a press release"

This is where he had gone terribly wrong. It was as if someone is asking an innocent and Ahimsa person; can you give me a stick so I can beat you up left right and center! Unfortunately being an Ahimsa dude Dhoni had gifted not only the stick but also with sharp thorns on it!

Immediatly Dhoni pressed the panic button and made a press conference to clear the cloud.

"This message is for the people of India and for Indian cricket fans worldwide and comes from the whole team, recent reports in the Indian media of a rift between me and Sehwag amounts to nothing but false and irresponsible media reporting,"

Mr.Dhoni, we hope you know the media better than anybody in the business, even you were a favorite kid of media at a point of time. They were just waiting for little bit of controversy or sensationalism to blow out of the proportion with a pinch of salt. To make a sheep a fox or vice versa is not a big deal for the press in any given time. So a statement that you said in the press meet is godsend for them.

On the other side of the coin; did we witness a curious case of “spilling the beans” here? Is there any substance in this gossip?

One could easily say yes!

Dhoni was tired of praising his deputy in each and every press conference he had recently, though Viru couldn’t show his real metal during IPL outing; his International cricket was on the rise; bettered his own position in ICC ranking as well. I would say it was media’s fault all together, why are they asking to Dhoni about Viru’s black mole on forehead or his deodorant brand all the time, not being gay partners it is very difficult to explain folks. If it let it go this way, press may ask next question why Viru is spitting on the ground always when he is out there to play cricket and making his own fielders to step on it to loose their balance resulting miss-fields or why is he losing hair despite of his uncluttered mind?! Instead why can’t you guys ask Dhoni something more interesting for him, about his lady body guards to protect him from ladies fans who suddenly appears out of blue to rush at him from all directions to press their boobs to suffocate him (it can cause a brutal asphyxiated death) or construction of his own temple in his native village? If not all these questions I mentioned above; at least you should have asked about his hair style that resembles electric shocked Simpsons.

On other side Viru is a man with steel testicles not bothers to fight for the captaincy or egoism just like his batting style, when it happens you can scream about it, if it is not then what the fuck, leave it and concentrate on the cricket what others play!

When I said something fishy going on in Indian cricket camp; my friend told me that is what they should not do while playing cricket, other wise it will be hard to find the difference between Andrew Symonds and the whole Indian cricket players?! I puzzled and stared at him in horror to know that he was referring Symond’s bunk over at a friend’s place for fishing during the practice session that earned him punishment from CA. Yeah, you are right; my friend was holding chilled Fosters can. Another real Australian!

Sreesanth – Is he a spoiled brat?

Sreesanth is the only cricketer who made it big from Kerala; one of the states from southern India. Strangely he is the only cricketer whom keralites hates the most now a days.

Is that his attitude pissing people off? Or it is his over aggression and animated celebration that he exhibits after every wicket he takes?

 

What ever the case, you hate him or love him, definitely you can’t ignore him due to his over expressions and antics he shows off as break dance in every occasions there are more than 3 people as a group.

 

A sneak look at his career - he is a cricketer with a lot of passion for cricket and break dance that he often expose with proud, on the stage when you see him doing ice walk of Michael Jackson, one would be wishing how if he just go away off the stage while doing the ice walk. 

He is very good with media. Talks well, most of the part will be praising himself that nobody can hit him for a six thrice in a row and stuff like that, but media also seems like possessing some likings towards him as an over spoken idiot and pretty happy to find some one from another field to better them in this department.

 

It was his T20 world cup appearance and those antics and abuse to his co-players made him a super star over night. He shoot in to the fame by hitting ground with both of his hands after taking a wicket of Australian Swashbuckler Andrew Symonds. Could you believe it? It was one of the strangest and weirdest ways of celebrating the wicket fall. Andrew Symonds didn’t like it so is Australian cricketers. He had pretty good tournament in the T20 world cup, that made him few bucks richer by signing some of the ad contracts and BCCI’s rewards (he was so kind to give almost half of those hard earned money by abusing players to ICC as fines). But clearly Captain Dhoni wasn’t happy with his uncanny ability to piss off anybody who just gets close to him. Sreesanth never had a habit to listen to anybody even his own captain, if captain ask him to bowl at off side he will bowl at on side, Dhoni often outsmart him by asking him to bowl at on side when he really wanted off side. This is how you manage a wild bull that doesn’t have control over his own power.

 

His dream run suddenly faced a dead end by getting a tight slap on face by his own team mate and opposite bowler in first edition of IPL. It was the funniest, saddest and hilarious moment in IPL till the date. Sree cried like a baby, all of a sudden this incident left millions of cricket fans world wide wondering is he the one jumped, grunted and abused the Incredible Hulk like creatures Mathew Heyden and Andrew Symonds? What if that slap is by any one of them? He may dissolve in their hands. Good for Sree though, they had much more patients than his own team mates Harbhajan Singh. He bowled really well after the slap gate incident and got the award for leading wicket taker in IPL 2008. Other side Harbhajan Singh felt he is the most idiotic cricketer in the world who got caught by police for breaking into a toilet! His dreams to own a Hummer H3 sink in Arabian Sea without a trace. His own people started hating him tanks to Sreesanth’s place in Punjab Super Kings.

 

It was not excess cricket that took toll on Sreesanths body; rather it was Australian’s curse and Bhaji’s disappointment, Sree looked more enthusiastic and fast when he show off those chimp antics after he takes a wicket than when he really bowl at a batsmen.

 

He developed tennis bowl elbow and out of the international cricket side for almost one year. As anyone could imagine; he is too good to earn friends as well as enemies though enemies weigh more in his case, unfortunately he earned a lot of them in media by not attending their calls and ignoring them completely like sh**. Even channels from Kerala started to hate Sreesanth, he always ignored the invitation by Kerala Cricket Board Associations to inaugurate some stadiums or attend a meeting. Common Sree, you should be more than happy for getting a call from authorities for something as good as opening a new stadium, or are you suspicious about your own evil hand that may turn the stadium as monument of bad luck?!

 

What made him so notorious? Why he doesn’t change? How has he got that ability to piss off people who get close to him? These are few unanswered questions the world faces today like global warming and Osama Bin Laden’s hideouts!