Shady’s Back:

It’s been quite a long hiatus -thanks to travel, sickness, travel sickness, and a bunch of family occasions thrown in. In the meantime, these are the things that happened:

1. India promptly crashes out of the T20 World cup 2009 (mind you, then next T20 world cup is 10 months away!!).

2. Pakistan  gets the cup (Sri Lanka’s time will come), and in the process , Shahid Afridi attains puberty (uh…well..).

3. India then goes off to tour the WI, which Late accurately describes as an inconsequential match-up.

4. Real Madrid robs their fans accounts (and possibly even yours) to acquire a Euro-Brazilian clone (Kaka) and Bipasha Basu’s one-night stand (Ronaldo). Talks of them acquiring Ribery, and also taking over the inter-stellar galaxy is also on.

5. In the green grass of Wimbeldon , 2 sisters have their routine annual cat fight beating each other up before the younger one goes one better. Simultaneously, Roger Federer creates history in the present, but if you’re like me, your heart might have gone out to the brooding Roddick- now 2-19 vs Fedex , and he must be wondering if he has a better chance making it big as a 20-20 cricketer than emerging victorious against the Swiss freight train of talent.

3 Action packed weeks , and a lot to catch up on!! Now sit back while I do the unthinkable:  take you , the unsuspecting reader , into a time warp, back to the T20 world cup to re-live the nightmare. Albeit delayed, here are my ratings out of 10 for the Indian squad:

Sehwag :0 Being one of the 2/3 Indian batsmen who truly appears as “gabbar singh” in the nightmares of the opposition bowlers, hiding his injury was NOT a smart thing to do. As with all things connected to Indian cricket, we’ll probably never know the whole truth, but this was definitely a distraction and baggage the team could have done without. I felt the need to rate him because with careful planning, it could have been a little better.

Gambhir : 4 One of the most improved players (statistically) in the last couple of years for India, much was expected out of “Gauti”,especially with Sehwag missing from the top of the order. But he failed to deliver , ending with an average of about 30 for the series, and more importantly, didn’t get going in the crucial super-8 games. As an aside, is it just me or is Gambhir almost anonymous in the field?! I’ve even heard Javagal Srinath or Sidhu called on the field more often than him!! He definitely has a knack of NOT finding the ball on the field 🙂

Rohit Sharma : 3 After a wonderful tournament in the IPL, and a good couple of warm-up games, Rohit failed like most of his other teammates when it matters most. The talent is there without a doubt, but the atrociously bad shot selection and seeming lack of willingness to struggle through and stay is what bothers me a lot about him.

Suresh Raina: 1 One of the best young players of the IPL tournament and a then-definite lock for the No.3 spot, his presence in the batting order seemed to come as an after-thought for his captain. The move to number 3 for the last 2 games came too late, and Raina didn’t live up to the billing, miserably being exposed against the shorter rib-cage deliveries. A long way to go. He seems like a confidence and momentum player, if it breaks at some point of time, no matter what he tries, it always seems to be a wrong move. Makes me feel even worse for having a man-crush on him, but I still have hopes.

R. Jadeja : 4 Asking the youngest player to win a do-or-die game on his own was not the smartest of ideas, but he definitely tried. The 4 is more for his bowling and his general efforts.

Yousaf P: 5 Never had too much of a chance to express himself correctly, but kept India in the last game. If the strike had been rotated, one never knew what this dangerous man could have done, but again, if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.

Irfan P: 3 Didn’t give India the right break-through when needed. RP Singh: 4 Didn’t carry his IPL form or the purple cap to the T20 world cup, was dropped for a game or 2 and then brought on again. Wasn’t used correctly, and definitely needs to buck up on his death-over bowling.

Harbhajan: 3 There’s no questioning this man’s heart (like he proclaims). He got India some good runs, upping the rate at crucial times, and did get some wickets. But after so many years in the team, Bhajji still isn’t able to don the mantle of the premiere bowler (like kumble has done quite often), and close out a couple of games. Inexplicably decides to become a spin version of Waqar Younis during the final stages, but pathetically bowls full delivers on the leg side- giving away the most crucial runs.

Ohja: 6 Bowled very well when given a chance, and then dropped without much rhyme or reason.

Ishant Sharma :  2 In the IPL, despite SRK’s antics, KKR’s team woes, and the curse of the Fake IPL Player, it was quite obvious that Zayed Khan Ishant Sharma needed some rest.  However, he was chosen for the World cup, and appeared in the warm up games and did well to warrant a start in the XI. Unfortunately, he had again spent it all by then, and looked a sorrowful version of himself . The effort was there, but the body just wasn’t.

Yuvraj Singh: 7 The one man who could actually stand tall amid all the embarassment. Talent is what talent does, and no matter what his character , he proved yet again that he has what it takes to win a game. Has improved leaps and bounds when starting his innings against spinners (used to be a weakness before), has all the shots and more.

MSD: 1 I am not quite sure why I gave him a 1. He got the team composition all wrong at many stages. Dropping of Ohja, not giving Raina , Y.Pathan etc games to get their eye in, promoting either himself up the order or Jadeja in the crucial game, not promoting himself up the order when the situation demanded, persistence with a jaded Ishant Sharma, “team walk-in ” to the media room, the list goes on and on. His inability to even attempt to clear the boundary in the last game was what really ticked me off the most.

What’s your take?

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So long, and thanks for all the fish mate

So there you have it, the first big victim of the T20.

First this happened.

The Gayle Bitchslap

And then , this:

The Sangakkara Bitchslap

And so the Aussies got served with a giant double-decker Calypso-Lankan flavoured turd sandwich.  Not sure what really went wrong. It’s all quite easy in retrospect. If you look at the folks who’ve gotten action in the recent past (I meant the cricket variety, and not what Warnie does for a living these days), we can quite quickly narrow it down to:

Warner ( performed in 1 game)
D.Hussey (chipped in a little in both games)
Bret Lee  (well,  he did play a few games in the IPL and did ok in a couple of them)

We’ve got the rest of the guys, who’ve got caliber but have been inactive for a long while now:
Watson
M.Hussey
Haddin

We’ve got a couple of queer looking dudes:
Bracken
Clarke
Johnson (what do you expect with such a name , just kidding. decent bowler and an Irfanish batsman)

A what-the-fuck or hopeful selections:
Howritz (though he did bowl ok)
Hopes….er..

And to top it all , this guy:

Fail-El-Capito

Gone is the team you might loathe but respect. A team filled with some delightful talent such as Mark Waugh (the on-side play) ,Warne or Gilchrist, or the dogged determination of Steve, Mcgrath or Hayden , is now not all that jazz, nor is it that awe-inducing. The only guys I ever feel like rooting for is Mr. Cricket himself – one of my all-time favourite players.

First they run into WI, who have this habit of playing 1 match out of their skin (and it’s almost always Gayle to the party), and then totter around later. For Australia, the kings of calypso decided it be the match against them. While Gayle did school the boys from down under on some power hitting, A.Fletcher on the other end provided quite a surprising and stunning start to ease some pressure of the King, and let him know,
“Yo Mon, I’m here too. Dun havfta do it all alone.”
The batting lineup for WI looks fairly good , for now. Gayle on his day cannot be stopped, and you’ve also got Bravo and Smith (who can forget him absolutely brandishing the bowling in a couple of games). But they’ve got this tendency to either have this big game altogether, or fail collectively .While one could argue that that is true teamwork in both aspects, let’s not  reach that far. Hence, we find them either winning big or losing bigger. Plus, outside of the two very impressive opening bowlers, I am not very confident in the rest of them; there’s not much variety. When the going gets tough, I think it will be left to the old boys (chanderpaul, sarwan) to do the work, and I am not sure if they have it in them (unless they play India).

SL too have started out strong. Jayasurya is an older, less consistent Gayle, but then again, 1 crucial innings is as good as gold in such a tournament. Jayawardane and Sangakkara will do what they do, consistently build the innings , and go for the big shots on-demand.
Dilshan is the one that scares the crap out of me. He seems to be a cold-blooded killing machine of late, and really seems to give them a strong dose of agreession and edge at No.3/4. Pretty scary. Their mid-lower order unknowns sort of impressed with their hitting yesterday. The bowling begins and ends with 3M- with the heat-seaking missle that is Malinga,  Mendis, and the Murali (I thought of giving the remaining 2 lame suffixes like mystical and magical respectively). These guys are capable of playing the restrictive or attacking role , and the batsmen seem to play them with a lot of caution.   The islanders seem to have the weapons to succeed in such a format.

As for the Aussies, they’d probably win the Ashes, but bright flame that once was is slowly dimming. I think the cricket-world’s a little more balanced now. For now, we all can heave a collective sigh of relief that we don’t have to see the following specimen for a while:

"Am I sexuuual? Yeaaaa--eaahh!"

"Who-stole-my-candy"

"We suck"

And joy for these gents:

"weee!let's make out and slap each other!"

"How do you like me now bitches!!"

Jacob Oram reveals his true colours

When Jacob Oram was drafted in the Chennai Super Kings squad, there was a lot of hope and anticipation from its legion of fans. One hoped that they’d see some destructive hitting when he would bat, and some tight stump to stump bowling at the death for CSK, choking and clogging the opposition worse than the public loos in a local train station .  Dhoni, who seems to have a weakness for all-rounders of the Ajit Agarkar caliber (how else can one explain the inclusion Joke-inder Sharma in so many matches that even he,  if given the option, would  bench his own arse), promptly persisted with Oram in almost all the matches this season. Oram would then proceed to promptly appear in the chennai yellows as consistently as a paan stain on the walls of a government building, a fungus on moist brittania bred, a rash due to a tight tantex underwear… well, you get hte picture.

We all know how Oram did this season of the IPL.

Webster Definition

In IPL 2.0 (since its SOOO cool), here are his figures:

M    I    NO    Runs    Avg    SR
11    8    2    88    14.66    94.62

Bowling
M    I    Runs    W    Avg    Eco    SR
11    8    133    5    26.60    8.58    18.60

All rounder. Right.

For someone with a strike rate of below 100 in this format, an economy rate in bowling that looks like batting average (never a good thing for an all rounder no matter how you look at it), an experienced bowler who had  “Smack-me-coz-I’m-AKON’s-Biatch” tattooed on his forehead every time he came on to bowl at the death, he didn’t exactly have an argument in justifying his selection in the team.

Yesterday, India plays NZ in a warm-up game, and surprise surprise, Jo is included in his team. As team India cruises along, JO is brought in to the proceedings. A casual observer and follower of the game in the last few months would think that, oh alright, I guess the teams want this to get over fast, so that they can all go back to their rooms, get some food,  make long-distance calls to their families (or1-800-LoNELY in the case Warnie) /or simply do whatever it is  they do when they are alone in the rooms…

What we witness next is a 3-0-18-1 performance by Oram, taking the wicket of his clubmate Raina , and punking his other clubmate and captain Dhoni in the process. More disturbing would have been the fact that he bowled 2 relatively tight overs at the death, making Dhoni and the CSK think-tank scratch their respective heads and groins in no particular order in shock of what could have been when they sorely needed such control during their IPL adventure.

For Team India, it’s probably a little too early to panic. It was a warm-up game, and a loss here is better than a loss in the real thing. It also must have provided a few insights, such as:
1. the team composition didn’t exactly light the world on fire
2. Ishant sharma can do some damage in those conditions
3. Jadeja is pretty good -but he isnt there yet  – seems to lose his mojo when the going gets tough
4. Take nothing for granted (read: oram)
5. Rohit and Raina are the best bet for consistency – hope they continue on that vein
6. You can suck/not participate in IPL and still do well in the world cup
7. It’s good not to have hear/see/smell Modi

All said and done, the team will probably look like this:
Viru, Gautham, Raina, Yuvraj, Rohit, Dhoni, Y.Pathan, I.Pathan, Bhajji,RP, Ishant  (if Zaheer is fit , he probably replaces Ishant).

But the final word goes to Oram and his likes- thank you for raising the warning bell!

Black Caps ku whistle podu!