Category Archives: IPL

August 16, 2012 · 2:40 am

The Pietersen Petrel: Mike Atherton’s measured review

Mike Atherton, from The Times and The Australian, with apologies for a change of title from that used: “Too much at stake for Kevin Pietersen and England’s permanent divorce”

 Pietersen -Pic from AP

IT is unlikely that the England and Wales Cricket Board keeps records for the longest selection meetings but there is a good chance the one concluded yesterday, with the announcement of the squad for the final Test match, wins the gold medal.  Inevitably the man who caused the disruption was Kevin Pietersen and the upshot of three days of discussion is that he has been dropped from the squad for Lord’s in a match that England must win to retain its No 1 status.

This has been a remarkable few days, and Pietersen’s axing will go down in the annals of famous non-selections, such as Ken Barrington, disciplined for slow scoring after hitting a hundred in a Test in 1965. The omission of the best player in the team, who only a week ago played one of the greatest Test innings seen in recent times by an England batsman, demonstrates just how far the relationship and trust between Pietersen and the rest of the England team and the management has broken down. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under child of empire, cricket and life, cricket governance, cricketing icons, IPL, michael atherton, performance, player selections, politics and cricket, T20 Cricket, tower of strength, unusual people

August 14, 2012 · 1:18 am

Ajit de Silva, master spinner … and his lesson for today’s cricketers

Nirgunan Thiruchelvam, in The Island, 14 August 2012

In little over a month, Sri Lanka will host the World Twenty20. It has been 30 years since the island’s inaugural Test. Neither Twenty20 cricket nor Sri Lanka as a host of a world event seemed in prospect in 1982. Most of the current players were not born then. They should heed the lessons of the tragic hero of that match — Ajit de Silva.

Ajit de Silva was the finest left arm spinner that Sri Lanka has produced. He had nagging accuracy, biting turn and a lovely loop. Standing over six foot, he could extract bounce from the tamest track. De Silva was a master of drift, a quality that made him a formidable customer irrespective of the surface. His deliveries used to hiss in its flight. They were like grenades once they pitched. Only Erapalli Prasanna, among Ajit’s contemporaries had that ability among finger spinners.

Ajit de Silva’s first class statistics are solid but unremarkable. He took 161 wickets at 27 a piece in 53 matches. A ten wicket haul eluded him. But, the figures are misleading. His appearances were infrequent. Sri Lanka’s club cricket was not recognized as first-class. The statistics do not record his dominance. Club cricket was more intense in the 1970s and 80s than today. There were only a dozen clubs, which is half today’s number. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under cricket and life, IPL, performance, Sri Lanka Cricket, unusual people

May 26, 2012 · 2:19 pm

Atherton tweaks the the West Indians chasing moghuls in India … and elsewhere

Mike Atherton, in The Times and the Weekend Australian, 26 May 2009, with title “Swatting balls in Delhi doesn’t compare to facing up at Lord’s, it’s just Gaylic”

Pic by Getty Images

 

LET’S call it Gaylic, shall we, the language of the modern, supranational, jet-setting Twenty20 cricketer. It is almost universal now, cricket’s version of Esperanto if you like, and it doesn’t matter whether it is IPL, BPL, Big Bash or the original, the Friends Life t20, the language is the same – cash is the game – and the building blocks of this new language are taken from its founder, the biggest, baddest Twenty20 cricketer in town: Chris Gayle.

Gaylic was being played out over the loudspeakers with deafening effects during the first Test at Lord’s. While his fellow West Indians were fretting about swing, seam and the slope, and other variables that make batting at Lord’s in May such a difficult task, Gayle was freewheeling for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Every shot he played echoed all the way to Lord’s. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cricket and life, cricket in India, cricket tamashas, cricketing icons, financial expediency, IPL, michael atherton, performance, player selections, politics and cricket

January 28, 2012 · 2:26 pm

India, IPL and Twenty20 Vision

Michael Atherton, in The Weekend Australian, 28-29 January 2012

CRICKET writers these days think long and hard before they pass judgment on the Indian game. The Twittersphere is awash with examples of irate Indian “supporters” lashing out at perceived slights.  The language of debate is always unreasonable and often disgraceful, a reminder that out east, cricket is much more than a game.

So reader comments need to be understood in that context where Indian cricket is concerned, which made those underneath a recent piece on Cricinfo all the more interesting. “Way to go”, “decision to be applauded”, “positive step for the right reasons”, “good decision”, “fantastic move” were just some of the comments and then, revealingly, “it should always be your country first, and then the rest”. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Australian cricket, cricket in India, cricket tamashas, IPL, performance, player selections, politics and cricket, T20 Cricket

January 24, 2012 · 12:20 pm

India’s Cricket Debacle mirrors India’s Poor Governance

Ramesh Thakur, in The Australian, 16 January 2011

THE sense of let-down from Team India’s Test performance results from the yawning gap between reputation and results.  The humiliation could yet be channelled constructively to address clusters of failures at three levels. Most critical commentary has highlighted individual failures, technical deficiencies and flaws: dependence on ageing superstars, repeated failures by newcomers to stand and deliver, substandard fielding, a casual approach to training and practice, the absence of strike bowlers, etc.

The positions of captain and coach need urgent attention, including splitting between long and short formats. M.S. Dhoni has been brilliant in the one day international format, where the task is to restrict the opposition and blast a big score amid fielding and bowling restrictions. In the Test arena, with the requirement to bowl out opponents twice and build an innings amid testing conditions, he is ultra-defensive and lacks creative flair. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under cricket governance, cricket in India, financial scandal, IPL, performance, politics and cricket, work ethic

December 21, 2011 · 1:38 am

ICC told that corruption extends beyond the field

Michael Atherton, courtesy of The Times and The Weekend Australian 17-18 december 2011

GIVEN the scandals that have enveloped the game since the veil was lifted on the activities of several players during the 1990s, it is only natural that when the word “corruption” is uttered, attention falls on the cricketers themselves. Transparency International, an organisation committed to challenging corruption worldwide, made an important contribution to clearing up some of those misconceptions this week.

Cricket is not the kind of playing field that TI normally steps on to, but it was encouraged to do so partly by the wide-ranging nature of the consultation over the ICC’s governance review that closed last week. TI released a number of recommendations for the ICC to consider before the publication of the review, the most important of which was to remind people that on-field corruption is just a small part – albeit the most damaging part – of the temptations that envelop the game as a whole. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cricket and life, financial expediency, foul tactics, IPL, politics and cricket, Sri Lanka Cricket, T20 Cricket, technology and cricket

Tagged as , ,

October 30, 2011 · 8:25 am

ICC reveals spineless greed on issue of Test play-offs

Gideon Haigh, in  the Weekend Australian, 29-30 October 2011 with different title… Gideon Haigh is one of Australia’s best sports writers and has expertise in financial analysis as well. He has now joined the Weekend Australian’s columns and must be listened to avidly. Web Editor.

HYPOCRISY, the saying goes, is the homage that vice pays to virtue. In cricket, it is the homage administrators pay to Test matches. Time and again, administrators assure us of their continued regard for Test cricket as the game’s ultimate form. Then they pull sneaky little manoeuvres like winnowing Australia’s planned three-Test series against South Africa away to two, and England’s promised five-Test series against South Africa next year to three.

Their recent decision to welch on playoffs for the World Test Championship is perhaps their most destructive move yet. Destructive and also instructive: because it demonstrates how far the game’s welfare now falls behind self-interest and short-term financial expediency as a governance priority.

At their July annual meeting inHong Kong, the executive board of the International Cricket Council, on which Cricket Australia’s representative was its chairman Jack Clarke, agreed to advance plans for playoffs to the World Test Championship: semi-finals and a final among the top four ranked countries. It was welcomed as a much-needed innovation: a chance to contextualise the game’s most skilful and historic format, and enrich it with a finale worth the name. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under financial expediency, ICC, IPL, politics and cricket, richie benaud, television commentary, Test rankings, unusual people

May 31, 2011 · 2:14 am

Malcom Speed’s Sticky Wicket

Peter Roebuck

Former International Cricket Council (ICC) and Cricket Australia (CA) Chief Executive Malcolm Speed’s memoir of his time in cricket, ‘Sticky Wicket’, is an unbiased and relevant eye-opener about what went on behind the scenes in cricket in the past 10 years, noted cricket columnist Peter Roebuck has said. “If the style is as dry as a paper clip, the content is colourful. Along the way Speed describes the rumour-ridden inquiry into Bob Woolmer’s death at the 2003 Cricket World Cup, an investigation hijacked by a vainglorious detective and a silly coroner,” Roebuck wrote in his syndicated column for the Sydney Morning Herald. “He talks about the disastrous 2003 Cup, the growth of Indian power, the move from London to Dubai, the advent of Twenty20, the attempt to spread the game beyond the Old Empire, and the sensible changes made to the throwing law.” “He focuses on the notorious SCG Test againstIndiathat showed numerous players and both boards in a poor light, an issue from which only a Kiwi judge emerged with credit,” he added. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under confrontations on field, cricket and life, IPL, politics and cricket, technology and cricket

April 23, 2011 · 2:41 am

On PAUL VALTHATY: “Breaking the shackles of selection bias” –Two Essays

Makarand Waingankar,  articles from 21 April et seq in The Hindu and Mid-Day

“… for me Paul Valthaty of Kings XI Punjab has been the surprise hero so far in this IPL edition. He is a cut above the rest,” Sangakarra in BBC nes item yesterday.

ONE:  Valthaty brings selectors’ role under scrutiny

Paul Valthaty’s Indian Premier League showing for King’s XI Punjab makes one wonder what stopped the selectors from picking him for Mumbai in first-class cricket An average Mumbai cricket lover knows the names of talented young cricketers in the city. Isn’t it an irony then that they ask ‘Paul who,’ after Paul Valthaty’s exploits in the Indian Premier League? It’s said a player has to have three Ds – dedication, devotion and discipline, ” but one may say he has to have three Ts ” talent, temperament and tenacity ” as well.
 What Valthaty possessed was alphabet T till a Bangladeshi bowler on an under-prepared pitch in Auckland hit his eye through the visor of his helmet in an Under-19 World Cup match in 2002.  One could see a small hole in his right eyelid. He did start playing after eight months, but could sight the ball properly only two years later when he was 22!

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cricket and life, IPL, player selections, politics and cricket, unusual people

October 7, 2010 · 10:30 am

The Empire strikes back

Sharda Ugra,

Courtesy of cricinfo.org, 29 Sept. 2010

The BCCI has absolutely nothing in common with the Afrikaaner volk, but what it came up with this afternoon in Mumbai was a classic laager, the traditional defensive encircling of wagons to protect its own. In this case its own property and territory, the property being Indian cricket and the territory all the ground it had lost over the last three years to the IPL and Lalit Modi.

On the surface the BCCI’s annual general meeting was meant to be a polite incantation of the names of those who will hold office for a year after another orderly election. Yet every move and announcement that emerged from the AGM carried with it the specific purpose of strengthening the BCCI’s internal order and regaining its control after what three very lucrative but extremely tumultuous years – during which the IPL had threatened to change the existing order not only of the BCCI but of cricket itself.

That’s why the most significant move is not the coronation of N. Srinivasan as president-elect but a change in the BCCI’s constitution, undoing what had been done three years ago, when the IPL was placed at the centre of India’s cricketing universe.

The IPL governing council will now be called the IPL Governing Council Committee, one of the BCCI’s 13 regular sub-committees, and will have a one-year term instead of five, thus allowing all errors and appointments rectified, if necessary, within 12 months.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cricket and life, IPL, politics and cricket