Now this one is like throwing the cat among the pigeons. Everybody has a view. I am one of everybody. So, I have a view. If you are a Bangladeshi and you are reading this, do not worry mate. I am just surprised. With players of the quality of Mohd. Ashraful and Abdur Razzak doing the rounds, things can only get better. But that was about an year ago. Or maybe two. I am not sure but what I am sure is that there is no drastic improvement in the win percentage. Talking about it to my friends (great cricket …read more

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With Tendulkar, it’s like the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.”
-Sanjay Manjrekar on Sachin Tendulkar
Source
Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly were picked out of the Indian team prior to the CB series. Rahul, of course, had been culled long before that, so his absence wasn’t talked about. But some people weren’t happy to see Ganguly go and opined if the selection committee can be brave enough to cull Ganguly, they should axe Tendulkar as well.
Moreover, Tendulkar hasn’t brought any laurels to the team in this tournament and

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The idea of off-season may be completely off to some. A previous post on it got, like, no response (We are thick-skinned. Heh), but however ill-fated it may be, we are determined to shop it around. For us, it’s the Great Romantic Novel (think Gone With the Wind). Someday someone will bite.

OK, the point now:
Why we think cricket should have an off-season every year?

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We’ve called him cool, and we truly believed it. But that coolness has failed to show itself in Test  cricket. Everybody pardoned Dhoni’s less than stellar performance against Pakistan. Too early, we echoed. But nothing has changed in Australia so far. Just 105 runs in 6 innings. Sehwag came into his own. Pathan bounced back (Interesting, he always gets Man of the Match on bouncing back), but Dhoni has kept everyone waiting. Karthik for Adelaide, anyone?

My dad can refer some doctors, if you want.

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Journalists are quite fond of finding new angles to old, beaten-to-death topics. These so-called slants come in handy when you’ve few important things to report, or to be very, very concise, your team is slipping off the pedestal.
Andrew Stevenson, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent, alleges, based on his research from secondary (as opposed to primary and authorized) sources, that Indian cricket team’s selection is caste-based.

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Chucking is all over me. So here goes.
While this is not a substitute for 3-D analysis and we’re not biomechanics, 2000 frames/second is slow enough for our eyes to observe bowling actions from varying angles.

I don’t really know if this is 2000 frames/sec, but it’s slow enough.
I am not going to say that it’s okay, because we all have different opinions regarding what throwing action is, and different eye (specs) powers.
As far as I am concerned, I think he bowls pretty neatly for his hypermobile joints. What do you think?

Sachin Tendulkar has refused to captain India’s Test side for reasons that are unknown to mortals as of yet. Most self-claimed cricket experts (my dad included) are of view that Tendulkar simply lacks executive intelligence-the kind that is needed to lead an international team. He’s no match to Ponting, Waugh, and the like, of course.
Let’s dig up some stats.

I spent a sleepless month in September. You know why. The T20 World Cup. I finally got my forty winks after the final. Before my eyes could adapt to light, Australia came down and I found myself entrapped again. But it seems a little different with the Indian Oil Cup. I’ll admit that I was never oh so looking forward to it. With the first match turning out to be a fizzle, I have actually decided to help Mom out with Diwali prep during the holiday.

Prologue:
I was going to review Warney’s autobiography and boy, was I glad to present my recent epiphanies about the leggie, but what the heck, something spoiled my mood. And here you have a rant.
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For starters, Shashi Tharoor is a former under secretary general of the United Nations. He ran for the post of general secretary, but lost. He’s also a prolific writer, and some 50-60 year olds (women, obviously) I know have found him very “dashing” and “handsome”.
Prior to the start of the World …read more