The Subcontinent syndrome

Sri Lanka is a good side. I'll go on to say that they're the best ODI side in the subcontinent.
Unfortunately, that doesn't say much about their cricketing ability.
Like other teams in the subcontinent, there is a lot of dependence on two or three players. If those guys make a mess, the team crumbles.
If I'm not convincing, here are a few examples:
In the 90s, Sri Lanka depended on two batsmen: Sanath Jayasuriya and Arvinda de Silva. If either one of them failed, the other would make runs (see Eden Gardens 1996 semi-finals at the World Cup). If both failed, then Sri Lanka was screwed.
Note: At that time, Murali was still discovering that he was a freak of nature.
Move to the current scenario. Sri Lanka's openers are strictly okay. Tilakratne Dilshan is an attacking player, as is Upul Tiranga. However, if you take away Dilshan's subcontinent record, barring South Africa, he has struggled elsewhere. He averages 22 in Australia, 10.33 in England, 26 in New Zealand and 36 against West Indies. South Africa is a more impressive 64. However, this shows that he is inconsistent.
Sri Lanka still depend a lot on Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. If they fail, the rest of the team fails. In today's game against New Zealand, had the two of them not made a century and half century respectively, the rest of Sri Lanka scored 69 runs.
Sri Lanka also still depend a lot on Murali. Although he is playing his last ODI series, he is a key bowler in their team. Lasith Malinga is also a valuable asset to have, but he's like a very non-controversial Shoaib Akhtar. He can be brilliant on one day and very ordinary on the next. Like Shoaib, he too has the makings of one of the greatest ever - only if he is consistent.
My point is that had Sri Lanka had not have players in the calibre of Muralitharan, Jayawardene and Sangakkara, the chances of exposing a weak spot would have been done even my a minnow side.
I think that this over-dependence by teams in the subcontinent. India had it on Tendulkar then and Zaheer now. Pakistan has depended on Wasim, Waqar and Inzi when they need help, which is probably one of the main reasons why the team is so mercurial.
In Sri Lanka's favour, however, the experts publically announce the fragile batting and bowling if Sangakkara, Jayawardene, Murli and Malinga are absent from the team. For India and Pakistan, nobody says it too often. They just keep saying India's strong batting lineup and poor bowling lineup. Yeah, the bowling is weak, but the batsmen don't exactly make you want to jump with joy either (remember 9/29 against South Africa and another collapse against England?).
If India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka want to be consistent, they should remember that cricket is a game about 11 and not about a few brilliant performances here and there. 

Pakistan needs help

Like the Joker, the Pakistani team doesn't
have a plan. It's just plain chaos!

Currently Pakistan is playing like we did in the 90s.
Test cricket is about playing in sessions, they say. Pakistan plays like a team possessed in one session. They have a pace attack which I believe is the best in the world right now. Their bowling today is what Ambrose and Walsh were when West Indies started declining as a side.
But the batting is rubbish. It's even worse than the West Indies batting. At least they had Lara, who could do awesome things sometimes.
But these guys need a lot of working to do. They nearly killed the match against Australia and managed to win by three wickets at the end.
I thought that they would repeat a Sydney or a Sri Lanka in that test match, but they managed to survive.
Not in this one though.
It's sad because you have a side that bowls brilliantly and the batsmen throw their wickets away and make a mess of themselves.
What's different from the way we played and the way Pakistan plays now? At that time, we would play badly in all the sessions of a test match, so the whole world knew that we would invariably lose. Here, there is a shimmer of hope for Pakistan when their bowlers bowl like that. Unfortunately for them, the batting is too weak. Quite the opposite of the present Indian team that has a very impotent bowling lineup.
My brother and I were having a discussion when England collapsed in their first inning. He asked me, "How much do you think Pakistan will make?"
"77!" I said.
He laughed and said that they'll make less than 200
"We were laughing today about how they made less than 250 in the entire match!"
They're in need of help. Maybe Inzy should come out of retirement and take over the middle order.
Pakistani cricket is in shambles. It's crazy and it's retarded.
It's probably why I like watching them play.
They're like the Joker. There is no plan. Only Chaos!

Consistency in the time of chaos

It's been a while since I've written anything.
During this period, Murali took his 800th, Pakistan managed to finally beat Australia, Sachin and Uncle J-Rod have plans to release books filled with blood and semen and Mohammad Azharuddin is reportedly banging some badminton player who is half his age.
Suddenly cricket seems more interesting than the football world cup
Now, I wrote my last piece a few days before the first test match and since then, so much has happened, which makes the cricketing world chaotic once again.
In two weeks of cricket, despite having so much chaos, there is one thing that has been consistent.
That is India's fast bowling problem.
We have two guys: one a relatively new guy and the other, who is bowling shit. The rest of the crop are injured or learning how to bowl.
How on earth can a country, whose general population multiply like rabbits, not produce a single fast bowler, who can consistently bowl fast without getting injured?
The fastest bowler we've had till date is Srinath and he has bowled at 90 mph on a consistent basis.
The guys today find it difficult to touch 85 mph.
Okay, speed isn't everything, but these guys are bowling like a bunch of retards. It's like Intakab Alam's comments should be used on the Indian bowlers, now that Pakistan has beaten Australia
And we're the number 1 side in the world?
I agree with Sangakkara and Harsha Bhogle. What do we have to show to be the best side in the world. For a better part of the 90s, we depended on one guy. In the early part of the 21st century we depended on 2 guys batting well abroad and one guy bowling well at home.
If we win this match, it'll be a miracle. The best we can do is draw it, unless Sehwag does something maniacal like he did in the Mumbai test match and win it for us.
That will bring some chaos to a pretty consistent performance by India.

Muralitharan End of an era

My parents tell me an interesting tale. When I was a kid, my father worked for the State Trading Corporation (STC). During his stint with STC, he (which means him and the family) were transferred to the UK. We stayed there between 1986 and 1989. We came back when I was six years old.

We stayed in an area called Corinium Close in London. From what I remember, there were seven large houses and each of them was occupied by someone from the subcontinent. We had these immediate neighbours, who were from Sri Lanka. But at that time, I didn’t even know what Sri Lanka was. Only recently, when I was having a chat with my father, did he tell me that they were from Eelam.

Recently I read an essay by historian and cricket lover Ramachandra Guha about the Eelam struggle going to western Europe and how several refugees over there had played an important role in trying to attain ‘freedom’ from Sri Lanka. Guha then spoke about V Prabhakaran the founder of the LTTE and the reasons why several Sri Lankan Tamils joined his cause, which at the end of the day, after nearly 25-30 years of rebelling, has proved to be futile. Prabhakaran died last year and Sri Lanka can only worry about local leaders and the opposition for the time being.

In the late 90s and for the much of the earlier part of the 21st century another Sri Lankan Tamil gained a lot of fame. Unlike Prabhakaran, who resorted to killing and blasting people, this man destroyed batsmen with his guile. He never spoke much, but let his talent and hard work do most of the talking. It is this dedication to the game of cricket that has made Muttaiah Muralitharan the greatest off-spinner in the modern era. People will question his action and whether it was legitimate or not, but there’s no question that Sri Lanka will never find a better ambassador than Murali.

Murali is a once in a lifetime cricketer. Never again, I believe, will you find a guy who uses his wrist to bowl off-spin. As Harsha Bhogle put it in his tribute to Murali, “If it was the action alone, a clone would have produced at least 300 by now, there would have been kids in the streets bowling like him. Surely they must have tried; that they couldn't is a tribute to his uniqueness.”

I do a parallel comparison between Prabhakaran and Muralitharan and when you read this piece you’ll understand why. Both Sri Lankan Tamils, but one’s choice made his country proud and the other’s made him a wanted man.  Murali never spoke of the Tamil Tigers and what his opinion was about the liberation. He just went on doing what he was supposed to do and that was take wickets for his country. He never said anything when people questioned his action. He just went through a biomechanic test to prove that it wasn’t illegal.

He’ll be playing his last test match against India soon and the tributes have come from all over. And at the end of the day, whether you like him or hate him, you can’t question his commitment to the game. He probably has a better average than Shane Warne because of the number of test matches he’s played against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, but they’re wickets nonetheless. He’s taken criticism well (except when Bishan Singh Bedi called him a dacoit, which was completely uncalled for). Most of all, he’s taken Sri Lankan cricket to an all-new high. Without him, the side will miss a match winner.

For someone, who has loved watching the game, irrespective of the opposition, Murali is one guy I will miss. The action, the wide eyes and the smile of a silent assassin will slowly go away from the cricketing world. And nobody like him will appear for the next 100 years

The comeback kid

I could write about how badly India played today.
But that's something I write about all the time.
However, I'm glad that Zimbabwe is slowly finding its way back into the international cricket arena.
I just finished reading A Corner of A Foreign Field and in it, Ramachandra Guha, on more than one occasion, stressed that when sport and politics go together, it can tarnish the entire essence of a game. It was seen in the days of the Raj, during the quadrangular and pentagular cricket tournaments, where the players of different religions and opposing faiths would clash. They might have gotten along, but the crowds most certainly did not. It was also seen post-1947. India and Pakistan have never gotten along as neighbors in the political circuit, but the sportsmen and women have made up for it. True that there are altercations in the heat of the game, like we've seen in hockey or in cricket, but at the end of the day the players are friends off the field, or so they claim.
While there is still turmoil in Indo-Pak relationships and the cricketers are barely playing, I can say this in writing that despite everything, the fan would die to watch an Indo-Pak game. Hell, there will be a packed stadium in Siberia if they played.
Politics also came in the way of South Africa's cricket. Their policy of apartheid resulted in them getting debarred from all sporting activity for over 20 years. Great players like Barry Richards and Mike Proctor could only make a name for themselves on the county circuit, despite dominating Australia in the 1969 series, which was South Africa's last series for a while.
A similar thing happened when Robert Mugabe became president of Zimbabwe. Mugabe won the elections in 1980 and served as prime minister till 1987. After that, he decided to take law into his own hands and made himself the ruler of Zimbabwe in 1987. His rule, people say is tyranny; some have even called it reverse apartheid. Several players, particularly the Flower brothers, Heath Streak, Henry Olonga and Pommie Mbwanga, migrated to England for a better life. Flower and Olonga, during the 2003 World Cup released a statement saying,

“

In all the circumstances, we have decided that we will each wear a black armband for the duration of the World Cup. In doing so we are mourning the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe. In doing so we are making a silent plea to those responsible to stop the abuse of human rights in Zimbabwe. In doing so, we pray that our small action may help to restore sanity and dignity to our Nation.

”

The duo had to escape to England and since then, the Zimbabwean side lost its focus and a lot of burden was left on the young shoulders of 19-year-old Tatendra Taibu. And credit must go to him because he captained, led by example and kept wickets. Unfortunately for him, the team had a bunch of players selected purely on the basis of the color of their skin, rather than talent. Just for the sake of minority, a couple of white cricketers would be thrown in. The result was disastrous, with the ICC finally giving up and debarring Zimbabwe from playing test cricket.
This was four years ago and thankfully for the sake of cricket, the side is slowly getting back to playing good, competitive cricket. Sure, there is no Andy Flower or Heath Streak and Mugabe is still going strong, but the players are showing that they are no longer minnows and are working hard to be better with every game they play.. India figured it out in this tour. For all you know, this could be a Sri Lanka vs Zimbabwe final. And for the love of the game, that makes me very happy.

From the failed ballad to a rock concert

When India played Australia in the T20 Cup, they looked like they were going to die because of the fast bowling.
I don't blame the side. You have Dirk Nannes, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson bowling at 150 k at your head, despite a helmet most modern-day cricketers would be scared.
But then came Rohit Sharma and batted like it was net practice.
He made 79 awesome runs, which Uncle J-Rod calls the Ballad of Rohit Sharma.
The ballad continued the other day against Zimbabwe.
No offence to the Zimbabweans, but if Rohit's ballad against Australia was Bridge Over Troubled Water, then the ballad against Zimbabwe was as bad as Unbreak My Heart.
India should not have lost that match. It was cuntish, overconfident  behavior that cost us the game.
However, today, Sharma changed the ballad into a sizzling rock star performance.
I call the performance Shoot To Thrill  

South Africa: the eternal chokers

Uncle J-Rod got it right again.South Africa proved that they can't perform in a big tournament. Today's loss to Pakistan has resulted in them getting out of the T20 cup.
Pakistan has a chance of surviving.
Does that mean, India has a chance as well?
Will the Indian side manage to stun Sri Lanka tomorrow?
Aakash Chopra tweeted that Sri Lanka's reliability on Mahi and Sanga could cost them the match.
At least, Sri Lanka have two people to count on.
Who on earth does India have, right now?
Dhoni's ODing as a captain. He makes Harbhajan open the bowling on a fast bowler's wicket and bowls first on a track where batting first is the smart thing to do.
Yuvraj is batting like a cunt.
Zaheer and Nehra seem out of sorts.
Vijay thinks he's playing a test match.
Dhoni is batting, but getting out at the wrong time.
So, Raina and Sharma, who have been amongst the runs, have a lot to do.
If this doesn't work, India can always join the South Africans and go on a vacation before embarking on their Zimbabwe tour