The tragedy

After watching Tamim's heroics yesterday, I thought that Bangladesh might just save this one.
Then he got out, and then there was a sudden collapse.
Never mind, I thought to myself, the lower order has never let Bangladesh down.
They have a number eight, who averages 42 in a test match.
That's a brilliant statistic by itself.
But then he failed and Bangladesh have given England a target of 160.
Strauss seems to have gotten the balls of a Tamim and he's gone on a rampage.
It's not as brainlessly brilliant like Tamim's innings, but it's effective.
And yet again, Bangladesh would have lost a game that they had dominated for many sessions and beautifully fucked up in others.
That, my friends, is a tragedy

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  

A must read

I'm currently reading A Corner Of A Foreign Field by Ramachandra Guha. This is also the first time I'm incorporating an image into this blog and it's not a photo blog, which makes this post all the more significant, although the layout might look crap by the time I'm done with this.

But that's not the point.

While I'm not done with the book entirely, I'm not in a place to do an overall review of it, which is why I'm just raising a few issues regarding the way the game was played then and how it is now.

If you read the book, barring technology and the use of protective gear, the game hasn't changed. 

In fact, it has gone back to it's original form, with a few tweaks here and there. 

For example, the type of umpiring then. If a decision was given against an Englishman, he had the right to appeal against it. However, it wasn't the same for the local players, but despite that they wouldn't fare so badly. There was an instance of a match an English batsman, refusing to walk claiming that the wicketkeeper had dislodged the bails when he was actually bowled. Harris was declared out, but the media particularly the Times of India, which was owned by the English at that time criticized the local umpires and claimed that only the English could umpire the matches. 

Eventually in the quadrangular, there were neutral umpires for each game i.e. a Muslim would officiate a game between the English and the Hindus and the English and Parsis; Hindus would officiate games between the English and the Muslims and the English and Paris and so on. The ICC eventually changed the rule of one local umpires in a test match early this century, which is quite bizarre, considering that the Raj was okay with it in the early 20th century.

The book, however, mainly speaks on the Palwankars, probably the first great cricketing family led by Palwankar Baloo, India's first great cricketer. People of course speak of KS Ranjitsinhji as India's first great cricketer, but Ranji himself played for England and had always felt that the Indian style of playing the game was not the right way, in terms of technique. This is probably why Guha narrowed down on Baloo while writing the book.
The book on the whole is more caste and history that went around the game. There are no scorecards or statistics, except for Baloo's and probably CK Nayudu's. It's an evolution of the game to the religion it has become in India. Guha doesn't disappoint again, which is why I recommend the book to both cricket and non-cricket lovers

Good on Bangladesh

I like this English side.
Although they started poorly and are playing against bottom three lowest ranked test teams, they haven't taken their opposition for granted.
Unlike the Indian side, whose players deserve to be walloped.
They scored 505 on a fairly shitty wicket at Lords.
But Bangladesh fought back. And they've done a good job of fighting back.
I know it's day 3 of a test match and a lot can happen over a session.
I am also aware that the Bangladeshi side is known for batting collapses after showing that they are capable of playing with the best sides in the world.
But they need to convert these brilliant bursts of cricket to something more relevant, if they are to have results in their favour.
Right now, they are three wickets down, but I hope they reach a score where they don't follow-on.
England, of course, are living off their T20 high and have done the transition from T20 to test cricket quite well.
And yes, in Bangladesh's defense, they had a good home series against England, although they lost. They fought and could have won one of the test matches.
India, on the other hand, need to grow some balls and need to stop being aggressive.

India outclassed

So India lost to Zimbabwe.
As an Indian, I should be pissed and disappointed, but instead I am laughing.
This is the best thing that could happen to Indian cricket.
We know that our bench strength is full of shit, but losing to Zimbabwe is like a slap on the face.
Like Ayaz Memon tweeted, it's because of overconfidence.
I hope Gary Kirsten breaks their balls.
Freaking wankers

Why the Pakistan All-Time XI will fail

I read the Cricinfo piece on the Pakistan All-Time XI.

On paper, the side is fantastic.

But, in theory, the team will lose.

Here are my reasons why

Hanif Mohammad, Fazal Mohammad, Zaheer Abbas and Imran Khan will proudly don the Pakistan cap and play like their life depended on it.

But four players aren’t enough.

Rashid Latif will be blogging on RashidLatif.net on how his team players conspired to lose the match and will name Wasim Akram in the fixing scandal.

Javed Miandad will be speaking to Dawood Ibrahim to ensure that his name is cleared of all fixing charges that have been filed by Wasim.

Waqar Younis will get into a public altercation with Wasim when Wasim is acting captain, saying that he was captain after Wasim. So as a result, Waqar will bowl badly to show that he was a better captain than Wasim.

Qadir will try and bowl googlies, but get clobbered.

Inzamam and Saeed Anwar will be MIA and be timed out for praying too much.

So yeah, the team will be screwed.

Dirty games

Before I begin this, J-Rod's piece on Pakistani players being mentally retarded is brilliant.
But after today's news, I tend to agree with what Alam said about the 'boys being mentally retarded'.
Since the match fixing scandal broke out in 2000, the cynic says that matches are fixed even today.
We don't know about player involvements because they've been smart since the scandal.
But then Pakistan plays awesomely bad cricket against Australia.
In the second test, they play brilliantly for the first four days and suddenly on the fifth day, Australia has won the damn thing.
You know that something isn't right and then suddenly Afridi comes out and says that he's heard of players fixing the matches, but doesn't have any proof that they did.
He even talks of some players checking women out during a game and then dropping catches.
While the world plays it safe, these guys go and fuck it up and get involved in another controversy.
It wasn't bad enough that nearly half the team is facing a ban for playing shit.
Now they'll be banned for life if they're proved guilty.
And yes, that takes an all-new level of retarded behavior to do something like that.
Suddenly getting genital warts and forgetting that you were married over the phone seem intelligent.
And let's face it: How the fuck can you lose this test match?
It makes India's chase of 120 and getting out for 81 look like intelligent cricket.