I feel I am lacking that drive to sustain a blog for a long time :) I get a lot of topics to write, but not the patience and time to write, feel better to tweet, it is quick and easy, although there are space constraints :) I feel this blog will again go on an idle mode for some time till I really get that enthusiasm for a sustained blog! Till then follow me on twitter @balajivasan :)
March 5, 2011
January 15, 2011
My 15 and 11 for WC 2011
With the Indian squad for the World Cup to be selected on 17th, I was thinking about what the squad composition look like. We would need 5 seamers, 2 spinners and 8 batsmen in the squad. Most of the members of the squad pick themselves right away:
Dhoni, Sachin, Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Raina, Kohli, Harbhajan, Ashwin (backup spinner), Zaheer, Praveen, Nehra, Munaf
That leaves us with 2 spots. 1 seamer and 1 batsman.
The Seamer spot is a tussle between Sreesanth and Ishant, going by the recent test form, I would go for Sreesanth.
That brings us to the bigger trouble: 1 batsman - tussle between Yusuf and Rohit. If not for Yusuf's recent century against NZ, this would have been a straightforward choice. Now the choice is between a pinch-hitter and a technically sound batsmen, who might lack temperament, but has the skills to bat long as well as go for the big shots. Let me go with Rohit here for his sheer capabilities, because we have big hitters in the form of Raina, Yuvraj and Dhoni.
Even if that choice is successfully made, I wonder what the playing 11 will be. Its long since the first choice 11 played together, and the replacements have been too good for us to miss the main stream guys. Here is my approximate playing 11:
Sachin, Sehwag, Gambhir, Kohli, Yuvraj, Dhoni, Raina/Rohit, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Praveen, Nehra/Munaf/Sreesanth
All said, it is the performance during the tournament that counts, lets hope they do well, and give Sachin the trophy for which he will be playing for the last time!
The Johannesburg thriller
At the half-way mark of the India vs SA, 2nd ODI at Wanderers, or probably even before the half-way mark, I thought India were all but done, and the symptoms were pointing toward a series similar to the India-NZ one just before 2003 World Cup. But the match had things more exciting that what I had expected!
Chasing 191 for a victory, SA were cruising, but still going by their choking capacities, there was a glimmer of hope. And the final equation just goes to suggest SA's choking capabilities more than India's abilities; from 160-5 to 189-all out!!
What I personally liked about the match was Dhoni's captaincy and his luck!! He rotated the bowlers well, with very short spells of 2-3 overs each, even for spinners, particularly towards the latter part of SA innings. And, of course, Munaf Patel and Zaheer Khan bowled beautifully to get those key wickets. Althought Nehra bowled well to get AB De Villiers, I thought he has to stem the flow of runs in his early (and death) overs. This performance also gives some selection head-aches for seamers: Zaheer, Nehra, Praveen, Munaf, Sreesanth; which is good from the WC perspective. Hopefull they do not get injured in the rest of the series!
But all said, the key catalyst for India's victory was SA's greed for fast runs and thereby opting of the "Batting powerplay" that was never required. Once that was taken, singles were cut off, and they had to go over the top to get those boundaries, and hence that additional risk! Look at this for a comparison, India scored 14 runs for 4 wickets in their batting powerplay, SA scored 20 runs for 3 wickets. But the damage was heavier for SA, because they were playing only 6 batsmen against India's 7.
Finally, SAs need to develop a good brain over their shoulders and avoid the choking that has kept a major tournament title out of their reach, in order to prosper in the upcoming WC. On the other hand, India needs to bat and bowl well in the same match; at this point these 2 are not happening simultaneously!
Chasing 191 for a victory, SA were cruising, but still going by their choking capacities, there was a glimmer of hope. And the final equation just goes to suggest SA's choking capabilities more than India's abilities; from 160-5 to 189-all out!!
What I personally liked about the match was Dhoni's captaincy and his luck!! He rotated the bowlers well, with very short spells of 2-3 overs each, even for spinners, particularly towards the latter part of SA innings. And, of course, Munaf Patel and Zaheer Khan bowled beautifully to get those key wickets. Althought Nehra bowled well to get AB De Villiers, I thought he has to stem the flow of runs in his early (and death) overs. This performance also gives some selection head-aches for seamers: Zaheer, Nehra, Praveen, Munaf, Sreesanth; which is good from the WC perspective. Hopefull they do not get injured in the rest of the series!
But all said, the key catalyst for India's victory was SA's greed for fast runs and thereby opting of the "Batting powerplay" that was never required. Once that was taken, singles were cut off, and they had to go over the top to get those boundaries, and hence that additional risk! Look at this for a comparison, India scored 14 runs for 4 wickets in their batting powerplay, SA scored 20 runs for 3 wickets. But the damage was heavier for SA, because they were playing only 6 batsmen against India's 7.
Finally, SAs need to develop a good brain over their shoulders and avoid the choking that has kept a major tournament title out of their reach, in order to prosper in the upcoming WC. On the other hand, India needs to bat and bowl well in the same match; at this point these 2 are not happening simultaneously!
January 10, 2011
Reviving the blog :)
One thing that has always stopped me from blogging is laziness. Will try to get over that over that to start blogging. Planning on theming this on cricket and Indian movies, lets see how the second innings is gonna be like..
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)