Tri-Series Cricket: Sri Lanka Beat Australia Again! Do or Die For India!

After winning the toss and electing to bat first Australia did post a challenging total of 280 runs for 6 wickets in allotted fifty overs at the ninth match of the Commonwealth Bank Cricket Tri-series yesterday played at Hobart in Australia.  Dashing new-comer Forrest scored a brilliant century with masterly support from skipper Clarke who scored 72.

But the total did not prove to be enough with the Sri Lankans going great guns while chasing. Skipper Jaywardene led from the front making a quick-fire 85 opening the innings. Chandimal proved his consistency by making a superlative 80 that almost saw Sri Lanka through. Sri Lanka achieved 200 runs as early as in the 37^th over and seemed to be coasting to an easy and emphatic victory. But after his dismissal in the 45^th over Australia made a temporary comeback with wickets falling and the asking rate rising. Spirited Sri Lankans overcame that and achieved an exciting victory by 7 wickets with just 4 balls to spare.

Now, Sri Lanka is almost through to the finals with 15 points followed by Australia with 14 and India in the bottom with 10 points. Every team has two matches each at this stage and rotating-experimenting-ego clashing-divided Team India must win their remaining two matches to entertain the thought of figuring in the finals. If they lose tomorrow’s match against Australia both Sri Lanka and Aus will be in finals. If they win tomorrow but lose the second match against Sri Lanka, Aus will have to figure it out in their last match helped by a very healthy net run-rate. India might still harbor some hope of reaching the finals losing one, but winning the other with a bonus point plus drastic improvement in net run-rate. In the unlikely case of India winning both their matches they will be straight into the finals and the last match of the tournament between SL and Aus will be the huge virtual semi-final for the other finalist.

What are India’s options? Hardly encouraging at the moment. They may consider stopping rotation or experimentation, but this could come as too late now. Top order batsmen are yet to settle down in some sort of a form or consistency and the youngsters are not at all predictable. The young pace bowlers are bound to get affected by their recent experiences with Zaheer Khan hopefully making a comeback. Irfan Pathan, if persisted with, will be another crucial factor. They must in any case regroup well and fast and give an all-round robust performance as a national team playing for their country’s pride. Unfortunately, this looks a doubtful proposition at the current state of affairs with the team.

The insensitive Indian cricket Board denied the very existence of any rift or any problems within Team India. You must understand! The Board has been terribly busy preparing and  raising money for the forthcoming IPL-Season Five and for making it a grand success. For their gratification all star players to figure in IPL-5  now playing  the Tri-Series had had good practice except perhaps for Manoj Tiwary. If club cricket brings in more bucks for the Board why bother about national team’s performance and so-called national pride! Finally it’s money that counts!

For the time being it’s over to Sidney for Sunday’s match between Australia and India.

The Celebrity Punch!

Hindi movie (read Bollywood) superstar hero Saif Ali Khan punched a South African businessman of Indian origin at a restaurant of five-star hotel in uptown Mumbai on the night of February 21, 2012. The superstar was in the company of his Bollywood-heroine wife Kareena Kapoor and few other friends including more celebrity actors. Saif was arrested and released on bail the next day evening.

The day following the midnight brawl all Indian news channels started devouring the huge story carrying bytes of the victims—South African businessman Iqbal Sharma and his dad-in-law. Saif Ali Khan could not be traced the whole day and the Mumbai police visited his residence leaving summons to come to police station immediately. The superstar was to be arrested anytime, cried on the news channels.

Iqbal Sharma revealed that he went to the restaurant along with his dad-in-law for dinner and they were deeply distracted by the noise emanating from the adjacent table occupied by the superstar and his friends. They complained repeatedly to no avail and finally decided to leave the hotel. At that time Saif chased them and punched Iqbal on his nose that started bleeding. His dad-in-law was also punched and pushed down the stairs by Saif’s friends. Getting admitted in a local hospital Iqbal further alleged that all in Saif’s group behaved like rowdy elements.

By evening of the eventful day Saif Ali Khan, eldest son of Indian cricket legend Tiger Pataudi who died only five months back, surrendered to police. He was arrested immediately and released on bail immediately too. Section 325 of the Indian Penal Code under which the actor was framed allows bail though imprisonment under the same section could go up to 7 years if found guilty in due course of trial.

Saif Ali Khan lodged a counter-charge alleging that Iqbal punched him first after a heated argument during which ladies in his groups were also insulted and humiliated. He only acted in self-defense; the movie hero fumed adding that the hotel close circuit cameras would definitely vindicate his stand later. Unfortunately latest reports today suggest that there is no CCTV footage as there were no cameras in that area where the fighting took place! 

                                                                 
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Tri-Series Cricket: Team India Demolished!

Team India has gone down to the last position from the top of the table in the Commonwealth Bank Tri-Series one-day cricket being played in Australia. In today’s match at the Gabba, Brisbane Sri Lanka thoroughly demolished Team India though not being able to earn the bonus point thanks to some resistance displayed by the ‘youngsters’. And breaking news! Rohit Sharma was finally dropped or rotated or rested. Scorecard

The buzz is that the ‘senior’ players have let the team down. Yes, they did let down the team in the Test series earlier and you did not consider rotating or resting or dropping them then. Now in the one-day tournament you have hardly allowed them to play! They never know when they are going to figure in the team and when not. Sehwag came in as the skipper in today’s match and captained the team where he does not even find a place most of the time. The rotation policy had been consistently followed, but even then Gambhir or Tendulkar played when they were not due to be in as per the same policy. Zaheer Khan just does not know what he is doing—helping the team win or helping the policy become unwritten law. There was no method in the madness.

Hailed as the most positive Indian captain ever, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been busy dividing the team and putting in a lot of negative spirit. Like the tactics adopted by an Indian politician along caste lines Dhoni had divided team India into ‘seniors’ and ‘youngsters’ clearly favoring the latter. He did not allow the ‘seniors’ to settle down with the justification that these seniors tend to cost the team 20 extra runs due to poor fielding in Aus outfield. To our cricketing experience Tendulkar had always been praised as a committed batsman, bowler and fielder on the field. The other two—Sehwag and Gambhir—had never been termed slow or slothful either. All three figured and contributed positively in the best World Cup-2011 Team India that won the cup.  Dhoni must blame himself for giving away at least fifty runs extra in most of the matches and his ’20 run justification’ stands nowhere. If you are not fielding the best team possible you have no business to talk about winning. Dhoni’s negativity has been so overfilling that he took resort to slow overrate in the last match for which he penalized and could not play today’s match.

When seniors fail to deliver consistently they do need to be dropped or they should indeed seriously consider retiring. Rickey Ponting was dropped from the Aussie team and he retired from one-day cricket today. But he was not harassed by some weird policy and was given lots of opportunities before the inevitable decision. In fact, he captained in his last match coasting his team to a huge victory over India. All is not at all well in Team India.

From hereon Team India’s journey looks  set to go further downhill Down Under!