Cricket: Mahendra Singh Dhoni Named Captain Of ICC ODI Team Of The Year!

Laurels for Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. For the fifth consecutive year Dhoni has been selected in International Cricket Council (ICC)’S ‘ODI (One Day International) Team of the Year’ and this time he has been named the captain too. Not only this, Team Indiagot its three players along with Dhoni selected—the highest for any team. Australia (Michael Clarke and Shane Watson), Pakistan (Shahid Afridi and Saeed Ajmal) , England (Alastair Cook and Steven Finn) and Sri Lanka (Kumar Sangakkara and Lasith Malinga) have two players each and South Africa has one (Morne Morkel). The other two Indian players are Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir.

The ICC Chief Executive David Richardson announced the 'Squad' at a special function ahead of the LG ICC Awards being held tomorrow in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The LG  ICC Awards honor the best performing international players and officials of the last 12 months. A specially appointed five-member expert panel headed by West Indies cricket’s living legend Clive Lloyd selected the twelve-member team. The other members of the panel were former Sri Lankan captain Marvan Atapattu, former West Indies skipper Carl Hooper, Australian all-rounder Tom Moody and former Englandwomen's team captain Clare O'Connor.

This is indeed a good moment for the Indian team that already arrived in Sri Lanka for the ICC World Cup Twenty20. Dhoni has already expressed his hopes for repeating the World Cup-2011 achievement here too and if they do so India will have the unique distinction of being World Cup-2011 Champions, the under-19 World Cup-2012 Champions and World Cup T20-2012 Champions! Get cracking, Team India! 

Diesel Price Hike And The Curious Story Of The 7th Gas Cylinder!

How many cooking gas cylinders do you use a year or how many days one cylinder lasts for you! The frenetic calculations must be raging at the moment in households or in the minds of housewives across the length and breadth of India! The curious spectacle of the 7^th cylinder must be getting embedded in various brains. But the first story first.

After months of introspection, retrospection and brainstorming the Government of India today took the courageous decision of hiking diesel prices by 12% or 5 rupees per litre. This is very courageous basically on two grounds; first, diesel has been the basic fuel of India used in various activities meant largely for the poor and the farmers and second, with the political opposition hounding for controlling inflation and the pressure of big and bigger scams building all the time the ruling coalition government was in a tight corner.

The fiscal deficit of the government that has been growing due to the heavily subsidized diesel, cooking gas and kerosene almost threatened a credit rating downgrade. Increasing crude oil prices in the international market and continuous fall in the Indian Rupee value against the US dollar the oil imports bill was growing with the oil companies making huge losses on a daily basis. The business experts across India hail this decision as a positive step forward to further reforms and a boost to the markets, and they appeal to the government not to resort to rollback. But the opposition political parties and the allies are already threatening a countrywide agitation and demand an immediate rollback. Well, the politics of economics or business is an old story in India. But now to the curious story.

The government found the decision to hike cooking gas, petrol and kerosene prices too politically risky at the moment and therefore decided to leave them untouched. But with a condition. There will a cap of six gas cylinders per year per household at the subsidized prices and if any family has to go for the 7^thcylinder its market price which is nearly double will have to be paid. Since the year considered is the April-March financial year all households can have only three more cylinders till March, 2013. Any exception for the poor families has not been specified so far.

So then, single, married, nuclear family, joint family, large families…beware! Keep guard over your kitchen and on what you eat! Happy calculations!

India Vs New Zealand Cricket T20: Kiwis Win A Thriller By One Run, Yuvraj Singh Wins Hearts By Millions!

Brendon McCullum Blazing Away!

New Zealand in the death moments prevailed over India in a nail-biting thriller and won the second and last Twenty20 international cricket match by just 1 run in Chennai today thus winning the T20 Cricket Series 1-0. The first match in Visakhapatnamwas washed out due to heavy rains. And, for all the eager fans—Yuvraj Singh played cricket again. He fielded, bowled and batted. His cancer was a thing of the past now—fought, conquered and forgotten.

Finally in Chennai the rain gods had mercy and play began dot on time. Indian skipper Dhoni won the toss and perhaps to use the conditions and some little grass on the pitch invited New Zealand to bat first. As anticipated by Dhoni the Kiwis started badly losing the openers for just two runs on the board. Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan shared the two wickets. Star Kiwi keeper-batsman Brendon McCullum took charge and made a hurricane 91 off just 55 balls. Kane Williamson (28) gave him able company and the pair added 90 runs for the third wicket.  Skipper Ross Taylor played a cameo of 25 and New Zealand managed to reach a somewhat healthy score of 167/5 in allotted 20 overs. Pathan took 3 wickets for 31 runs in 4 overs. For India the target of 168 was neither here nor there meaning it could be easy meat or could get very risky.

As Virender Sehwag was declared unfit Virat Kohli opened the Indian chase with Gautam Gambhir. Kohli was in an aggressive mood from the word go and despite losing Gambhir early he kept the momentum going. Suresh Raina (27 off 22) joined him and took the score from 26/1 to 86/2. 

Yuvraj Singh Winning Hearts!

And then walked in Yuvraj Singh in his customary No.4 position and provided the most sought after sight for his fans and cricket lover all over. Settling in he made his first boundary, a tricky shot past the slips, off Milne and two balls later he was dropped of the same bowler. Next over by Vettori and Yuvraj was back in his original glory using his crease and lofting the ball tossed up outside his off stump to over long on boundary—a Yuvi six that always makes his fans go wild with joy. A mini crisis next over as Kohli fell to Franklin after making 70 off just 41 balls, but at 120/3 in the fourteenth over it looked immensely attainable for India needing just 48 runs in  40 balls with 7 wickets remaining.

Skipper Dhoni joined Yuvraj and smart slow-pace bowling by the Kiwis made run-scoring difficult for India. New Zealand roared back into the match when India needed 32 runs from the last three overs. Then stiff 25 runs from 2 overs when Yuvraj hit his second six to make things a little easier. Finally 13 runs to win in the last over. First ball—Yuvraj takes a single; second ball Dhoni hits a four and third ball a wide that makes it 7 to win from 4. Dhoni takes a single off the third making it 6 from 3. The biggest blow in the fourth ball as Yuvraj (34 off 26) gets bowled by Franklin to make it 6 from 2. In comes the hopelessly out of form batsman Rohit Sharma ahead of hitters like Pathan and Tiwary and still manages to take a couple to make it the classic situation of requiring a four to win in the last ball. But Rohit fails to clear the boundary and again manages only 2 and New Zealand wins a thriller by 1 run, winning the T20I Series 1-0. Brendon McCullum was both the man of the match and of the Series. And, in T20 Internationals New Zealand makes it 4 out of 4 wins against India. Harbhajan Singh making a comeback after more than a year was not selected with Ashwin getting the nod and Balaji coming back after 3 years made his debut in T20 Internationals. Of course, Balaji has been a veteran in IPL T20 cricket.

It proved to be a glorious cricket match. New Zealand the most deserving winners. Yuvraj Singh making a comeback and winning hands down. For India perhaps Dhoni (22 runs off 23 balls) was a bit slow and he seemed to depend too much on taking quick singles which was a wrong tactic considering the obviously slow reflexes of Yuvraj coming back to cricket after nearly a year. Dhoni acknowledged that India should have won the match after Kohli and Yuvraj, but in the same breath also blamed the pitch as going slower in the second half. The Scorecard:

Anyway, much more to come with the warm up matches of the ICC World Cup T20 in Sri Lanka starting from 13^th September. The scheduled warm-up encounter between India and Pakistan on 17^thSeptember has already got the attention of the cricket lovers and the advertisers. More cricket and more of Yuvraj Singh coming your way! Cheers!