Does India stand a chance ?

Lets try to look at it statistically using batting averages of the current indian team against Pakistan :

sehwag 105.58
dravid 65.00
laxman 35.06
tendulkar 41.38
ganguly 27.00
yuvraj 46.80
dhoni 148.00
pathan 27.25
kumble 17.90
zaheer 20.00
rp 6.00

total : 539.97

I don't have the strike rates to comment on the average amount of time spent on crease..but lets say these runs were scored at an avg of 3.5 runs per over then based on these numbers india should be able to occupy the crease for over 154 overs!

Interesting isn't it ?

Did Woolmer look at these averages and therefore decided not to declare yesterday! :p


PS: Many of these averages do not represent the true picture as
1) they are based on too few matches
2) factors like pressure, form, etc. are not taken care of.
3) 4th inning averages will probably be different from these.



Anyway, this is real test of character for indian team...saving/winning this test will mark the beginning of a new era in indian cricket.....the era of resiliency..

No Panic => No loss

Call me a crazy indian fan but I am quite hopeful that India will be fine as long as they do not panic..

Abdul Qadir

Abdul Qadir

was my hero for a long time. He was real fun to watch. He was a magician with the ball I loved to watch him bowl when I was a kid. In fact thinking back, about my early days of cricket there are really very few names that stick around in my mind. And interestingly most of them seem either Pakistani or West Indian. In fact English players are prominent by their absence.

Hers the list of players I really used to enjoy watching when I was a kid
1. Abdul Qadir
2. Imran Khan
3. Viv Richards
4. Merv Hughes
5. David Boon
6. Kapil Dev
7. Laxman Sivaramakrishnan


Apart from these I also remember watching a recording of a few overs that Michael Holding bowled.....and man...His run up was so smooth that I instantly loved it...


Guys....Please do leave your own lists in the comments section.

Can i get away with more bull-shit than Mr. Ranatunga ? : Moin Khan

Sounds weird right! ...but the following article by Mr. Moin Khan definitely seems to suggest this... (I guess Mr. Ranatunga's capability doesn't require any proof....)

I can understand some stupid reporter coming up with such bizzare stories to sell their articles but Mr. Moin Khan..... C'mon Mr. Khan.. why r u so intent on disgracing urself and probably ur country..

I hope that shoaib plays the next test and give sachin a chance to make Mr. Khan eat his own bull-shit.

Happy Republic Day...

Dilip Vengsarkar

I was really surprised to read this about Vengsarkar on cricinfo. Just thought i should share this with you all...
An amazing feat considering the fact that throughout this entire period he battled for the clear underdogs.


Dilip Vengsarkar (1986-87)
The elegant but unassuming Vengsarkar is perhaps not the first man you'd think of when searching for a worldbeater, but for 18 months in the mid-1980s he was peerless as the rock of India's fortunes at that pivotal No. 3 position. In 16 Tests he accumulated 1668 runs at 104.25, including his third century in three appearances at Lord's and a brilliant 102 not out at Headingley to set up India's last significant series victory outside the subcontinent. And that was just for starters - next came three scores in excess of 150 in consecutive Tests against Australia and Sri Lanka, 96 against Pakistan, and two more hundreds in three matches against the mighty West Indies.

Rule #1 for on-field umpires

"When in doubt, ask the 3rd Umpire"

but Mr Rudy Koertzen for some reason, forgot this basic guideline. I don't know how he can get away with saying that Kumble blocked his view... Mr. umpire thats what 3rd umpire is for...

Evaluating players, captains and coaches

http://in.rediff.com/cricket/2006/jan/21chap.htm

Having transformed the Indian team into a winning unit...

This first phrase of the article raises a couple of interesting questions (at least to me):

1) First one is about our media... in my opinion our reporters will make great researchers.. they can almost always make inferences they want (and make us feel that they are right) irrespective of the observations (data) they obtain.

2) Second one is abt how early should one try to infer if a player/captain/coach has IT in him to represent a country. Its not too long ago, we saw reports of Moody being a great coach and having transformed Sri Lanka into a winning unit. Probably this issue is not completely unrelated to the previous one in the sense that more often than not, it is these reporters who raise questions like these. They try to evaluate players/captain/coach as they probably don't have a better "masala" to publish. Needless to say that their timing of such questions is not appropriate usually.

Inside info

Telegraph seems to have some kind of hidden connection with the team management. Just read the following preview of the second test:
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060121/asp/sports/story_5748338.asp

I do not follow telegraph regularly but according to Indra, they have rarely been wrong in things like this!

Sehwag vs Ntini (as quoted by Bob Woolmer)

Prempanix has a nice article
where he analyzes Bob Woolmer's statement that Ntini knowing how to get Sehwag out. Just to make things more concerete, I will post a few statistics here which strengthens Prem's point and obviously questions the logic behind Woolmer's statement, or the lack of it.

Test Matches: Ntini got Sehwag out twice in 4 test matches Sehwag has played against SA. Sehwag's avg against SA in tests is 68.50 (his career avg is 56.73!)

ODIs: Ntin got Sehwag out twice in 12 matches he has played against SA. Sehwag's avg against SA in ODIs is 30.90 (his career avg is 32.15!).

Like my earlier posts, I wont make any inference rather let the numbers speak for themselves.

How is India doing in test matches?

The bar graph shows Indias performance as year-wise win/loss ratio in test matches.
The plot has not been normalized for the variation in the number of matches played per year, so this probably doesn't show the complete picture but nonetheless, no one can deny that India is doing good :)

Test Squad for Second Test

There are two questions regarding the Test squad for the next Test.

Should Zaheer Khan play in place of Harbajan Singh?
Should Jaffer or Gambir play in place of Ganguly?

No different in ODIs

Shows how much we depend on our batsman...

Why India loses test matches ?

PS : click on the image to zoom.

The graph shows the test averages of indian batting line-up. For each batsman, I consider three averages:
1) overall batting avg
2) Avg in matches India won
3) Avg in matches India lost

As one can see, other than Sehwag (and Yuvraj but he can be ignored as he has played too few matches and his avg is not that great),
all indian batsman fail to perform to their potential in the matches India loses...or saying otherwise, it is this under-potential performance of these biggies which is (at least partially) responsible for losses.

Picture of th day ...

What abt Ganguly now ?

Should he be there for the next match ?

One thing is certain, if (what a big if!) Ganguly refused to open at the last moment just before the start of the match, I will not pick him for the next match. Though we do not exactly know the precise details, luckily Dravid and Chappell know the truth and they should be given all powers to leave him out if this was the case.

If this was not the case, I guess there will not be any change as far as batting is concerned. Regarding bowling, I don't know if we have better options.

Sir pe kafan baandh ke nikle hain :-)

This one is for you Indra .. who would have thought this ... :-)
Pressure and words like that are missing from this guy's vocab. There is little doubt now that he is the deserving heir of tendulkar's iconic status.

What was the discussion all about ?

I am referring to the much hyped video footage showing our captain and his ex :p having a one way (ex doing most of the talking) discussion. Of course, Mr. Chappell is part of the group. I mean how can he be away from any controversy involving indian cricket ;).
Interesting part is the our smart and creative reporters have explained it in all possible ways (http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/2006/01/rashomon.html), probably to keep fans of either polarity happy (I assume indian cricket fans are quite polarized as far as Ganguly issue is concerned). Among the reasonings, the most amusing one is the one suggesting that Dravid doesn't want Ganguly to open as he thinks that Gangs can excel as an opener and ...... BRAVO!... this will add colors to ur resume in case u plan to portray urself as a fiction writer.

Team

I guess we need to have a group to have some kind of discussion. Have sent invitations to a few guys ..lets hope these guys join so that we can start with our analysis and discussions.

test