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There's hardly any interest over here. People are still lost in the World Cup glory. I'm beginning to think it was a bad idea to have the IPL start just a week after the WC. From what I have heard, none of the matches have been sold out yet.

 

And lol at KKR. It seems that nothing they do will help them end their woeful run. Next year, I bet they will be itching to have Ganguly back at the helm. tounge.gif

JoeyLeone25

Shane Watson yet again shows his quality against Bangladesh with fifteen fours and fifteen sixes in a huge innings of 185 off only 96 balls! And with another Aussie-Bangla demolition job over with, any objections to renaming this thread something along the lines of 'General Cricket Thread' ('Gen Cricket Chat', 'ICC Cricket Thread', etc, etc, etc)?

  • 1 month later...
JoeyLeone25

So the English Cricketing Summer begins with a rain-centric draw! Hours lost everyday due to the beautiful British weather, but there has been one good thimg to take away from the Test so far. Cook and Trotty's form doesn't look like it'll be drying up anytime soon!

JoeyLeone25
You guys have been playing really well in Tests. I don't see SL being able to defeat you in this series. Not to forget, Bell chipped in with a great century. I rate him quite highly as a middle order batsman.

I agree Grish, Bell is another player that has come back from poor form (Strauss, Cook, etc) and showed over the last twelve months that he is a different player, but I still can't grasp why he isn't put in at four when Pietersen is so out of form at the moment. I think Pietersen should still be kept int he squad (ala Cook), but he should maybe be dropped to five (or even six!) to relieve some of the pressure off his shoulders and allow him to pick his form back up.

JoeyLeone25

Interesting. I decided to watch the Championship Play-Off Final as I expected a couple of hours of 'rainy-day' (on, off, on, off, tea, on, off, etc) cricket arising from the final overs of this match...how wrong was I! Just watching the highlights on TV I couldn't believe it as wicket after wicket fell, and what made it all the more surreal was that the ball was barely doing ANYTHING. All ten (well, nearly) wickets were down to the Swann, Broad and Tremlett bowling the right lengths in the right area's and making the batsmen make simple, yet costly mistakes. Bring on Lord's!

Well, you have got to be kidding me! I would have bet my entire life savings on a draw. Luckily, I didn't. SL folded like a pack of cards. Really poor display of batting on the last day. Kudos to the English bowlers though.

 

And I'm not sure about dropping Pietersen lower down the order. You'll be moving him out of his comfort zone and if it still doesn't click, it might dent his confidence further. It shouldn't take him long to come out of this rut, so they should definitely wait a while before thinking of pushing him down.

  • 2 weeks later...
JoeyLeone25
Well, you have got to be kidding me! I would have bet my entire life savings on a draw. Luckily, I didn't. SL folded like a pack of cards. Really poor display of batting on the last day. Kudos to the English bowlers though.

 

And I'm not sure about dropping Pietersen lower down the order. You'll be moving him out of his comfort zone and if it still doesn't click, it might dent his confidence further. It shouldn't take him long to come out of this rut, so they should definitely wait a while before thinking of pushing him down.

Good call Grish, personally I'd have said drop him down the order to relieve the pressure off his shoulders, but he came out in the last Test (finished a tidy draw) against Sri Lanka and despite getting only 2 in the first innings, he managed to tuck over a nicely played 72 in the second. He also looked a lot more confident against Herath (left-arm spin) until he was unfortunately un-done by a jaffer of a ball. Also, the Master-Blaster is back for one more ODI and T/20 in England before he retires! Happy days!

  • 2 weeks later...
JoeyLeone25

Even Google appreciates the god-like genius of the Little Master...

 

So, England vs Sri Lanka was a joke, with around ten days of the fifteen scheduled to be played washed out due to the brilliant British weather, we were only able to get a result in the First Test, which saw Sri Lanka drop like flies in Cardiff. Despite that there were a few good performances here and there; Swann, Sangakkara, Bell, Cook, P Jayawardene etc.

 

Also just as England vs Sri Lanka finish their test matches, India and the West Indies begin theirs. The first days play saw a relatively inexperienced West Indian side skittle the Indians out for 246 in only 60overs, while they managed to get 34/1 on the board before the end of play.

  • 1 month later...
JoeyLeone25

Girish are you watching the current series between India and England? First day was almost an entire wash-out with only forty-odd overs played, but a full day yesterday say England settle on 474-8, with KP hitting an awkward, but well-needed double-hundred. Three days left, potentially three innings left, this should be a great series between the best two Test playing nations in the world (at this moment in time...).

  • 1 month later...

I'm triple posting for a reason; I do believe Girish is avoiding this topic on purpose! For what reason, I am not sure though... tounge.gif If you'd have asked me a month and a half ago what I thought the score was going to be, I'd have probably said 1-1 with two draws/washouts. But a 4-0 whitewash of the former number one test side in the world? Insanity! But my bloody god does it feel good to say England are the number one test side in the world.

 

I don't know if we deserve to be numero uno, because playing at home is a lot different than playing on the subcontinent and against the likes of South Africa on their turf, but my god did we deserve to win the series. We dominated on all levels, seven of the top run scoring batsmen were English, all the Indian bowlers combined took forty-six wickets, Broad and Anderson took forty-six wickets between themselves.

 

Everything seemed to go to plan, including the luck you need sometimes (ala a few inside-edge LBWs) and England showed that we're no longer the team that go out and get bowled out for 57 against the Windies, but now under the leadership of Strauss and Flower, we are a team that looks only for victories, victories, and well, a few more victories on top for good measure.

Way to rub it in. mad.gif

 

To be fair, we only have ourselves and the BCCI to blame. f*ck, I wish they just scrap IPL altogether and concentrate on international cricket only.

 

Anyways, enjoy your top position (for as long as it lasts *coughSouthAfricacough*). Safe to say we're not coming anywhere near that position for at least the next 2 years or so.

Apparently if South Africa smash us and whoever else they're up against in the Summer, they'll go #1.

 

Rankings are pretty gash when you consider how many time South Africa were #1 between 1997 and 2007 (twice!). Errone knows just who were the #1 team then.

 

That being said, you'll get bored of smashings eventually. That's why Australians were interested in the 2005 Ashes, it was a contest, and imo the best Ashes I've watched.

Way to rub it in. mad.gif

 

I had to really, because like Jay mentioned, South Africa could easily become the numero uno test side in the world in the blink of an eye over the summer, so us English need to milk this for everything we can!

 

 

Rankings are pretty gash when you consider how many time South Africa were #1 between 1997 and 2007 (twice!). Errone knows just who were the #1 team then.

 

That being said, you'll get bored of smashings eventually. That's why Australians were interested in the 2005 Ashes, it was a contest, and imo the best Ashes I've watched.

 

True, that's why I personally believe that England going to the number one spot is good for test cricket, because it'll mean more competitive series between the likes of South Africa, Australia, India and Sri Lanka in the future as they all aim to knock us off the top of the block.

  • 3 months later...

For anybody that says Test Cricket is dead, just look at the recent test between India vs WIndies which has just literally finished. WIndies posted 500-odd, before India replied with 400-odd - Tendulkar just missing out on his 100th 100 by SIX RUNS - then the WIndies were skittled out for 134, leaving India 243 to chase on the final day. Last over came and India needed 3 runs to win and the WIndies 2 wickets. First 5 balls from Edwards and only 1 run, then on the final ball they ran another single to make it SCORES TIED as Ashwin is run out trying to win the game by coming back! Brilliant advert for Test Cricket if the T20 brigade ever needed one!

  • 1 month later...

Bump! sorry!

 

So the test match is going bad. What happened to india? Well, I searched and found this.

 

 

Renewed efforts are being made to give a much-needed boost to cricket in India after a study commissioned by the ICC recently found the sport was suffering from a lack of exposure, and was, in fact, showing unmistakable signs of marginalisation in the country.

 

The controversial report threw up many uncomfortable truths for cricket administrators trying their best to raise the profile of the game in countries where cricket continues to struggle to gain a foothold. For example, it was found that in spite of their best efforts, there were still as many as 11 days last year that failed to offer a telecast of some form of live cricket in India. Just as confounding was the discovery that during the 354 days in which live matches were shown, ratings plummeted steadily, in some cases even lagging behind reruns of Masterchef Afghanistan.

 

The report also highlighted other problem areas. While it would appear that the basic infrastructure for the game in India has, after decades of struggle, just about been put into place, and a national team finally been scratched together from far-flung regions across this vast land, these are but surface details that flatter to deceive.

 

There are still serious problems with the stadiums (one of them, in the exotic north-eastern city of Kolkata, would enjoy being one of the largest sports stadiums in the world if only it were ever completed and given games to host), with a lack of basic facilities often posing problems to spectators and players alike. And while there does officially exist a national team (notional at best, and branded, in a desperate bid by sponsors and the media to provide something catchy to remember it by, as "Team India" or, when the imagination fails completely, "Men in Blue"), the harsh reality is that these athletes remain only part-time players, unable to devote the requisite time and commitment to the team because they are forced to hold onto - out of nothing more than the immediate and completely understandable necessity of feeding their families - their primary jobs: that of endorsing products on TV.

 

India is clearly a country undergoing tremendous changes, both socially and economically, and against such a background, where does the cursory distraction of a cricket match fit in? Certainly, if the ICC report is anything to go by, the future does not look too bright. Particularly rankling is the aforementioned discovery that so many days without live cricket were allowed to pass unchecked last year.

 

"That was a small glitch that shall be overcome in due time," promised a spokesman for the BCCI, one of the nation's foremost and largest multinational corporations, which, aside from advising the government on certain foreign policy issues pertaining to the neighbouring state of Pakistan and sending out subliminal messages of vested interests via commentators embedded in the theatre of PR war, also occasionally deigns to take on the responsibility of protecting the interest of Indian cricket fans.

 

"Eleven days may not seem like much, but these unused days add up collectively to amount to a massive waste of time that could have been better spent watching advertisements, with short interruptions for exciting live cricket," intoned Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar in unison while commentating during the last ODI between England and India.

 

In a recent attempt to address this issue and fill in some of the empty, dreary days when the national team was not playing, cricket fans in India were treated to a live telecast of three teams made up of reserve players playing each other in a round-robin tournament. The matches were slotted conveniently between the England-India series just played and the India-England series about to kick off. Played by teams cleverly named after primary colours popular with children, the games were held in stadiums filled to the capacity with empty seats. The cricket fan was afforded the opportunity to stare at these games on television in the comfort of his living room. Confusingly however, ratings continue to remain poor.

 

Yet perhaps the biggest threat to cricket in India, as well as in other countries, is the recent emergence of a new sport altogether. Imaginatively given the working title of "20-20" or "T20", this revolutionary new game involves smashing repeatedly into the crowd a ball lobbed gently - and preferably on the full - at a "batsman". The batsman then waits for another such ball lobbed at him, and the process repeats ad nauseam.

 

Savvy thinking-ahead type marketers and the media are already tossing around a potential name for this new game, which, it is hoped, might just kick on: "baseball".

 

The game of cricket meanwhile continues to lead as tenuous an existence as ever in India.

 

Anyone can say why India has lost glory?

 

Has Sachin scored his 100th Century or is he going to retire?

 

I guess India will be replaced by China... confused.gif

 

 

Anyone can say why India has lost glory?

Way too much cricket. The more money hungry BCCI gets, the more Team India suffers.

 

I'm surprised no one has called for Fletcher's head yet. Also, Dhoni was fined and suspended for slow over-rate. I'm pretty sure he did it deliberately or the match would have ended on the second day itself.

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
I have a question. Do you all love Sachin Tendulkar? I know Indians do but what about others?

I love Sachin. He's a personality, and Cricket needs personalities if it's going to carry on growing and appealing to younger and younger members. Also, he is the perfect role-model for young people (no football spit-roasts, or failed drug tests here...) and that is what the masses (while I don't agree with it) are crying out for nowadays.

 

Haven't really caught much of the India vs Australia Test Series, but I did manage to stay up and watch both Ponting and Clarke hit double-hundreds, which was nothing short of beautiful. Yet, quite the opposite from beautiful, England's batsmen (Not bowlers! Swann, Anderson, Broad, Monty, etc have all performed well) have been nothing short of terrible, aside from Cook, Trott and Prior, the rest of England's batsmen have lost us the two tests against an improving Pakistan side, who are looking good under Misbah. I knew we wouldn't be on top for too long... tounge.gif

I have a question. Do you all love Sachin Tendulkar? I know Indians do but what about others?

I love Sachin. He's a personality, and Cricket needs personalities if it's going to carry on growing and appealing to younger and younger members.

Are you being serious? He's boring as frogsh*t. He has zero personality, and has zero life outside of cricket, which is why he never has scandals. He toes the line when he does media (if he does media, been in Australia for weeks now and hasn't done one presser yet) with the boring cookie cutter lines.

 

Rahul Dravid > Tendulkar every day of the week for mine. Tight knit and free of scandals, but at least he can hold a room when he gives a speech.

Rahul Dravid > Tendulkar every day of the week for mine. Tight knit and free of scandals, but at least he can hold a room when he gives a speech.

Yeah, but Dravid is a commerce graduate whereas Tendulkar never even made it to junior college. Makes quite a difference.

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