Ashes 2009

1st test in cardiff has proved that ICC should never think of tinkering with the Test cricket format. The match was a treat to watch with some superb exhibition of skills with the bat and ball. The life time innings from Collingwood and the tail playing for time to save the match should make the ICC officials think hard before embarking on any kind of change in the format.

Aussies were on top right from the go and never gave the english men a chance to dominate the proceedings. The only session England can take heart of was the lower order batting well to get runs on the board in the 1st innings and the last session of the last day.

Australian batting line is back to its own with all the top order batsmen except M.Hussey getting runs and its only matter of time that Hussey gets into form. The big plus for australia is the find of the youngster North playing some important knocks, he did very well in South Africa and continues the good work here. I like the way he bats, in the sense he knows when to attack and when to defend and his technique is solid. The big relief for Australia is Ponting getting back to his own, i enjoyed every movement of his 150 and the flow of strokes and what not, if he continues to perform like this i am sure it will reflect in his captaincy. Katich is the most under-rated player in the Australian team and i remember the way he played in India in his early days and has come a long way to seal his place in the team, even though he is not the great player to watch (chanderpaul style) but very effective. Haddin has taken the big burden of filling the great legacy left by Gilli and has been pretty successful till now, even though its early days to compare with Gilli.

As for as the England batting, its a side that rarely perform as a team. England i would say is the most over-rated team in world cricket today. All the players are good individual players and perform to keep their place in the team and rarely play as a team to win. Kevin Peiterson and Strauss are the two solid batsmen who can make a difference to the side and i would say Cook is fine player but lacks confidence now with string of medicare performances. We have not seen much from Boppara in the test arena and all others Collingwood,Flintoff,Prior are all absolutely over rated players as batsmen. Even though Collingwood played the innings of his life, i would say he will fail often than perform. Flinoff is the utterly over-rated player i have ever come accross in cricket history. I do not remember his batting winning a Test match in the recent past, a player with so many injury problem and uncertainty is not worth the kind of backing he gets from the ECB.

Australia missed the fire power in the bowling department and were a bit too defensive in the field. May be the 2005 ashes loss is still rankling hard in Ponting that he was a bit defensive and let the tail to score runs and play time in both the innings. Ponting back to form should help his confidence and show in his captaincy. There is only one strike bowler in Johnson who can run through the opponents and that is hurting the chances of taking 20 wickets. All the other bowlers can support and take wickets but not take wickets in quick time which is very important in test cricket. I feel this is what had cost the 1st Test for Australia.

I see england is a better bowling side compared to the batting even though they gave away 650+ in the 1st test. If the conditions and wickets are going to favour seam bowling they can prove very difficult to tackle with. Anderson & Flintoff with Harmison can prove to be a solid seam attack in helping conditions. S.Broad is listless if the wickets are not helping, i would prefer harmison or Sidebottom for him. Paniser has been out of form for too long and may be needs a tour to India to get back to form with helpful wickets. Swann is yet another ordinary spinner who will be carted even in our TNCA First div league but he is ratted so high.

Overall Australia as a team is a better side compared to England and its going to be Aussies yet again.

Dhoni digs CSK's graveyard ........

It has been very hard to see that CSK went down without a real fight, as a CSK fanatic it was very tough to digest the fact that csk did not make it to the finals.

I am not going to write about the way they performed but the strategic failure in picking the XI for the big semi-finals based on commonsense and the facts which sent CSK packing out of the tournament.

I attribute this defeat is the reflection of Mr Cool Dhoni putting himself ahead of the team in many instances in this tournament. This was a open fact through out the tournament, it was purely some over-smart captaincy,unimaginable team selection and no intervention from the think tanks of CSK cricket management to set thing right at least at some point of the tournament.

Specially on the semi-finals, why would some one pick Goni ahead of a spinner in spite of his very poor performance with the ball and pathetic fielding. Dhoni yet again proved he backs few guys and goes with the instinct and not by one's performance. The whole cricket world knows that it has been spinners all through the tournament but he preferred Goni ahead of Ashwin who bowled brilliantly in the low scoring match against KXIP. Why to pick Oram again and again when he is not going to get his time to settle down in batting with the strong top order and he has been listless with his bowling. We could have picked Thusara or Ntini (sad that we did not use the leading SA bowler in even a single match) as a pure bowler and if this is not acceptable he could have used him as a new ball bowler and picked Ashwin in place of Goni, we would have had many options in the middle overs. If dhoni plans to bat up at No3 & No 4 there is no use in having both Badri and Oram in the side just for fielding.

Finally if Dhoni is going to shuffle his batting order very often in any form of the game in favor of himself, not only CSK but even Indian Team will suffer in time. We saw this happen in Kitply and AsiaCup finals with some dour batting from Dhoni but there was some justification for that but the kind of moves he made in the IPL is debatable. The sad side of all this is neither CSK nor India has a good backup for captaincy .

CSK back on Track !!!!!!!!!!

Great Double for CSK and chennai is again bustling with the hope as we are back on track and will put up some exiting stuff going forward.It was nice to see the two rookie bowlers perform exceptionally well and i see Thyagi is the future for Indian Cricket and high quality material and needs lot of hand holding to be successful in the international arena.

Finally all the comments and bashing to send Badri at No 4 has been heard and Badri has just performed like a champ, even though there is lot of room for improvement. I would have expected a Raina like innings (98) from Badri in the game against DD but again the effort was just fantastic.M.Vijay started of well and needs a couple of games to settle down and i am sure he is far far better batsman than Parthiv so please stick with him.

Jakati bowled superbly to pick 4 wickets and kept the run flow under check and sure to help CSK in the upcoming matches. We chennai folks would have loved to see Ashwin in his place, why did Dhoni prefer Jakati over Ashwin ? he just got only one match and he did not bowl or bat then how is that Jakati is picked ? I know you will say we already have Murali & Raina bowling off spin and we need a left arm spinner. Including Thyagi & Jataki over Amarnath (who did very well last season) and Ashwin has only proved that Dhoni is not confident on TN players for some reason or other. At least now we have 3 players from TN and wish that they perform well and give confidence to Dhoni in picking more from the state.

Coming back to the match against DC, i hope and wish that the top guns in the middle order get some runs to boost the total and help the bowlers. Dhoni,Albie & Oram are total failures with the bat and expect them to raise to the occasion and peak their form at the right time.CSK has slight edge over the DC as Fidel leaving the team and DC losing the last 2 matches and CSK winning the last 2 games

Good Luck Guys.

Bad start for CSK & RR

MI & RCB performed like real champions to beat CSK and RR respectively. Sachin leading from the front for MI and Dravid & Kumble performing for RCB to start IPL-2 on a winning note.

I am not going to write on what happened in the match for CSK but on what went wrong for CSK and the mistakes that cost the match for CSK.

1.Hayden dropping a sitter from sachin early on the game.
2.When CSK had restricted MI well Flintoff gifting 25 runs in the 18th over.
3.Flintoff & Hayden throwing their wickets after showing signs of recovery.
4.Playing 11 and batting order.

I feel dropping catches,gifting runs and throwing wickets are normal and sometimes depends on many factors like weather,first game,batsmen just hitting out and taking all the risks etc but what baffles me is the team selection and the order in which the batsmen were sent in for the chase.

CSK were playing with 10 players and the 11th man was playing as a fielder, no bowling and no batting, how can you play Ashwin and not give him even a single over it is ridiculous to play him at the first place when you are playing 3 specialist bowlers and 2 bowling all rounders and having picked him in the team not trying him even for a single over shows how confident the captain is on Ashwin.

I don't understand how you can not pick A.morkel, what ever the reason be (kits not arrived on time !!) it is very silly to think that he can not play with the available kit from the other players in the team. How on earth you can pick Joginder ahead of balaji (even though joginder did well) i doubt if Dhoni has any confidence in the chennai players. It is really hurting when you see only 2 players picked from chennai for the CSK team and 1 of them did not bowl or bat and the other specialist batsmen walking in at the end overs when the asking rate has gone up to 11 a over.Its a shame for TNCA and Chennai players that they are treated so badly in spite of owning the team. All the other teams (except RR) play minimum of 3-4 players from the state and they are key performers also.Some how i get a feeling that dhoni is not confident about players from TN.

How is that all the big hitting batsmen were sent in one after the other early in the innings and send the inexperienced players in the end overs and expect them to perform. May be he is experimenting in the initial phase of the tournament but it is always good to start winning so that the team's morale and confidence gets momentum going forward. I am not blaming Dhoni alone here its a total failure of the team management which includes Fleming. I strongly feel that its time that dhoni starts to keep wickets and create an option to include one more batsmen/bowler in the team. I would want to see Flintoff at number 6 and Morkel at 7 and may earlier depending on the match scenario and not at no 4 / 5 pre-planned.

I am sure the team management on cricketing affairs get together and plan for the next game and come out with the best possible lineup which should include Hayden,Morkel,Flintoff and Murali and make sure they start winning.