Category: Cricket

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Sri Lanka’s big three may have stayed on too long

It has been said of the great West Indies cricketer Viv Richards that he should have quit the international game two years before he actually did. Richards, who made his debut in India in 1974, retired in 1991, after having been West Indies captain for about six years.

But after 1989, he was never the dominating batsman he had been over his entire career; his reflexes appeared to have slowed, and his temper sometimes got the better of him.

Something similar could be said about the three Sri Lankans — Mahela Jayawardene, Tillakaratne Dilshan, and Kumar Sangakkara — who played their last game together on Wednesday, a loss to South Africa in a World Cup quarter-final. For Sangakkara it will be his last one-day game; Jayawardene has already quit Test and T20 cricket so this is his last international game.
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Dhoni quits Tests: an era ends

AFTER 90 Tests, Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has called it a day as a Test cricketer.

He will continue to lead India in the one-day and T20 formats, with a one-day World Cup around the corner in 2015.

Dhoni was not a great captain but he had limited resources at his disposal. To win a Test, one has to take 20 wickets and having batsmen who can pile up the runs is simply not enough. The West Indies, during their incredible run of 15 years without the loss of a Test series, were often bailed out by their bowlers — and boy, did they have some bowlers! — when the batting failed. Yes, even the powerful batting line-ups of the Windies did fail on occasion.
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South Africa will be the real test for Australia

HAVING just come off a 5-0 win over England in the Ashes series Down Under, Australia must be on a high. But, no matter the margin of victory, there are several serious issues to be considered in the run-up to the tour of South Africa that begins in February.

There have been writers who have started comparing the Australian pace attack — only one man has genuine pace — to the West Indies attacks of the 1980s. This is a fanciful comparison and if anyone among those who are involved in selection swallow this myth, then they will be stripped of the illusion in South Africa. While Mitchell Johnson bowled fast and with hostility for most of the series, the other two pacemen, Ryan Harris and Peter Siddle, are medium-pacers who looked very good against a team that was itself suffering under some big illusions.

When England defeated Australia 3-0 in England in 2013, it began to believe that it was that much superior to Australia. In truth, the actual series outcome should have been 3-2. In the third Test, where much of the final day was lost to rain, England was 3 for 37, chasing 332 for a win. Only 20.3 overs were possible on the final day and it is highly likely that Australia would have won this Test. That would have made the margin 2-1 in favour of England at that stage and could well have meant a different outcome after the next two Tests were played.
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Johnson doesn’t need to behave like a thug

CONTRARY to all expectations, Australia has won the first two Tests of the ongoing Ashes cricket series against England. But it has done so in a way that leaves much to be desired.

The teams played a series in England during the northern summer too and England prevailed 3-0 with two Tests drawn. England has held the Ashes since 2009 when it won them back from Australia.

In the current series, the main factor behind Australia’s surge has been the fast bowler Mitchell Johnson. He has undergone a considerable change after being trained by a man who is probably one of the two best fast bowlers of all time – Dennis Lillee.
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Why is so much taxpayer money wasted on sport?

How much taxpayers’ money does Australia spend on sport? It appears to be a huge amount and something the governments, both federal and state, would prefer stayed hidden.

Sport is an obsession in the country and politicians know that when the country is occupied with it, then the people won’t bother about the comings and going of those in power.

Hence, they encourage sport to the hilt. Wealthy associations receive big handouts for this and that even though they do not need the money and can manage on their own. This keeps the sport and the sportsmen on-side.
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Lara Bingle says Michael Clarke could not ‘stimulate’ her

“But I require more for myself. I need to be stimulated more than that, you know?” – Lara Bingle on her relationship with Michael Clarke Source

LARA Bingle is the Paris Hilton of Australia. She is a silly empty-headed woman who uses her looks to get from A to B and has done nothing to merit any kind of publicity – apart from periodically ensuring that she bares a bit in public.

However, when she hooked up with the Australian cricketer Michael Clarke in 2007, she got a good deal of the spotlight. Clarke was the captain-in-waiting at the time and that post is the second most important in the country after the prime minister.

Hence Bingle was often in the public gaze. She made the most of it.
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Australia’s Test losses: six, and counting

THE last time Australia lost six Tests in a row, it lost a captain with the fifth of those losses. That was Kim Hughes who wept openly at a press conference as he resigned.

He had led the team to three defeats in the Caribbean in 1984 and his team lost the first two Tests of the return series in Australia. The opposition was the mighty West Indies; Allan Border took over and suffered defeat in the third Test to complete the run of six losses. A draw broke that run of defeats, before Border led the team to victory in the final Test.

This time, after being brownwashed by India in a four-Test series and losing the first two Ashes Tests, Australia will not lose its captain. One must, however, question whether the players should shoulder all the blame for the hammerings they are taking.
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Whinging Poms or whinging Aussies?

BACK in March, when Australia played India in a Test series, the Decision Review System, the use of technology to query on-field umpiring decisions, was not used because India had not agreed to it.

During the series there were often howls of protest in Australian circles.

Australia played four Tests and was roundly thrashed 4-0. Several decisions which were said to be critical to the result went against Australia. There was no way to cross-check these decisions and the lament always was “if only these Indians had agreed to use the DRS…”

In other words, four months back, DRS was A Good Thing™.
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Much ado about nothing: sportsmen are not the moral compass of any nation

SINCE when did cricketers — or any other sportsmen for that matter — become the moral compass of the people? Since when was it wrong to do anything that passed muster with the authorities in a sport in order to win?

The shrill chorus that has erupted over the action of England cricketer Stuart Broad, who did not walk after he was clearly caught at slip by the Australian captain Michael Clarke on day three of the first Ashes Test, is truly astonishing. Of course, the Australian media has a good reason to shout: this would be the ideal excuse for the defeat that is surely coming on day five.

All that happened was that the umpire, Aleem Dar, got slightly confused by the fact that the ball first hit the hands of Australian wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and then went to Clarke. Haddin fumbled at it and missed it and Dar was unsighted by this. He gave it as not out. Each side has two chances to review decisions but by then Australia had no chances left; the second was wasted on a stupid review that Clarke called for.
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