Pakora Korner

The Aussie cricket team’s policy of rotating its players has come in under fire from former Aussie greats: Steve Waugh, Taylor, Chappell and others. However, I think they are doing the right thing. Firstly it makes no sense to play so many matches. It would be even crazier to have the same set of players play all of them. In particular, a team like Australia has enough bench strength to beat the finest teams in the world without playing their best team. Then why not experiment? After all this is not the World Cup they are playing for!

The Indian team’s rotation policy has done wonders for it. It has helped unearth some great talent. I think most teams can and must rotate their top players else they’ll get burnt out or be forced out by injuries.

SL won two successive matches in the VB series first beating SA and then Australia. For the first time in a long time SL put up a fighting 300+ total. The most heartening was the return of Jayasurya. If he can sustain this form SL’s problem of bad starts might be solved despite Attatpatu’s desire to hide in the lower middle order. The VB series should be interesting if SL can continue to win and put pressure on both SA and Aus.

Its a smart move by the Aussies to rotate their players no matter what Smith and Ranatunga say!

The Indian team once again showed a lot of character by stepping up to the challenge of chasing a huge score. With this innings Dhoni has proven that he can adapt to Test cricket. If he can keep up his wicket-keeping standards he can be a fixture in the team for a very long time. Hats off to Pathan, Dravid and VVS. Dravid now has two centuries as opener!

Sachin once again failed when the team needed him to deliver (what as he thinking when he walked before the umpire’s decision?). A sign of how much has changed in Indian cricket. In a moment of crisis Indian fans hope for some Viru magic or some solidity from Dravid. A Sachin knock is only a bonus! Its nice to see the team no longer dependent on him.

I hope the pitch for the third Test suits the bowlers. I would hate to see another high scoring match which produces no result!

It was a great move on the part of the Indian think tank to go in with five bowlers. Even if India loses this Test they at least they went into this match with an intent to win. With four bowlers and a dead pitch India was not going to bowl Pak out twice.

R. P. Singh proved a decent bet right on the first day with three wickets. Agarakar is a joke in any case, so Zaheer can’t do worse. Irfan is a disappointment.

Pak on the other hand seems to have gone on the defensive by playing Abdul Razzack in place of Naved. Though he got thrashed in the first Test definitely Naved is better bowler. Mohammed Asif might be the surprise package that does it for Pak in this match just as Umar Gul did for Pak on India’s last tour.

The press and the cricket loving public are the first to fault any cricketer who is even remotely “record” sensitive. Yet notice that most of the major news outlets were so hard pressed for cricket news on the last day of the Lahore Test that most of them lead their new reports with the fact that the opening partnership record was missed. Its a little unfair to expect the players to be insensitive to records when at the slightest opportunity the media and the press are displaying records of all types all over the place. Poke around the leading cricket website and you’ll be amazed the kind of stats and data mining you can do there.

Btw, Ganguly claims his record is good! Maybe that’s why the selected him:-)

The most interesting piece I read was the news that Viru had never heard of Pankaj Roy or Vinoo Mankad! I hope this piece is authentic because it has quotes from Dilip Vengsarkar. (Normally I don’t trust this site because of the kind of stuff they publish!)

Finally, the Sri Lankan cricket team managed to win a match! What’s better is that they did it in style. I still think that the batting order is badly flawed. Considering the good start they should have crossed 300. Unfortunately, they were left with big hitters towards the end. Mubarak clicked partly because he had so many lives. He could be useful in the last 10 overs instead.

Sangakkara is still their mainstay. He clicks and they have a good chance. Attapattu must just open the batting with him on permanent bass in ODIs.