No match worth the name, but a result to please the hordes of Chennai fans

Ariel Jackson05-May-2009Team supported
Chennai Super Kings. They represent southern India, where I hail from. And I like MS Dhoni as an inspiring leader.Key Performer
Once again it was Shadab Jakati, the new “mystery” slow left-arm spinner. Not forgetting Dhoni’s crucial knock.One thing I would have changed about the match
I would have had Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs firing on all cylinders, which would have made for a closer match.Face-off I relished
Albie Morkel v Herschelle Gibbs. It was short-lived, and Albie had the last laugh.
Also, RP Singh v Dhoni. Dhoni won all the way.Star-spotting
Sivamani, the indefatigable drummer. Always cheerful, never says no if one wants a photograph with him.Wow moment
Dhoni’s six off Pragyan Ojha over long-on left us gasping. It was simply breathtaking. There were a couple of Dwayne Smith moments that were also worthy of some fireworks.Cheerleader factor
Chennai Super Kings all the way. Their cheerleaders are by far the best I have seen in this edition of the IPL, and they are ably assisted by Sivamani.Crowd meter
Not surprisingly (since it was a Monday) the crowds were thinner. Still, there were more than enough people to raise a racket when the signature horn was played by the DJ. The Super Kings might have felt they were playing in Chennai because of the support visible on the ground. One six hit by Smith over midwicket came near where we were sitting. A little fellow tried desperately to latch on to it in vain.Local hero
The local hero I wanted to see on the ground was Makhaya Ntini, who did not play. The others, Gibbs and Morkel, were greeted warmly, but not at the decibel level reserved for JP Duminy on Mayday.Overall
It was a letdown. Two super teams enacting a one-sided show. Chennai’s fielding leaves a little bit to be desired. The Chargers: pathetic batting, worse bowling.Marks out of 10
Super Kings – batting and bowling: 9, fielding: 6
Chargers – batting and bowling: 5, fielding: 6

The Netherlands have played three World Cups, but their biggest moment in cricket only came 10 days ago. One veteran has been there all along

Nagraj Gollapudi15-Jun-2009It was bittersweet for Bas Zuiderent when on June 5 the Netherlands recorded the biggest triumph in their cricket history, shocking hosts England in a World Twenty20 thriller. As the team made merry that evening, at the back of Zuiderent’s mind was the thought of the money he was losing.Zuiderent runs a physiotherapy practice back home in Holland. “I don’t get any wages if I’m not working in my day job. We get a daily allowance and no match fee,” he reveals, on the eve of their next game, against Pakistan. (They lost by 82 runs to exit the tournament).It is a harsh reality for the cricketers from the Associate nations, who have to keep motivating themselves to script such improbable wins in the hope of being able to raise a platform from which they can start dreaming big. Cricket is a minority sport in their countries and the boards don’t have the finances to run professional set-ups. The players are in the game for love not money. Zuiderent is a fine example of that sort of devotion.He started when he was 10. “My cousin played cricket at the time and I remember that my mother asked whether I was interested in playing as well. I didn’t think much of cricket initially. Those funny white outfits…”Then my mother took me to a local club in Rotterdam. I can recall bursting out in tears because I didn’t want to join in! After she calmed me down, I joined in the training session and I got hooked on to the game straight away. I never looked back.He was still in school when he made his debut for Holland as a 16-year-old in the World Cup qualifiers played in Kenya in 1994. His first international came in the World Cup two years later. “I was 18. It has been a long journey,” Zuiderent says as his eyes look up staring in the distance. “I’m actually playing the best cricket of my life now. The older I get, the better cricket I’ve started to play.”Zuiderent thinks it has to do with the team ethic, where there has been a radical turnaround from the laidback fashion popular in his early days in international cricket. “Luckily I’ve been part of the transformation,” he says. “It has changed in the way the team operates, trains, eats, sleeps and looks after themselves. It has become a professional set-up.”The Dutch still have only three pros, Dirk Nannes, Ryan Ten Doeschate and Alexei Kervezee, but they are inching towards the level of a professional sports team. The results have been there to see, in the World Cup qualifiers and in the World Twenty20.Zuiderent provides an example of the changing face of Dutch cricket. “In my first years, a past player, in his 40s, would arrive at the ground, inspect the field, do his own thing, like hit a few balls, go back to the hotel and wait for the evening when he could drink five or six whiskies. These were the old-school cricketers, who did not take things seriously and were super unprofessional.”

“I didn’t think much of cricket initially. Those funny white outfits… “

It took at least 10 years before things really changed. “We are a very, very tightly wound team unit, very proud team,” he says. What he doesn’t come out and say is that he would have loved to have today’s team environment when he started. That might have given him more of a chance at realising his potential.In his second international game, against England in the 1996 World Cup, Zuiderent became the second youngest player in World Cup history to score a half-century; Sachin Tendulkar, the youngest, was about 200 days younger when he did. Zuiderent points out the fact with a shy smile. “That was massive for me [the fifty], but it is a shame, really, that I never kicked on and went for bigger things than that.”He still remembers it clearly. “What was most impressive was to walk out and rub shoulders with the likes of Jack Russell, Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart, Dominic Cork… I was just loving it. It was almost unreal,” Zuiderent says. Later that evening, still on cloud nine, he ran into Geoffrey Boycott in the team hotel, who tapped him on the shoulder to say “Well played, son.” Zuiderent won’t forget that. “It was so nice of him to say that.”Zuiderent says that it was only when he started to think more about cricket that he ended up complicating things, and went through a period where he put pressure on himself with expectations. “In the last few years I’ve allowed myself to settle. It allows me to just relax,” he says.A couple of months after his first World Cup, playing for Holland against Worcestershire he hit 99, and was offered a contract. He decided to finish his studies in economics instead, but soon gave that up. “One morning I woke up in Amsterdam and suddenly realised what I was doing was not what I wanted to do. I sort of had an epiphany, where someone was literally talking to me and told me to use the talents I was given.” Within a week he flew to England and signed a contract with Sussex.The 2003 World Cup was Zuiderent’s third•ReutersThe first Dutchman to represent Holland in English county cricket was PJ Bakker, who opened the bowling for Hampshire with Malcolm Marshall. Roland Lefebvre played for Somerset and Glamorgan, and Andre van Troost, who played at Somerset, was rated by Desmond Haynes as the “quickest white guy” he ever faced. Zuiderent was the first specialist batsman. What are the moments that stand out from his county cricket days, I ask him.He talks of his maiden one-day and first-class centuries, which came in the space of two days. The one-day hundred made him the first centurion at the Rose Bowl. “No one can take that away from me,” Zuiderent says with a big smile. The four-day hundred came against Nottinghamshire, against a bowling attack that featured, among others, a certain Kevin Pietersen. Zuiderent smiles when he speaks of lofting Pietersen over mid-off for a six. “He was as cocky as he is today, and that is his massive strength.”That statement illustrates the divide between the top professionals and amateur cricketers. Zuiderent is not embarrassed to admit it. I ask him what the difference is between him hitting a straight drive and Tendulkar doing the same. Zuiderent rolls his eye at Tendulkar’s name, before saying the difference lies in the execution. “Sachin can hit a Brett Lee 98mph delivery at will. We can do it as well, but we don’t control it as well, because Sachin is used to doing it continuously.”Unlike the players from the top cricket nations, who spend most of their waking hours training, much of Zuiderent and his team-mates’ time is spent at their dayjobs. “Because I work 40 hours a week, I cannot afford to practise every day. Our skills are there, but we can’t execute those skills enough to be like Yuvraj Singh or Irfan Pathan, because they can hone their skills much more every single day against the best.”So when victories like the one against England come, they are hard to forget. Zuiderent has been there for Dutch cricket’s peaks: qualifying for the World Cups in 1996, 2003 and 2007, and this World Twenty20. But the England win takes prime spot on the list. “It was our first victory against a full-member country in an official game,” he says with pride.The fact that England took the contest as a bout against a featherweight is not lost on Zuiderent. “England would always believe that they are far superior to the Dutch, and in a way rightly so, because they would win 95 out of 100 times. But never, never take a team lightly that is hungry to win. That is a big mistake you can commit. And England did exactly that. [They thought] we are a Mickey Mouse team. We are way better, and we’ve shown that.

Twelve years ago, Abdul Qadir, still good enough to turn out for Pakistan, spent a summer playing club cricket in Melbourne. The few who saw him remember it like it was yesterday

Christian Ryan08-Feb-2010On a sticky Peshawar afternoon in 1998, Mark Taylor clipped a Test triple-hundred while Pakistan’s spinners tossed and chased and collected one wicket for 327 runs. Next morning Abdul Qadir, who was not any more a Pakistani Test spinner, and hadn’t been for eight years, found himself in a car bound for Princes Park in one of Melbourne’s lovelier suburbs.Carlton was playing Footscray that day.Carlton was Abdul Qadir’s new club.Driving the car was Carlton’s vice-president, Craig Cook, who was relating the contents of an email his legspinning son Calum had sent – something about a Footscray batting wiz named “Larko”.”Tell Abba,” the email went, “that Larko only picks wrong’uns from off the track, not out of the hand.”Qadir stared out the windscreen. The car pulled up at the oval.”Hey Abdul,” roared Ian Wrigglesworth, Carlton’s captain. “Listen. Larko can’t pick a wrong’un. You set it up, do whatever you want.”Qadir nodded and said nothing. Not until many minutes later, as they were walking out to field, did he ask politely: “When does this Larko come in?”Larko was Rohan Larkin, an ex-state batsman, and he stepped out that day at No. 4.Qadir watched him approach, stuck a fielder at close gully. And bowled. Wrong’un. Larkin, failing to pick it, went to square cut. The ball smacked the bat’s edge and whistled through first slip’s hands for two.”Great,” Larkin thought, “I’m off the mark and I’ve seen his wrong’un. I’ll be right from here.”Qadir’s second ball was faster; wicketkeeper Micky Butera rocked back instinctively on his heels. It was also wider. “Very close to the edge of the pitch,” says Larkin. It was too wide to make mayhem, so wide that the umpire cleared his throat and gave a preliminary twitch of his arms. Larkin flung his own arms high, his bat even higher – “to allow the ball to travel through harmlessly”.Instead the ball dipped – swooped, more like – as if by remote control. It landed, veered headlong in the wrong direction, then hit middle stump, like Shane Warne dumbfounding Mike Gatting all over again. In reverse.”Abdul spun this wrong’un one and a half feet,” gasps Butera. “Sounds ridiculous when you say it.””I would play that ball the same way a hundred times out of a hundred,” believes Larkin.”There was an element of luck in the Warne ball,” Cook points out. “Whereas Abdul’s was absolutely contrived.”The only person not surprised was the contriver himself. Deep down, Qadir knew that by rights he should have been in Peshawar that Saturday, playing for his country not a suburb. His Carlton team-mates knew that he knew it. He did not need to say so; though sometimes he said it anyway. There was and remained only one wonder of Pakistani spin.But Qadir was 43. His face was unwrinkled. Brown eyes still danced with mischief. But selectors of Test teams have no love for 43-year-olds.That was why he wasn’t in Peshawar. It does not explain how he came to be playing park cricket in Melbourne.

****

IT HAPPENED, like many of the best ideas, after a long and jolly lunch. The Carlton Cricket and Football Social Club was the setting. Big Jack Elliott, football club president and one-time prime ministerial aspirant, glared at the cricket club vice-president and barked: “Why can’t you bastards win like us?””Well,” said Craig Cook, “we’ve lost a little bit of flair. We really need a big-name player.”Big Jack barked again. “You get the player and we’ll pay for it.”

On his last weekend in Melbourne he was handed the new ball, not for the first time that summer. And for the umpteenth time, from mid-day till sundown, he bowled and bowled and bowled

Cook, a legspin fanatic, thought of Qadir. He phoned an old pal, Javed Zaman Khan, cousin of Imran. An evening net tryout was arranged and Cook’s ticket to Lahore booked. “We took Abdul down to the Lahore Gymkhana Club nets, where he bowled for an hour. And he looked beautiful. We signed him up on the spot.”Forty thousand dollars Carlton paid him. They put him up in a flat in Brunswick, not far from the practice nets. Larkin was one of eight men from Footscray he fooled that Saturday. At spectator-less playing fields all over Melbourne, the ranks of the befuddled grew: at Windy Hill, at Arden Street, at Ringwood’s Jubilee Park.Arms bucked and swayed and his tongue kept licking his fingers when Qadir skipped in and bowled. The passing of decades had taken a few spikes out of his flipper, which now slid more than it spat. But the miracles of his legbreak remained two-fold: the sheer stupendous size of the spin, and the way he could vary it at will. Wrong’uns, meanwhile, arrived in threes.”Three types,” Butera confirms. There was a lightning wrong’un, a mid-paced wrong’un lobbed up from wide of the stumps, and a slow wrong’un. “It looked like a lollipop,” Butera says of this last invention, “and the batsman would think, here’s an opportunity to come down and score. But it would drop incredibly late, and as soon as the batsman got there he’d realise he didn’t have as much time as he thought he had.” The lollipop wrong’un left more batsmen licked than any of Qadir’s other variations, helping Butera rewrite the Victorian Cricket Association record books for most catches and stumpings in a season.”Best time of my life. Abdul put me on the map,” he says. That is not just rosy-glassed affection talking. Nine days after the Larkin ball Butera, previously unheralded, made his state 2nd XI debut.Mid-January came; an encounter with the competition’s in-form batsman beckoned. Geelong’s Jason Bakker, tall and lumbering and toe-tied against even the gentlest spin bowling, had heard all about Qadir’s variations. His coach Ken Davis tried to replicate them, hurling balls down, floating them up, while Bakker watched Ken’s hand in the hope of reading what might happen. After a week of this it was time to face the real thing in a match. And it felt, to Bakker, as if he were still in the practice nets.With eyes wide open he’d stare at Qadir’s wrist. He left balls he was supposed to leave. He defended others comfortably. If he could get to the pitch of the ball, he’d drive. When it was wider, he’d cut, but softly, never forcing anything. Bakker had heard batsmen more debonair than him talk about being in “the zone”, and for the first time he really understood it. “This sounds incredibly vain but I felt like I didn’t play a false stroke.”They paused for drinks. Captain Wrigglesworth despaired. He trotted up to his star bowler. “Listen. This bloke’s picking your wrong’un.”And just like that Qadir stopped bowling it. No flipper or flotilla of multi-speeded googlies. The magic act was over. Every ball was a legbreak, landing on or slightly outside off stump. Every ball twisted harmlessly away. This went on for an hour. It was a scorching afternoon, a flat deck. Bakker cruised past 50. “I’d broken him.” And something else had happened too – “I was getting more confident, more relaxed, less vigilant.”So when another one wafted down, as ho-hum as all the others, Bakker took one stride forward and shouldered arms, intent on letting the thing whirr past, and then just as it was about to bounce, inches from his nose, he noticed that this particular delivery was actually a touch wider, and the seam looked different, and by then it was too late to do anything other than think, “Shit I hope it misses”, which it didn’t. It knocked back middle stump.Against England in Karachi in 1984•Getty ImagesEleven years on, Bakker’s head is still shaking. “An hour – he was prepared to wait an hour. There was I falsely thinking I had broken him, when all that time he was working up a trap for me. I mean, my God, the mentality of the man, the mindset.”Later Qadir would boast, “I saw it in his eyes” – saw that microscopic let-up in the batsman’s vigilance, which was what he had been waiting for all along.

****

HE LIVED for Saturdays, his new team-mates sensed. In his inner-city flat he was on his own. The club vice-president drove him to matches, to training. Most nights he ate at the vice-president’s house. “Abdul had never cooked a meal in his life,” Cook explains. “Never made a cup of tea in his life. So if he wasn’t eating at our place I’d organise the Pakistani community to bring food in. And he got a bit lonely, so I’d have to go around and see him.”He would clap opposition batsmen’s fine strokes. He would tell people what a pleasure it was to meet them. “No, no,” he politely informed his captain one gusty Saturday, “I will bowl downwind.” Another Saturday, batting against a fast bowler and a spinner, he insisted that his team-mates jump the fence to alternately ferry out and fetch his helmet at the end of every over.He did not swear. When Qadir was around, Butera used to soften his own language. “But I don’t think the rest of the boys did.”He did not lairise, throw high-fives or drink beer. “I wouldn’t have thought he made a friend while he was here,” says Wrigglesworth. “I don’t know what he did from Monday to Friday and I wouldn’t have thought many people do. As soon as the game finished on a Saturday he was pretty much off. I don’t think he sang the team song once.”The song, in fairness, was seldom aired, for Carlton kept losing despite Qadir’s wickets. By the eve of the season’s final match at Northcote Park he had 66 – only seven shy of the post-war record set by Richmond quick Graeme Paterson in 1965-66. Qadir thought about that record often. “He never,” Cook reflects, “reckoned he should have been left out of the Test side. So when he came over here it wasn’t a holiday. He was wanting to show what he could do.”On his last weekend in Melbourne he was handed the new ball, not for the first time that summer. And for the umpteenth time, from mid-day till sundown, he bowled and bowled and bowled. His preoccupation with the record and those seven elusive wickets had become something close to an obsession. Nobody except Wrigglesworth and the Carlton committee men realised this – until, that is, the fall of Northcote’s ninth wicket, Qadir’s sixth, at which point he bounced into the team huddle and shrieked: “One more!””If he had just shut his gob,” says Wrigglesworth, “no one else would have known. Instead the boys were all going: ‘Hey, hang on a minute!'”One more, alas, did not come easily. Northcote’s last-wicket pair looked untroubled. Runs flowed. Wrigglesworth thought about taking Qadir off. Wrigglesworth couldn’t take him off. “By this stage,” he says, “I was a puppet of the president and the committee. And they wanted to see Abdul get this record.”

A few short years later Douggie was picked for Australia’s team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong’un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done

Qadir kept going. He ran through all his variations. The partnership kept swelling – to 95 by the tea break. Forty-six overs Qadir had bowled unchanged.”Should I take him off now?”Permission was granted. Five balls later the wicket fell.The Ryder Medal he won as the competition’s best player still hangs on his wall in Lahore. His 492 overs in a season might never be surpassed. Seventy-two wickets at 15.87 in the era of covered pitches at the age of 43 is a feat carved in club cricket legend. It could have been 73, the record should have been his, he told the ‘s gossip columnist the day before he flew home; if only the captain had listened, if only the captain had bowled him a bit more.”Oh, Abdul,” sighed Wrigglesworth when he saw the paper next morning. “Where’s this come from?”

****

WHEN Jason Bakker remembers the day that he did not play a false stroke and was deceived by the most mysterious ball he ever faced, he thinks of the heat. At tea-time he galloped upstairs to the Kardinia Park dining room and began gulping down water. “I was tucking into rockmelon and watermelon and whatever else I could find.” That’s when he glanced out the window and saw that Qadir, who had bowled through the entire afternoon session without a rest, was still on the oval.Qadir was out there with Craig Whitehand, known to all at Geelong Cricket Club as “Douggie”, the guy who fronted up every Saturday in his whites and his spikes to drag off the pitch covers and carry out drinks and take care of the equipment. As Qadir was walking off, Douggie had stopped him at the players’ gate and asked, how do you bowl a wrong’un. Now the two of them were standing on the grass, metres apart. A couple of balls lay between them. Qadir would wave his arms and talk a bit. Then he’d bowl a few. Then Douggie would bowl a few. After a while Qadir would wander across and say something. Then Douggie would bowl a few more.Bakker went back to his watermelon and forgot what he’d seen. Twenty minutes went by before he thought about strapping the pads back on. “As I was coming down the stairs,” Bakker recalls, “I looked out on the ground. And the two of them were still there. Abdul had given his whole break on a hot day to this guy from Geelong who he knew nothing about.”At Geelong training the next week Douggie was gleefully flighting wrong’uns. A few short years later he was picked for Australia’s team of intellectually disabled cricketers. He has since represented his country in South Africa and England, this stranger who had never bowled a wrong’un until the day he met Abdul Qadir and asked how it was done.

A stats preview to the third place playoff between Bangalore and Deccan

Madhusudhan Ramakrishnan23-Apr-2010Both Royal Challengers Bangalore and Deccan Chargers had their hopes of a final rematch crushed following their losses in the semi-finals. While Bangalore went down by 35 runs to Mumbai, Deccan made a mess of an attainable target in their game against Chennai. The common point in both those matches was that the team which won the match had won the toss as well, and had chosen to bat. With the pitch at the DY Patil Stadium getting more difficult for batting as the match wears on, the toss could play a crucial role in the clash for third place, a match which is vital as the winner qualifies to play in the Champions League later this year.The table below looks at the performance of teams in the first and second innings at this venue. In all four games played at this venue, the team batting first has won quite convincingly. While chasing, the scoring rate falls considerably and the number of wickets lost also is much higher. Deccan have lost all three matches here, and on each occasion they have batted second.

Deccan Chargers, though, will be encouraged by their recent record against Bangalore. They’ve won their last three encounters, triumphing in both games this year, and in last year’s final.In overall performances this year, though, Bangalore hold an edge over Deccan in terms of their batting and bowling performances, which is reflected in the difference between the batting run rate and bowling economy rate.

The scoring rate in the Powerplay overs for both teams has been quite similar but Bangalore have lost far fewer wickets in the first six overs. The reason for this has been the strong showing of the openers Manish Pandey and Jacques Kallis in the initial games. Deccan, though, have never quite had a good start which can be attributed to the poor form of their captain Adam Gilchrist.

The table below shows the bowling performances of both teams during the Powerplay overs. Deccan have picked up more wickets in this phase due to some penetrative bowling by Chaminda Vaas and Ryan Harris. Apart from Dale Steyn, the Bangalore bowling has not been threatening in the first few overs.

Bangalore are clearly ahead with their showing in the last six overs. Deccan’s average is very poor and they have, on more than one occasion, lost wickets in a heap. Their scoring rate in the crucial last overs has also not been on par with the other top teams.

On the bowling front, though, Deccan’s fast bowlers and spinners have performed much better than their Bangalore counterparts. Vaas and Harris have picked up crucial wickets in the beginning of the innings and Pragyan Ojha has bowled quite exceptionally all tournament. For Bangalore, though, Steyn and Anil Kumble have been the only two bowlers who have performed consistently throughout.

Look no further than Bengaluru and Chinnaswamy, home to Dravid, Kumble, Viswanath and Chandrasekhar

06-Nov-2010Bengaluru can be a contradiction. The people can come across as laid-back and quiet and yet ambitious. Its cricketers have all have been quiet, cultured men who played the game with great success. The city and the state have produced some of the best Indian players. At one point, in the late ’90s, nearly three quarters of the Indian team came from Karnataka.Bengaluru didn’t enjoy the British patronage of cricket that benefited the port cities of Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai. It was only in the late ’50s and ’60s that Bengaluru began to emerge as a serious contender in the cricket stakes. Over the next couple of decades cricket won institutional support from banks and public sector units, and private corporate sponsorship came in the ’90s.Cricket history has reflected the realities of society. Karnataka has had a long-standing dispute over river water with neighbouring Tamil Nadu, and the frisson reflects in their cricketing rivalry as well. There have been numerous cases of crowd trouble during encounters between the two teams in the past.The venue
Originally named the Karnataka State Cricket Association Stadium, the ground was renamed after M Chinnaswamy, who was the president of the Indian board in the late ’70s. It also houses the National Cricket Academy. The stadium was given Test status in 1974-75; it hosted West Indies in the opening match of their series that season. The first ODI played on the ground was in 1982.Ground page | Tour fixtures | MapGreat matches
India v Pakistan, fifth Test, 1987
An all-time classic, thanks to a pitch that was a minefield – to put it kindly. The match is remembered for Sunil Gavaskar producing a masterful 96 over five hours and 23 minutes in the final innings, battling the wiles of Pakistan’s spinners, Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed, and the spite of the pitch. No one else in the India side made over 26, and they were all out for 204 chasing 221 for a win that would have given them the series.India v Australia, second Test, 2010
An outstanding 72 by Cheteshwar Pujara on debut set up a seven-wicket win for India. Not the result Australia might have expected after they got to 478 on the back of 128 from Marcus North in the first innings. Honours were more or less even after India batted (Sachin Tendulkar made 214 and M Vijay 139), but Australia fell for 223 in their second dig, and India blazed to the target of 207 on day five – Tendulkar unbeaten with a fifty alongside Pujara.Top performers in Tests
Most runs Sachin Tendulkar, 869 at 62.07 | Top score Younis Khan, 267 v India
Most wickets Anil Kumble, 41 wickets at 34.53 | Best bowling Maninder Singh, 7 for 27 v PakistanMajor players
Rahul Dravid | Anil Kumble | Bhagwath Chandrasekhar | Gundappa Vishwanath | Javagal Srinath | Venkatesh Prasad | Roger Binny | Erapalli Prasanna Home team
Karnataka have won the Ranji Trophy eight times and have been runners up four times. The Karnataka-Tamil Nadu rivalry matched the Mumbai-Delhi contests in intensity and in the following for it. Karnataka’s most recent wins were back to back, in 2013-14 and 2014-15 – that last win coming against Tamil Nadu, whom they also beat for the title in 1995-96. In 2009-10, they lost to Mumbai in a thriller.

ESPNcricinfo08-Feb-2011Join Jonathan Harris-Bass and the team for all the latest English cricket news and opinion. From the County Championship to the Test arena, the Switch Hit Podcast team chew the fat on all the action. .This week’s show: As England look set to become the number one side in the world, we discuss if the current side are better than the Ashes winners of 2005?Plus, a look at whether India can come back despite growing injury concerns.Jonathan Harris-Bass, Andrew Miller, Andrew McGlashan and Sambit Bal are this week’s Switch Hitters.To download the podcast to your computer, click here.To listen via iTunes click here.If you don’t have iTunes and would like to listen to the show on an RSS feed, click here.

He was hailed as the next big thing, and persisted with through thick and thin, and now the faith invested has begun to reap results big time. Watch for Watson to be crucial at the World Cup

Brydon Coverdale12-Feb-2011Four years ago on a cruise ship docked in Grenada, Merv Hughes, part-time selector and part-time travel guide, was taking questions from his World Cup tour group when an older gentleman piped up.”Is that hugely overrated Shane Watson playing today?” the man asked in frustration.”I believe,” Merv replied, “and the other selectors believe, and Ricky Ponting believes, that Shane Watson will become Australia’s most important player within the next few years.”The answer was greeted with scepticism. Watson-bashing was a popular pastime among Australian supporters, who had seen the young allrounder spend seven years in and out of the national team – mostly out. Many Australian fans felt the selectors were so blinded by the 2005 Ashes that they wanted an Andrew Flintoff of their own, and that Watson was a poor man’s Freddie at best.Others saw him as a delicate flower, his emotions all too public. Surely anyone who cried, or a man who thought he was having a heart attack when some food disagreed with him in India, would never be hard enough for international cricket? Some liked him and wished he would live up to his promise, but were resigned to his career being cut short by injury.Whatever the fans on that cruise liner thought of Watson, few agreed with Merv’s prediction. Fast-forward to the 2011 World Cup and Hughes, now an ex-selector, has been proven right.Watson enters the tournament as the winner of the past two Allan Border Medals, the one-day team’s leading scorer of the past two years and their second-highest wicket taker in the same period.And, without question, as the team’s most important player. Among the major contenders, perhaps only Jacques Kallis is as critical to his side’s all-round success at this tournament as Watson is for Australia.His most vital role is as an opening batsman, alongside Brad Haddin. In 2007, Australia had Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist to set the tone and they did the job so well that the middle order was rarely under serious pressure. Haddin is a powerful striker but his form is moderate, and Watson is the one who should really impose himself.That’s especially significant in the current Australian outfit, where the No. 3, Ricky Ponting, is returning from injury, the No. 4, Michael Clarke, can build but won’t blast, and the reliable finisher Michael Hussey is at home in Perth nursing a tender hamstring. The situation is clear – for Australia to win their fourth consecutive World Cup, Watson have a big tournament.He’ll enjoy the slower pitches on the subcontinent, where he will have extra time for his front-foot pulls and drives, and as the Player of the Tournament in the first IPL, he is a proven performer in the conditions. He’s also shown himself to be a man for big moments: what better pedigree for a potential World Cup hero than back-to-back hundreds in a Champions Trophy semi-final and final, as Watson achieved in 2009?And his bowling in this tournament shouldn’t be underestimated. In an attack that will rely heavily on the sheer pace of Shaun Tait, Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson, Ponting will look to Watson for variation, reliability and reverse swing, as he is one of the few in the attack who can claim to have it mastered.

He’ll enjoy the slower pitches on the subcontinent, where he will have extra time for his front-foot pulls and drives, and as the Player of the Tournament in the first IPL, he is a proven performer in the conditions

It is to Watson’s great credit that he did not give up bowling a few years ago, when every time he ran in to deliver the ball his team-mates held their breath and hoped a muscle wouldn’t snap. He broke down 12 times in six years, and it turned out that he was brawny. With help from the sports physio Victor Popov, Watson worked out that the gym was not the answer and that other fitness options like pilates were needed to help him become more flexible.He has transformed not only his body but also his role in the game, becoming a reliable Test opener, whose major flaw is forgivable – he makes too many fifties and not enough hundreds. That hasn’t been the case in one-day cricket, and his unbeaten 161 in the series opener against England in January will go down as one of the all-time great Australian limited-overs innings.It makes for a formidable all-round package and it seems remarkable, in hindsight, that Hughes and his fellow selectors didn’t have more supporters when they persisted with Watson, year after year, injury after injury. Watson knows he didn’t help himself with some of his behaviour. Even as recently as late 2009 fans tut-tutted at his obnoxious celebration when he bowled Chris Gayle in the Perth Test, which also brought a fine from the match referee.But finally, at 29, Watson is starting to win the Australian cricket public over. The admiration has come through a maturing approach, and more importantly, piles of runs and wickets.”It was something that I really craved, with the issues that I had with my injuries and also some of the ways I carried on in the field as well really didn’t help me out as much,” Watson said this week. “Probably one of the most satisfying things that has happened over the last couple of years has been to see people really appreciate what I’m able to do.”That respect will keep growing if Watson turns it on at the World Cup. Oh, and that match in Grenada four years ago? Merv’s words were still ringing in the ears of the Australian fans as Watson belted 65 off 32 against New Zealand.

ESPNcricinfo presents the Plays of the Day from the IPL game between Chennai Super Kings and Deccan Chargers in Chennai

Abhishek Purohit01-May-2011White’s contagious form
Cameron White has been struggling to get bat on ball for quite some time now. Even a forward defensive appears like an achievement at the moment. In such a frame of mind, there can be days when the contagion with the bat spreads to other areas of a player’s game. Two deliveries after M Vijay’s dismissal, Michael Hussey pulled a long hop from Pragyan Ojha straight to White at square leg. It came at a catchable height, White got both hands to it, and dropped it. Hussey went on to add 36 more in a 60-run stand with Suresh Raina that laid the foundation for Chennai’s innings.Morkel goes massive
Despite a late flourish from Chennai, Deccan had managed to keep them to 139 with nine balls to go. Ishant Sharma had conceded 23 off 21 deliveries and would have looked to end on a tight note against new man Albie Morkel who had faced just three deliveries. But Deccan were taken aback by what came next. Morkel smashed the next three deliveries, all on a length, into orbit over long-on. Each six was bigger than the previous one, and the last two were the biggest in the IPL, at 109 and 114 metres. Chennai surged to 165, and tellingly, their winning margin was 19.The comedy of errors
What happened off the last ball of Doug Bollinger’s first over is something that would have had few parallels even on a school ground. Shikhar Dhawan cut towards point and trotted out of his crease. Sunny Sohal, meanwhile, had assumed that there was a single, and rushed towards the other end. Dhawan was ball-watching, and Sohal had almost crossed him before he realised what was happening. He turned back, and both batsmen were now aiming to make the same crease.The point fielder, in his haste, went for the striker’s end. Had he hit, both batsmen would have been caught short, but he missed. The man backing up at midwicket, fumbled while trying to collect the ball as well. He recovered, and seeing one batsman try to make his way to the non-striker’s end, lobbed the ball to Bollinger, who was some way from the stumps. Bollinger gathered cleanly but his first attempt to disturb the bails did not find them. Panicking, he threw the ball at the stumps, but astonishingly, missed again from close range. At that moment, Chennai wouldn’t have found a needle in a haystack full of them. Sohal was on 13 then and went on to add 43 more.The one-trick show
Right from the start, Sohal had made his intentions clear. He was going to back away outside leg stump, and hope to clear cover. Sometimes he missed, sometimes he connected, and mostly the results were hilarious. On either side of a six and a four in a Morkel over, Sohal played two shots that made the big screen flash: “You can’t teach that.” He made lots of room only to find the ball eating it up and hurrying on to him. One the first occasion, he fell away and managed to edge the ball wide of Dhoni. On the second, he got it in the same direction, this time off a delicate dab. Both times, he collected boundaries. Morkel went for 20 in that over, and Chennai weren’t finding Sohal’s effort funny at all.

While statistics provide evidence that Ross Taylor succeeds when he leads, his principles could offer plenty to the wider game in New Zealand

Andrew Alderson22-Jun-2011Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Luteru Ross Poutoa Lote Taylor stands to fulfil that mantra stepping into the role of New Zealand cricket captain.The 27-year-old may not have the enjoyed the privileged upbringing of Churchill, but has taken a natural ability to brandish a bat as a five-year-old in the North Island town of Masterton and developed it into a career. Look no further than his signing of a $1 million contract with the Rajasthan Royals in the last Indian Premier League.Taylor is just the second New Zealander of Samoan heritage to play international cricket after pace bowler Murphy Su’a. He has built on that pioneering influence, playing 30 Tests, 107 ODIs and 37 Twenty20 internationals since his debut in 2006. His cavalier approach often inspires the masses and wins games single-handedly.As the incumbent vice-captain Taylor fought off a stern challenge from former vice-captain Brendon McCullum, inheriting the leadership role from Daniel Vettori.Taylor – who received the captaincy ahead of his wedding to fiancée Victoria on Saturday – made a strong case at the World Cup with the bat and as an in-fielder. He scored 250 runs and averaged 50.00 against the Test-playing nations, compared to McCullum’s 10.60. In McCullum’s defence, he battled a knee injury and could not be rested without a specialist back-up wicketkeeper in the squad. He still made a century against Canada, a half-century against Zimbabwe and remained unbeaten against Kenya.Taylor might be more of a quiet cajoler than a damn-the-torpedoes ranter, but he can point to evidence that he succeeds when he leads. His ODI average of 44.20 in ten completed matches as captain compares favourably to his average of 35.79 when he is not. He has won four and lost six in charge. At the World Cup his 131 not out against Pakistan – including 55 runs off his last 13 balls – was a match-winner, reinvigorating New Zealand’s tournament hopes.Taylor was selected by a panel comprising coach John Wright, interim national selection manager Mark Greatbatch and cricket director John Buchanan. Greatbatch has been a mentor of Taylor’s for some time. Taylor captained Greatbatch’s national under-19 side and was coached by him at Central Districts. Wright had been non-committal on his preference, but wanted a candidate to be a “strong competitor” over other qualities. At the end of the World Cup he noted: “If you’re not performing, people stop listening. Leadership is performance.”Taylor’s performance will now be judged on a busy summer programme: tours to Zimbabwe and Australia, visits by Zimbabwe and South Africa and a tour to the West Indies next April-May. While New Zealand have proven themselves in limited-overs cricket with a semi-final finish at the World Cup, performances in the Test arena have lagged. Since the 2007 World Cup, New Zealand has played 32 Tests and won just six, including four against Bangladesh and one each against England and Pakistan. They get at least 11 chances to change that perception over the next year. Taylor can lead the way by righting an often slated middle order.The new captain can also offer plenty to the wider New Zealand game by managing his power wisely. Three factors need public awareness: his generosity, his vices and his warmth.When Samoa played Vanuatu in Apia a few years ago a number of the white trousers finished at low calf or needed a couple of folds to avoid slipping over sneakers. That was an example of Taylor’s commitment to his heritage – donating a couple of bags of used Black Caps’ clothing for further use.

Taylor can also capitalise on vices that lend him a common touch. Anecdotes suggest his penchant for runs is correlated to how much KFC anyone is prepared to bet him

Word has it home appliances would also mysteriously appear on the doorstep of the family home in Masterton. Apparently when he moved in with his fiancée in Hamilton last year, Taylor’s house in Palmerston North was not sold. It was instead used by his sister.Taylor can also capitalise on vices that lend him a common touch. Anecdotes suggest his penchant for runs is correlated to how much KFC anyone is prepared to bet him. It started when a Central Districts team physiotherapist is alleged to have offered him a bucket if he scored a century. That resulted in a delivery of Colonel Sanders’ finest to the dressing room.There is also warmth behind Taylor’s sometimes awkward media persona, but it needs coaxing into the public domain.Take Tuesday’s announcement. At one point nerves seem to overcome the new captain and he lost his train of thought responding to a question. It might have been the thought of those impending nuptials, but it is something he can rectify. While easier said than done – and not everyone can be a Churchillian-type orator – relaxing would help. Yet it matters little what Taylor says to the media pack as long as he and his team perform and his comrades respect him. Captaining the New Zealand is not about popularity.Taylor’s natural honesty can be refreshing – while he prepared some responses on Tuesday, like his initial statement to the waiting media pack, he spoke off the cuff elsewhere. One example was describing Buchanan’s all-important phone call: “I didn’t hear it,” Taylor said. “I was trying to pick wedding songs and had the volume up.”He also had those priorities in place when he nipped away at the end of the conference rather than facing a barrage of similar one-on-one interview questions: “I gotta go, I’ve got a wedding to sort.” With priorities like that, Taylor might well be the sound future New Zealand cricket is looking for.

Mahela Jayawardene on reaching a third consecutive World Cup semi-final, drawing the same opposition as 2007 and the performance against England

Mahela Jayawardene27-Mar-2011The next week is definitely the most important week of our cricket lives. We know we are two games away from fulfilling a dream we came so close to fulfilling four years ago. We also know that one mistake can be enough to end that dream. And a World Cup comes only once every four years. The memories of that campaign in the West Indies come back to us, but it is important to stay in the present moment. The reality is, four years have passed, we have come a long way, in our preparation and in what we have done.Two matches away, but we need to take it one game at a time. That’s what we have done this entire tournament, and we will keep doing that. It is an exciting time in every player’s life, but at such times there is a fine line between enjoying it and letting it become a pressure for you. We have spoken to the guys and asked them to try and live a normal life. Try and keep your feet on the ground. Make sure you do everyday things the way you have been doing them, and just carry on with life. Don’t make any changes.Our preparations haven’t changed at all for the knockouts. We have kept it simple: the same routines, practice and everything else. We have our team get-togethers, with family and friends if they are around, and just hang out with them to make sure that we don’t think too much about what’s in front of us. It is important because what is going to happen in the future you don’t have any control over right now, but what you have control over is the preparation you go through, and also the way you enjoy that preparation.It’s not easy to stay away from distractions at this stage of the tournament because everybody wants a piece of you. You have to realise they are all fans and once you play cricket, you are part and parcel of the whole cricket frenzy in the subcontinent. You have to accommodate that as well. I think the more you start trying to say no to that, you tend to give in to it, and make it a distraction. You have to embrace that as well, and make sure you all enjoy that in a way that it’s not going to be a distraction. That’s part of the fun.Most of our team members have been here before. They played a final in 2007. For the newcomers, we have asked them to be excited about the whole thing. From what I have seen they are enjoying their cricket, and they have enjoyed the journey so far. We have asked them to just continue to do that, rather than tell them, “Okay you are going into a World Cup semi-final.” Just enjoy the ride, the moment.We have come here through a near-perfect performance in the quarter-final against England. Near-perfect because we dropped three catches. Now that you think about those catches, we can afford ourselves a little laugh. You think you need to take the half chances to win matches, but these were the really easy ones. Half chances might go our way, might not go our way, but I am sure now the guys will hang on to those kind of easy ones. The three players who dropped those catches are our lesser experienced players when it comes to playing World Cup knockout games, so it could have been nerves too. They are all relieved the way we finished the game off after that. They have all realised their mistakes. We have had a good laugh about the way they dropped those catches.The only big drawback of that period, when Jonathan Trott and Eoin Morgan had put together a partnership, was that we felt we got rattled a bit. That’s something we have spoken about as well. We have told our guys those things can happen, but we cannot let ourselves get rattled.A big positive about these moments is that we have a big pool of match-winners that we can rely on. On that day it was Lasith Malinga who bowled superbly at the death, on other days it can be anybody: Muttiah Muralitharan, Angelo Mathews, Ajantha Mendis. That’s the luxury we have, and up to now we have used that luxury really well.Another reason why the memories of the 2007 World Cup are coming back is that we are facing the same team in the semi-finals as we did then. And New Zealand have our fullest respect, even though we have had success against them. It’s a semi-final, and they will be charged up. They were surely charged up when they faced South Africa in the quarter-final. We will never underestimate them. We have understood exactly how tough they can be. We saw the way they finished off South Africa, how good they can be. We have to make sure we don’t give them those opportunities. And we just need to make sure we concentrate on our strengths and enjoy the game.