Sportsnob – Critics Corner

Sports fans can be a strange lot. They can forgive and forget a shambolic performance quite easily and at the same time harp on matches where the team loses by very small margins. But what fans cannot put up with is a lack of visble progress in their team. And that is exactly what seems to be happening with the Chennai Super Kings team.

This is a team which played well above its potential and made the final of the first Indian Premier League before ultimately coming second best to a Shane Warne and Yousuf Pathan inspired Rajasthan Royals team. In the second season, the team barely managed to scrape into the semi-finals before ultimately falling short to a very efficient Bangalore Royal Challengers. Even then, it was quite obvious that the team relied far too heavily on it’s batting, especially Matthew Hayden, Suresh Raina and Dhoni himself.

A continuing weakness

But the one theme that was evident through the second season and has now continued into the third season is the decline of the team. And worse, the management has not made a serious attempt to cover the flaws in the squad. The biggest weakness is obvious to even the most casual of cricket fans – the bowling attack.

Throughout the first and second seasons MS Dhoni often publicly criticized his bowlers out of sheer frustration. And the same frustration was evident today after the defeat against the Mumbai Indians. It is rather depressing that often when Dhoni wants to break a partnership he has to call on Lakshmipathy Balaji, Manpreet Gony or (much worse) Joginder Sharma. While Balaji can point out to the occassional success in this season, the performances of Gony and Joginder have gone downhill since the heady days of the first IPL.

And yet no changes..

And yet, it seems like no attempt has been made to add variety to the attack. From what I understand, the team did aggresively bid for Shane Bond and Kemar Roach before ultimately losing to the Knightriders and the Chargers respectively. With the knowledge that Andrew Flintoff and Jacob Oram weren’t be available through the tournament the management should have looked at other options. The team clearly was desperate for another strike bowler to complement Muralitharan and provide much needed bite in the final overs. Frankly, it is rather surprising the likes of Stephen Fleming or bowling coach Venkatesh Prasad have been unable to suggest good options in the off-season. When teams – most notably the Chargers, the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers have progressed, CSK along with Rajasthan Royals have regressed the most.

Making the best of limited options

Frankly, with this bowling attack, Mr. Fleming and MSD need to come up with a radical change in strategy to effect a transformation. Some suggestions from our side.

1. Joginder Sharma bowled a semi-decent over 3 years ago. Get over it. If you are desperate to play Indian pace bowlers – why not just give poor old Sudeep Tyagi another shot?

2. It is OK to play 3 spinners – especially when all 3 of them have different styles. It might just work on Indian pitches. And especially when your fast bowlers have economy rates of 11.00 (Joginder Sharma), 10.60 (Manpreet Gony) or 9.09 (Balaji)

3. Suresh Raina, as much as this may surprise the two of you, does know how to bowl. He has been used before for both India and the Chennai Superkings and is known to do a decent job. Most importantly, he has a cricketing brain.

4. How about variety in the attack in the form of left arm speedster Thilan Thushara? I know the two of you like all rounders and Thushara fits the bill. Plus, he has actually done well for Sri Lanka in the shorter forms of the game.

5. Speaking of pace bowlers – have you considered Makhaya Ntini? This is after all someone who has taken nearly 600 wickets at the international level. Sure, his performance dropped of late but when your alternatives read Joginder Sharma you can definitely at least give him a chance. Forget fitting the foreigners quota with people who can do a bit of both (ie Shaun Kemp or Thissara Perera). Give a match winner a shot for once.

Photo Source: S. Jagadesh

So, I was trawling through Ted.com when I came across this Harsha Bhogle video on the rise of cricket in India. Harsha is his usual charming self as he outlines the latest episode in the rise of cricket in India – T20.

Overall, it was a fairly ordinary talk – coming from one of the sharpest thinkers about cricket today.

• He makes very few points that offer any new insight either into India or her relationship with the game. And there are far too many clichés – more like an article you’re likely to see in a Sunday morning newspaper than something from Harsha.
• While IPL has clearly cemented India as the place to be for cricketers to make money, India’s rise as a cricketing superpower (economic) started well before the IPL. ‘Bollywoodization’ and ‘corporatization’ hadn’t happened in this scale, but cricket had become a huge money spinner by the end of the last decade. Hearing Harsha talk, you could quite forget this.
• He spends too little time discussing the ‘cricketing’ aspect of the game. Admittedly, TED isn’t the forum for a serious talk on how cricket technique and style of play have changed over the years. But to talk about the rise of cricket in India without making a single point about the quality of cricket on display was disappointing.
• It was unfortunate that he didn’t have an opportunity to elaborate the point on how cricket has impacted other sports and talk about the last 20 years in Indian hockey/ athletics.

But if you have 15 minutes, you should still watch this – he does have some nice video clips (the auction video clip (which I hadn’t seen before)) and interesting snippets on the things that happen behind the scenes – watch for the Dwayne Bravo story. And he does a good job of driving home how India has made T20 her own with the IPL.

In what proved to be a return to competitive cricket at IPL 3, the Chennai Super Kings beat the Delhi Daredevils by 5 wickets, with 5 balls to spare, on a slightly two-faced Kotla wicket this Friday afternoon. Although the pitch did act up from time to time, for the most part it was a featherbed, as Virender Sehwag and Matthew Hayden, as well as a debutant mongoose bat will attest to.

The Cobra

Dinesh Karthik, captaining in place of the injured Gautam Gambhir, won the toss and chose to bat first. As is his wont, Sehwag didn’t waste any time, and toyed with the Super Kings bowlers much as a cobra would toy with its prey – tormenting them, taunting them, and then zap! Another ball dispatched into or over the ropes. Even though Warner departed relatively early, things looked ominous as delivery after delivery disappeared.

Debut skipper Suresh Raina must have wondered whether bad karma from a previous life was at work, until the evergreen Murali struck with two wickets in an over – the mercurial Dilshan falling first, giving Raina the first (and easiest) of the three catches he ended up taking. What followed had a sense of déjà vu about it, as Justin Kemp reprised his heroics for the Hyderabad Heroes in the ICL, grasping a Sehwag clout one-handed, out of thin air, inches short of the boundary line – a truly brilliant catch.

From then on, the Delhi innings could only trundle where it had once galloped. It took a late surge from Rajat Bhatia to bump their score up to 185. Chennai were superb in the field – the second and third of the afore-mentioned catches by Raina were outstanding – something which has certainly been improved on since last year’s farcical state of affairs.

The Super Kings’ innings started well, with 4 boundaries coming off Umesh Yadav’s first over. Parthiv Patel was then run out by a combination of poor calling and superman skills from AB Devilliers. It didn’t help that Patel also appeared to have the turning circle of a luxury cruise liner. Hayden knocked another one to the fence and then called for the much-awaited mongoose bat.

The Mongoose

The blade belongs to a bat that Sachin Tendulkar might have used when he was, say, a foot shorter than he is today. But it’s all meat, and there’s a long handle to go with it. If Sehwag was a cobra, then it was apt that a mongoose would be needed to counter him. (Oh, and if you didn’t see this ‘joke’ coming, please drop an email to sportsnob@gmail.com for further instructions)

Hayden went berserk. 18 runs came off a Rajat Bhatia over, with three fours and six. Dilshan wasn’t so lucky – 21 came off one of his overs, including 3 maximums – and the big Aussie reached his 50 off 24 balls. The thing about this bat is, even the shots which don’t appear to be well timed seem to accelerate in mid-air after leaving the blade. By the time Haydos departed to an outstanding catch by Dilshan, diving forward at mid-on, he had plundered 93 runs off 43 balls.

Morkel departed soon-after, and suddenly the game appeared to be on again. However, a steady 49 by Suresh Raina and a quickfire dozen from Murali Vijay meant that the Super Kings squeezed home – the skipper clearing the ropes off the first ball of the final over to win the match.

After two days of incredibly one-sided matches, it was good to see a game contested till the death again. However, the main takeaway from this contest, more than anything, was the brutal introduction of the mongoose to the IPL.

Picture Courtesy: Sky Sports

Things that are overhyped often fail to live up to their billing – Murphy, we have to concede, is a very powerful man after all. Tonight’s match was no exception as well – Delhi vs. Mumbai is a big rivalry in Indian cricket. Add to it the exciting line ups and of course, the Kotla pitch which has been courting a lot of attention both on and off the field, and the evening was set for a lip smacking encounter. But then our man Murphy struck, and the Mumbai Indians put on a totally professional performance, outclassing the Daredevils in their own den.

Put into bat by Gambhir, the tone for the match was set by the Mumbai skipper, Sachin Tendulkar himself. Runs flowed from his blade in the same elegant hurry as we have been used to for the past 20 years and though the home team was at the receiving end, there was no shortage of support for the Little Master at the Kotla. He scored a quick-fire 63 of 32 balls, an effort which earned him the Man of the Match award as well. Youngsters Tiwary and Rayudu came to the party too, and some late over lusty blows by the Calypsos – Bravo and Pollard – ensured Mumbai never let their foot off the pedal, posting a very formidable score of 218 in their 20 overs.  The Delhi fielding was patchy barring the 12^th man Yogesh Nagar, who probably took the catch of the tournament to get rid of Sanath  Jayasuriya.

The Daredevils were already a batsman short due to an injury to their skipper, Gambhir, and the onus was on Sehwag to fire. Dilshan finally managed to open his account in IPL  3 and Sehwag showed a preview of his trademark pyrotechnics, but some very disciplined bowling and a brilliant fielding performance by the Indians never allowed Delhi a sniff at the target. They won by a whopping margin of 98 runs, their biggest ever victory in the IPL.

Mumbai now have 2 out of 2 and Delhi tasted their first defeat of the series. However, Gambhir’s injury and his subsequent unavailability will make sure that the Delhi think tank has a lot to ponder before their next match against the Super Kings.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is the battle of the leggies, Kumble and Warne at Bangalore. With RCB hitting some serious form against the KXP, the Royals are going to have a real challenge to open their points tally this season, especially since Smith and Mascharenas have been ruled unfit. Join us here for the review.

The Super Kings stormed back in style on Tuesday night, hammering the Kolkata Knight Riders by 55 runs to take them into third place in the nascent IPL league table. As this correspondent noted two days ago, the Bengali outfit are nearly as overhyped as their owner’s acting skills, and their meek capitulation to a Dhoni-driven Chennai side went some way towards proving it.

KKR got off to a more than decent start, getting rid of the potentially dangerous Matthew Hayden early on. Things were going swimmingly, with regular wickets being taken, until MS Dhoni got going with Badrinath providing an able supporting role. Shane Bond bowled a beautiful line and length, while Murali Karthik made yet another case for a return from the international wilderness – his 4 overs yielded no boundaries, a rarity in this form of the game.

However, Ganguly’s men were powerless when faced with the might of the Indian Captain’s bottom hand. Having scored a measly 81 runs from the first 14 overs of their innings, one would have thought anything from here on in would be too little too late. What followed was nothing short of a violent assault, as 83 runs came off the final 36 balls, Dhoni finishing with a stunning 66 of 33 deliveries – the highlight undoubtedly being the flattest six you will ever see, knocking over a couple of tiger mascots stationed just beyond the mid wicket boundary.

In reply, Kolkata were never really allowed to get going – the rot started in the first over, when Brad Hodge pulled the ball straight to Ashwin at mid wicket. Manoj Tiwary smacked a couple of fours off Manpreet Gony before having his stumps rearranged – he scored 8 runs off 3 balls. Wickets continued to fall with alarming regularity, and every single bowler (bar Suresh Raina) got in on the act. A great team performance by the boys in yellow.

Tomorrow night promises to be a right corker though – the Mumbai Indians take on the Delhi Daredevils in what promises to be the match of the tournament thus far. Come back tomorrow for the review.

Picture Courtesy: Chennai 365

While one might say the Super Kings have always been slow starters, that things will come together in the fullness of time, that Yes, we will most definitely reach the semi-finals, I believe the thing that says it all last night was the fact that a stray dog spent more time on the pitch than all the CSK batsmen combined.

Admittedly, the ground staff were more than a little lax – after the first few abortive attempts to chase it off the field, they sort of adopted an air of resignation. Even the fielders ignored it completely, which is a shame, because if they’d put their foot down and waited for it to leave, Chennai might have earned a creditable draw against the current IPL champions (thanks to the match being abandoned, of course).

Anyway, I digress. There were very few positives to take from last night’s performance at the M A Chidambaram stadium. Ashwin Ravichandran bowled fairly well, and the Kings’ fielding was more than adequate, as evinced by the three run outs they effected. Two things puzzled me – firstly, why on earth did Dhoni give Sudeep Tyagi the final over of the Chargers’ innings? It was clear to all and sundry that he wasn’t hitting his straps and was low on confidence. Which brings me to the second bewilderer – why didn’t Raina get a bowl last night?

Chennai’s batting was quite possibly a tribute to Brett Lee’s band – Six and Out seemed to be the order of the day. Every time a batsman hit a six, he would end up getting out within the space of 4 deliveries. Some of the shot selection – Raina’s and Badri’s in particular – was abysmal. Chaminda Vaas bowled brilliantly – castling Murali, accepting Raina’s gift, and then drawing a false shot from Hayden.

Here’s hoping things change tomorrow night against a very overhyped Kolkata outfit.

Picture Courtesy: The Hindu

The only two teams that have failed to make the semifinals in both the editions have been, ironically, the cities with the highest profiles and the cities that have been backbones of Indian cricket. If the Mumbai Indians acquired a big profile thanks to the Ambanis, the iconic status of the city itself and it’s number one player Sachin Tendulkar – the Kolkata Knightriders owe a lot to their owner (and a Mumbaiite himself) Shahrukh Khan for raising their profile.

The Inconsistent Mumbai Indians

Mumbai’s case has been one of inconsistency – in both editions they managed to follow good performances with dire ones and more significantly, ended both seasons with a string of defeats thereby ending their hopes of making the semifinals. This time around a lot will depend on (who else) Sachin Tendulkar carrying his test and one-day form into the 20-20 version. It’s also going to be interesting to see how Kieron Pollard performs considering the money the Ambanis paid for him.

Kolkata: From the sublime to the ridiculous

Everything started so well for Kolkata two years ago when Brendon McCullum launched one of the most breathtaking assaults ever seen on a cricket field in the first ever IPL match. The Knightriders’ challenge faded away in the first season after a series of poor performances, and despite a late revival, they couldn’t make the final four.

What happened last year in South Africa though was inexcusable. John Buchanan first came up with the concept of multiple captains during the tournament – something that can never work in a game like cricket. Following which Shahrukh Khan made Brendon McCullum captain at the expense of Sourav Ganguly. In the middle of all this, someone launched the incredibly popular fakeiplplayer blog – giving details about team meetings and throwing light on the chaos within the team. This mess led to a scenario where the team lost an incredible nine (NINE!) games in a row which resulted in the team ending up bottom of the table

Despite the lack of success on the field – KKR have been the most successful team financially, as Shahrukh Khan threw his brand name behind the team. In the off season, the KnightRiders spent big money on Shane Bond and re-signed Sri Lankan spinner Ajanta Mendis. Most importantly, they have signed Dav Whatmore as head coach – a shrewd signing considering his history of successful tenures with Asian teams.

My predictions

My gut tells me one if not both of these teams will make the semifinals. Why? Quite simply, they have the most to prove. 20-20 cricket is a fantastic leveler – a quick 30 here or an inspired run out there can make a big difference and produce upsets such as when Zimbabwe defeated Australia and the Dutch memorably upstaged the English.  It’s impossible to imagine such results in a five day match because test cricket offers you a second chance.

And lest we forget, the two teams that finished at the bottom of the table in Season I of the IPL  - the two finalists in Season II – Bangalore Royal Challengers and Deccan Chargers.

It's not working, Nando

Liverpool’s season seems to get worse by the day – every misplaced back pass, every scuffed shot, every yellow card borne out of a frustrated tackle – it all contributes to what is turning out to be a spectacularly average year for the Red half of Merseyside.

A 1-0 defeat at the DW Stadium last night left Rafa Benitez’s team struggling to cement 6th place, leave alone 4th, as their hopes of getting into the Champions League were dealt a huge blow by Hugo Rodellega’s first half goal. The strike itself was fairly scrappy, with the Wigan front man somehow contriving to squeeze a cross in after Dirk Kuyt managed to pass the ball straight to the opposition 18 yards from his own goal. Without resorting to panic, it’s safe to say that the consequences of this result could unhinge everything Benitez has been striving to build at Anfield for the past six years.

Not qualifying for the Europe’s top competition would result in, apart from significantly less revenue, Javier Mascherano packing his bags and upping sticks for Barcelona. The Argentina captain has been one of the few bright points of the season so far – his long passing has improved immeasurably, and his drive and work rate carry the team a lot of the time. Frankly speaking, he deserves to play in the Champions League, and with contract talks dragging on, there’s a very real possibility of him leaving. Alberto Aquilani, who has struggled to make an impact in part due to Rafa’s unwillingness to play him, would also probably be on a flight back to Serie A, with the old lady of Juventus showing a bit of leg to tempt the former Roma player.

Apart from this, there’s always a worry that the owners might, in their frantic need to pay off the ever growing debt, sell Fernando Torres. Anathema to any Liverpool supporter, but the possibility must be considered. I know I have. Of course, the debt itself could turn into an uncontrollable monster – no 4th place -> no CL TV revenue -> minimal investment in new players -> probability of selling off one or two big names to help balance the books. Tom Hicks and George Gillett – take a bow. An almost complete lack of investment in players has led to stagnation and apathy setting in at all levels of the club. Apart from the unfulfilled promise of a new stadium, which my grandchildren would probably be lucky to see built.

Before you accuse of me of leaving Benitez out of this, I’d like to say that a lot of blame lies with him as well. Regardless of all the talent in the squad, the players (Mascherano and Lucas aside) have appeared to lack motivation and direction, particularly against the so-called smaller teams in the league. The players always seem to be up for the marquee matches against Chelsea, United and Everton, but just can’t seem to bother showing up for games like the one at the Dave Whelan stadium last night. Yeah, the Wigan chairman did name it after himself. Yes, it does sound a little ridiculous and self-aggrandizing. Poor sod.

The fact of the matter is, things are out of Liverpool’s hands now. They need Tottenham and City to self destruct, and at the same time win most, if not all their remaining games – two of which are against United and Chelsea. I’m very, very worried as I write this. And if you’re a Liverpool fan, you should be too.