While this is supposed to be a tech blog, I've sort of attempted to broaden the scope to all geeky pursuits including, with this post, cricket stats. I was always very good at the permutations and combinations part of mathematics in school because I always visualized problems using cricket tournament standings. So if I ever forgot the "formula" to calculate say "4C2", I would physically work out the number of matches in a 4 nation round robin tournament. Needless to say, like most Indians, being fond of math and having to support perpetually under performing teams, I'm at the forefront of "theoretical optimism".

  Thus I'm quite flabbergasted that SRK has already begun apologising when KKR is very much in the reckoning for a semi-final spot especially with the MASSIVE advantage of playing the final game against a team that has already qualified. They will know the exact run-rate required if it comes down to that and they'll be up against a not-so-motivated Mumbai side who might just take it easy. Forget KKR, even the beleagured Kings XI Punjab are in with a theoretical chance of going through:

14 Apr RC beats RR

15 Apr DD must beat CSK

16 Apr KXIP must beat DC

17 Apr  RC beats MI ; KKR beats RR

18 Apr KXIP must beat CSK; DD must beat DC

19 Apr MI beats KKR 

  The alternate scenario is that if RR beat RC today, then RC needs to lose to MI on 17th as well, to stay stuck on 12 points and KKR has the option of losing either of its two remaining matches to also stay stuck at 12. In both scenarios you'll have MI, DD and either of RR/RC going through to the semis and the remainder FIVE teams stuck on 12 points.

  After that its Net Run Rate and KXIP could well have the highest NRR though both DC and KKR will have an advantage of having their final match after KXIP. That's why it would have Read more...

Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan IPL Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, IPL, Kings XI Punjab, KKR

They needed just one more victory to finally take that giant leap into the last four; at that time, of course, it seemed as simple as taking the next step during a casual stroll in the morning.

That step, however, didn't turn out to be so simple: in fact, it drew them away from home and into the killing climes of Chennai. There, first, the humidity sapped Tendulkar; then, the heat of the competition got to his team. Eventually, they failed to chase down a fair-game 165.

The next step was even more complicated, taking them all the way from down South to the fringes of northern India. On the face of it, though, it seemed like a facile mission: zip into Mohali, zap the already-down Kings and go back into the reassuring folds of home.

But then, you scoff at a pride of hungry lions at your own peril: not too surprisingly, Mumbai managed only 154 and just didn't have the heart to defend it. Suddenly, it was two defeats in two games; you didn't have to see the anxious faces in their dugout to know that they had lost the momentum.

That is, however, not the main reason for their anxiety; Mumbai Indians are probably worried about something else: the curse of the Number 14. Surely, the ghosts of an earlier lifetime, of IPL 2008, are haunting them again.

In the inaugural edition too, they won six straight games after a disastrous start to be called the momentum-team; but they lost the next three to be unceremoniously left out of the race. Clearly, they had peaked a little too early; is that the case this time too? Can they get past 14 points at least now?

More importantly, do they have the wherewithal to go all the way? Are they still as red-hot as they appeared to be just a couple of matches ago?

The answer, on current form, is no. First and foremost, their batting doesn't have the firepower to keep winning day in and day out; yes, there is Tendulkar but he must be feeling like Read more...

Bobilli Vijay Kumar IPL Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, IPL, Sachin Tendulkar, Twenty20

Every bowler’s worst nightmare finally came true: on a humid Saturday evening, and on a perfect sleeping beauty, one batsman after another went on the rampage to literally set the Chidambaram Stadium on fire.

In the end, it was nothing but a massacre; only a miracle saved the match from going down as a rabid joke.

  M Vijay, who showed signs of manic aggression in the earlier match, went berserk in a crucial match for the Super Kings; he started in a fitfully quiet manner, greeting Shane Warne’s trump card Yusuf Pathan with utmost dignity.

  But when Warne pulled out another card, Sumit Narwal this time, he cut loose: 6, 4 and another 4 got the heartbeats racing inside the packed stadium. They, however, didn’t give an indication of the mayhem to follow; runs flowed from his blade like booze on a wild night of partying.

  The original tormentor, Mathew Hayden, could only watch as his micro version attacked with the freedom and finesse of a soaring bird; he didn’t have time for a single bowler, neither for Shaun Tait, nor Shane Watson or Warne, as he towered over the blazing horizon.

  By the time dusk descended on Chennai, the Super Kings had amassed 246 for five, the highest tally in the Indian Premier League; Albie Morkel simply added more colour to the fireworks with his blistering 62 off 34 deliveries.

  If the hosts thought that the party was over, they were in for a rude shock: the Royals, like true warriors, simply don’t believe in giving up without a fight. Led by the lanky duo of Michael Lumb and Naman Ojha, they went after the target like hungry wolves.

  At the fall of the first wicket, Warne unleashed his trump card again; but a smart boundary later, Yusuf smashed what seemed like a clear sixer. Bollinger, however, was clearly Read more...

Bobilli Vijay Kumar IPL Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, IPL

When it first entered the realm of possibility, Twenty20 seemed to be too short a format to qualify as a contest: it doesn’t give anyone a second chance, they said, the most basic premise of any game; one mistake and you might as well kiss your grandma goodbye, they added.

  That, however, is just one of the myths that has exploded along with purse strings in the IPL. The current edition has slowly but very surely shown that you not only get a second chance, but also a third and fourth one. The key is patience, just like in its most pristine form: Test cricket.

  On Sunday night, Rajasthan Royals appeared to be galloping away after winning the toss; as Ojha raised 100 in just 10 overs, combining with Lumb and Fazal, a 200-plus total seemed more than probable. But then, Yusuf Pathan fell for 8, and pretty soon the inevitable slide began: in the end, they managed just 177.

  As M Vijay went on the attack, along with Hayden and Raina, the target looked even less intimidating; but then, Yusuf conjured a stunning run out to break Chennai’s momentum. Soon after, Dhoni too crashed into Badrinath for a crucial run-out. The match turned emphatically towards the Royals… until, of course, Albie Morkel decided to throw his bat and caution to the wind.

  He smashed 3 sixes off Warne, and raced to 28 off just 12 deliveries, to cut the match wide open. But then, Shaun Tait bowled a quiet, smart over to bring it back into their grasp; Siddharth Trivedi just had to keep his wits together to keep the smiles on his mates’ faces. He did, rather easily.

  Quite a few matches, thankfully, have followed this pendulum phenomenon. The most stunning example of a second chance, though, came in the game’s most miniscule form: catching. On Monday night, it seemed like a simple case of touch-and-go when Paul Collingwood hit one down David Husssey’s throat. Hussey, however, made a hash of it: the ball landed in his palms but bounced out of them to find some meaning beyond the ropes.

  He went after it, instinctively, to try and lessen the damage; he hung in the air, and Read more...

Bobilli Vijay Kumar IPL Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, IPL

After this duo, however, the batting leaderboard is a mixture of young, not-so-young and the old. Fascinatingly, the bowling list is also topped by a wily old hand, and a spinner at that: Muthiah Muralitharan; chasing him is his mate Chaminda Vaas, who is desperately trying to get back into the Sri Lankan scheme of things.

Read more...

Bobilli Vijay Kumar Twenty20 Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, IPL

On paper, nothing seems wrong with the Indian cricket team selected for the T20 World Cup beginning next month. All the right-sounding names are marked present. But dig a little deeper: this is a team selected on reputation, not form.

  To begin with, T20 demands athleticism from every player. Tell me, how many in this team are good fielders. Barring Ravindra Jadeja and Suresh Raina, nobody can be listed A class.

  We also have Dinesh Karthik and Rohit Sharma, two players who have got unlimited opportunities in the past, again waltzing into the squad. How can the two be preferred over Virat Kohli beats me. Neither of the three have done anything special in the ongoing IPL3 but Virat, at least, was in great form in just-concluded ODIs. He is also a far superior fielder than either of the two. One thing is certain: the selectors love Karthik and Sharma.

  Yuvraj Singh’s selection is also a gamble. He is out of batting form and not half the fielder he used to be. But then he is a proven performer. His bowling too has improved leaps and bounds. Let us hope he comes good.

  The bigger gamble is opting for brittle-as-glass Nehra. Agreed, he is a sharp bowler. But he is such a sub-par fielder and batsman that his overall value is highly suspect.

  I am also surprised at Piyush Chawla’s selection. He has been far from impressive in IPL3. Chawla is a good spinner but he bowls at least 1-2 loose deliveries every over. That can be fatal in T20. In any case with both Harbhajan and Jadeja around, he will be sitting in the sidelines.

  This team is largely made up of players who have already established themselves in their respective ‘cricket-corporate’ careers. Barring a few, T20 World Cup 2010 will be just another tournament for them. Which is why this team seems to lack hunger.

  I would have loved to see young, in-form players like Manish Pandey in the squad. In their batting, you can see a burning desire to make a mark. That’s what the champion team of 2007 had. And that’s what this team lacks. Even Pakistan’s 2009 team succeeded only because it had a great balance of rookies and experience and a larger reason to play for. The selectors have played safe by opting for familiar names. But I hope it hasn’t come at the cost of India.

  After the money-minting, energy-sapping IPL3, what does Team India play for?

  I am hoping that the genius of Sehwag will rescue us. I am also putting my money on Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Vinay Kumar (if he gets a chance) to come up with outstanding performances. Not because they are the best players in the team. But because they still have something to prove.

  The selectors have done one good thing though. They have dropped Ishant Sharma.

  Team India Squad: MS Dhoni (c), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Dinesh Karthik, Ravindra Jadeja, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chawla, Vinay Kumar, Rohit Sharma

  My team:  MS Dhoni (c), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Virat Kohli, Manish Pandey, Ravindra Jadeja, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, R P Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Vinay Kumar, Irfan Pathan. 

  (PS: I know there's only one wicket-keeper in my team. No big deal. If there's a crisis, Parthiv Patel or Wriddhiman Saha can be flown in)

Avijit Ghosh Twenty20 Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Twenty20

IPL 3 has begun and a scrutiny of the finer points of this new avatar of the game will start. Imran Khan in his column has already told us how excited he is to see what new things turn up.

Cricket is a game that keeps evolving and that's why it is greater than any other sport and the fastest growing.

Just to take a review of the things that people have fine-tuned thanks to T20. The straight six, the reverse sweep which is more a hit. The slow sweep over short fine leg, the lofted cover drive, the drive over midoff and midwicket, late cut/steer, chip over slips, pull/hooks, flick over square leg.

For the bowlers, the yorker, slower ball, quicker delivery for spinners, bouncer, arrow straight bowling, doosra, flipper, off-cutter, flighted swing.

What we haven't seen perfected is a sweep or a scoop  over slip. Nicky Saldanha, the former Maharashtra Ranji bowler, would step out scoop from leg stump over his right shoulder over the keeper's head and over first slip. This irritated the keeper of our side, none other than former India keeper Nana Joshi, then in his  fifties. But that was the idea of Nicky.

Iqbal Khan played a similar shot in a one-day event at the CCI. He was a Mumbai Ranji player, who is now settled in the UK.

So what new did we see in the first two days of the IPL? One saw the slow bouncer of Angelo Matthews of KKR. In the match against Deccan Chargers he welcomed Hershelle Gibbs with a slow bouncer. Gibbs' greatness was that he saw it all the way and did not premeditate and let it go. When the regular bouncer came Gibbs pulled it away. Lesser batsmen would have remained in a confused state.

Mathews and Mahroof of Sri Lanka are bowlers who innovate and that makes them great competitors. Manoj Prabhakar was that type. India doesn't have one like him though Read more...

Pradeep Vijaykar IPL Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Deccan Chargers, Hershelle Gibbs, Imran Khan, IPL, Mahroof, Mathews, Sreesanth

Sachin Tendulkar's birthday being named World Cricket Day is a tremendous tribute by cricket's apex body, the International Cricket Council. The announcement came a day after arguably the world's finest cricketer, Garfield Sobers, paid handsome tributes to Sachin, saying that with all his achievements he won't give it away so easily.

  Before this tribute to Sachin, Indians were basking in the glory of the world's finest hockey player, Dhyan Chand, being remembered by his birthday being named the National Sports Day of India. One can't remember other sporting greats being similarly commemorated. But Sachin's glory is that he is being honoured in his lifetime.

    Only recently we had Winter Olympic gold medallist Hannah Kearney seeing a day named after her in Vermont, US.  Hannah Kearney opened the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games with a bang, winning the United States' first gold medal in the moguls' competition. That sparked a great run for the US, as they went on to win 36 more! Last week, Hannah returned to her hometown of Norwich to parade through the town. She also went through Hanover, where she was born. Vermont governor Jim Douglas declared that February 26 will for ever be known as Hannah Kearney Day!

      Otherwise we have only had things, events, tournaments, etc named after sporting heroes. On surfing the internet you find that there are Bradman Biscuits named after the Aussie legend. Someone says he wants to see an Alfonso Soriano shampoo, named after a major League baseball outfielder. Another doesn't like a talk show being named after the brash tennis icon John McEnroe. He says basketball great Magic Johnson was given a talk show because he was a likable guy.

      A highway in the US was named after Mark McGwire, famous baseball player who averaged a home run once every 10.61 at bats, the lowest at bats per home run ratio in baseball history. It was a portion of I-70 near downtown in his hometown St Louis. After his disgrace following a drugs scandal, the portion of I-70 was "renamed" I-70.

      There were calls to have a Jim Ross Barbeque Sauce after this WWF wrestler peddled his barbeque sauce so much on the WWF airwaves. There was actually an entire WWF cookbook at one point. American NFL footballer Mike Ditka, one of the two people to win Read more...

Pradeep Vijaykar Indian Cricket Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Sachin Tendulkar

Sometimes the future is upon us when we least expect it. Just the other day, there was no batting slot in the Indian team. The so-called Fab Four had locked up the middle order, and later the opening pair had settled themselves in. Now Ganguly is gone, Dravid and Laxman are injured, Yuvraj is yet to score a century after Ganguly’s retirement (although he averages 44 in his last ten Tests, as opposed to 36 overall), and suddenly there are all kinds of possibilities.

A Wridhiman Saha, who would have been mentally prepared for a five-day education from beyond the boundary during the Nagpur Test now finds himself at the deep end. Badrinath gets a chance to make the leap from domestic superstar to international star; Murali Vijay, already being spoken of as the long-term replacement for Dravid, can consolidate.

Of the two reasons for infusing fresh blood – injury and consistently poor team performance – India are dealing with the first. “In the last three or four months we have had someone or the other getting injured and dropping out of the team on a regular basis,” was the philosophical attitude of skipper M S Dhoni, who has said often enough in the past that one man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity.

It wasn’t so long ago – in 1996, in fact - that an injury to Sanjay Manjrekar brought in a young man who evolved into the backbone of Indian cricket. Rahul Dravid hasn’t looked back since.

Depending on whether you call the core of the Indian team in the past decade and more the Fab Four or the Big Five (with Kumble) or the Super Six (with Sehwag), it is becoming increasingly difficult for the surviving members of these exclusive clubs to play together in recent matches owing to injury.

The foursome of Kumble, Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar played together in a record 86 Tests; add Laxman to that list, and the world record is still theirs, with 65 Tests. Bring Sehwag into the equation, and that lot has played 36 Tests together. (the record for six players doing so is held by Australia, 40). These are impressive figures, and speak of a settled team over a long period. They speak of remarkable skill and consistency in all conditions, against all opponents. These are marks the next generation will be aiming at. It would be unfair, of course, to expect a whole new ready-made bunch to slip into the shoes of the masters and carry on as if there has been Read more…

Administrator Indian Cricket Badrinath, Blogs.CMDN.com, Cricket, Cricket Blogs, Dravid, Ganguly, Kumble, Laxman, M. S. Dhoni, Misra, Murali Vijay, Nagpur, Pragyan Ojha, Sanjay Manjrekar, Sehwag, Tendulkar, Wridhiman Saha, Yuvraj