South Africa's tour of India

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South Africa's tour of India

Post by gvhvhg »

Kumble is India's greatest-ever bowler
Top 5 defnitley...but best ever?
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South Africa's tour of India

Post by vkd_1717 »

Which Indian bowler had/s better consistance than Kumble?
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South Africa's tour of India

Post by gvhvhg »

well i dno...some of the older guys....chandrashekar, bishan singh bedi etc....
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Post by vkd_1717 »

bedi was excellent but i would but him no.2 behind Kumble
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Post by PKBasu »

The only bowler who had a (marginally) better strike rate than Kumble was Chandrasekhar -- until the start of this season. Now, Kumble's career strike rate is actually slightly better than Chandra's (65.3 for Anil, 65.9 for Bhagwat Subramanya). Kumble's bowling average is better than Bedi, Gupte, Chandra, Kapil, Prasanna and Mankad (the order in which the others' averages follow Kumble's).

In this test match, Kumble has taken his test tally to 430 wickets, just 4 wickets shy of Kapil Dev's India record. More importantly, his bowling average has now fallen to below 28 runs per wicket -- the only Indian bowler with over 200 wickets to have achieved that average. (Harbhajan Singh also has an average marginally below 28 -- and, actually, an even better strike rate than Kumble, although he is younger and in the early stages of a career while Kumble has sustained his numbers over a 15 year career). At 35, Kumble is in the midst of a real purple patch in his career over the past 12 months -- and it is little wonder that he is now officially the TOP RANKED bowler in the world, ahead of Murali, Warne, McGrath and all the others.
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South Africa's tour of India

Post by PKBasu »

Can there be a result in this test match? I think India should declare overnight (given that all the hard-hitting batsmen are back in the hut, and Laxman will probably need a few overs to get his eye in). Pile on the pressure with attacking fields, and try and get the South Africans all out by tea (possible given that the pitch seems to be taking some turn now, or atleast allowing considerable deviation for the seamers). Then, play like an ODI in chasing some 250 to win off about 40 overs...(Sehwag, Gambhir, Ganguly, Tendulkar, Laxman should be the batting order; then Zaheer, Harbhajan...Dravid has completely forgotten what made him the world's best batsman a year ago, and has become a strokeless wonder).
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Post by jaydeep »

Nobody tried to produce result from this boring match ... First innings of both teams got over on 5th day ... that tell us the full story of this match ... In my view such matches kill viewership for test matches ... After Mumbai's dust bowl, we experianced extreme contrast pata wicket in Kanpur ... Even on 5th day ball wasn't doing any wonders, its only keeping low sometime ... We needs sporting wickets like banglore, chennai and even nagpur ... Which give bowlers and batsmen equal opportunity and we viewers see result in these matches.

For us only gain is Gambhir's batting ... I agree this was batting wicket, still one has to stand and score into the match (which sachin and laxman failed ... Sachin got out 7th time in his last 8 test innings below 10, only notable score is 55 in last inning against Aussies in Mumbai.) ... Gambhir stuggled in the begining but played his part ... This outing will definetly give him confidence for his future outing ... About Sehwag we can't say anything ... When he plays his inning, they r topic of discussion ... He scored his 8th century in 28 tests ... If this ratio remain same till his end of the career ... Then he will definetly known as one of the great unconventional technique batsman in the world.

But what worried negative signs for us from this match r ... Something is wrong with our think tank ... Continuously in second match we made blunder in selection ... Against Pakistan in Kolkatta match, we should played Kumble instead of Nehra ... May be result would be different in that match with Kumble inclusion ... And in Kanpur we should play Pathan and select one of these two for Kumble's partner (from Harbhajan and Murli Kartik) ... Becoz wicket was Pata and morning dew factor is more helpful to seamer ... In this match Karthik's wicketkeeping wasn't upto the mark ... He should concentrate hard on that and showed improvement in it ... Lots of players r waiting to get chance, so this youngster should show improvement and solid technique in batting ... But these r all IFs and BUTs ... But one thing is sure we loose opportunity to rule this SA test series and give upperhand to South Africans ... SA gains lot from this match ... Their batsmen get enough confidence that they can stand on Indian pitches facing spinners ... Even their makeshift opner manage to score more than 150 gives them enough confidence boost ... Then they manged to bundle out us less than their first inning score ... So now SA will enter into second test at Kolkatta on 28th november with psychological advantage on us ... Hope we will spring some surprises to distrub their planning for that test.

Jaydeep.

PS. academic score ... South Africa 510/9d & 169/4
India 466
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Post by PKBasu »

It was silly not to declare overnight, and the rest of the batting put up a sorry display.
Some weekly newsmagazines have called for Ganguly to be replaced as captain, and have questioned his place in the team. I find this shocking, as Ganguly has a batting average as captain of over 37 (better than Pataudi and Wadekar) while the alternative captain, Dravid, averages less than 15 when he is the captain.
In fact, Ganguly has really had one test failure (the woeful innings of 9 in Chennai) in the past year. Before that, he averaged over 47 in the Australia series, made 77 in his only innings against Pakistan, scored 45 in the first innings of the home series against Australia and was run out (due to Dravid's professional error) for 5 in the second innings. Here in Kanpur, he made 57.
But Tendulkar and Laxman are in truly woeful form. Apart from the great innings each played in Mumbai, neither of them has really got another decent test score all season, and the team cannot afford to carry two such passengers in the middle order. Can the selectors bite the bullet and play Kaif ahead of Laxman in Calcutta (if Ganguly isn't suspended for that test)? Let's see...
Of course, if Ganguly is suspended, then it would be prudent to play Kaif in his stead and not alter the middle-order any further. I would also play Pathan as first-choice seamer, and select Zaheer ahead of Murali Kartik.
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Post by PKBasu »

Incidentally, I disagree with the notion that Sehwag's technique is unconventional. He is one of the great drivers of the ball in world cricket. His main scoring strokes are the off-drive, square-cut or -drive and straight-drive. He is audacious in his stroke-play but not particularly unconventional. He rarely hits cross-bat strokes, and the main unconventional element in his off-side strokes is the occasional angled-bat glide towards third man, especially when there are no slips in place. I think Viru Sehwag is one of the best batsmen in the world, and the second-best opening batsman in contemporary cricket (close behind Matt Hayden, and possibly even ahead of him given Hayden's recent mini-slump in form).
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Post by PKBasu »

Sourav Ganguly's 2-test ban has been withdrawn by the ICC. The ban was ridiculous to start with, but the fact that it was lifted probably has a lot to do with Ganguly's choice of lawyer -- Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the 85 (or so) year old former CM of West Bengal, Governor of Punjab, Ambassador to the US and probably the best advocate/barrister in the land even at this advanced age.
SS Ray is probably one of the most under-appreciated individuals in modern Indian history. In Shashi Tharoor's "Great Indian Novel", Ray suffers the ignominy of playing the character of Shakuni (the unmistakable "Shakuni Shankar Ray" who advises "Priya Duryodhani" or Priyadarshani to role the dice of the Emergency, etc.), and he is mentioned primarily as the person who provided Indira Gandhi with the legal advice to impose the Emergency. But he strongly resisted the abuses of the Emergency -- and was among the few who openly opposed Sanjay Gandhi and his henchmen during it. More important, he ended the scourge of Naxalism in Bengal -- which had ravaged the state in the 1967-74 period, and virtually destroyed the economic vitality of Calcutta. Although the benefits of the end of Naxalism (and the resulting peace and stability) were reaped by his successors, there is little doubt that Ray was responsible for one of the most important contributions to the stability of modern India by ending the scourge of Maoist Naxalism in the state where this destructive ideology had its genesis.
Later he was Governor of Punjab during one of the decisive phases leading up to the end of the Khalistan movement. Surely, the man who saved India from Naxalism and Khalistani terrorism deserves the gratitude of our nation. And of course he was an excellent Indian Ambassador to the US at a time when US-India relations improved quite decisively -- and he was instrumental in positively altering Americans' image of India.
Ray also was a keen cricketer in his time (and was Dalmiya's predecessor as chief of the Cricket Association of Bengal), so he has made another small contribution to contemporary Indian history by saving the Indian captain from an unseemly and inappropriate punishment that may well have ended his career. Three cheers to Siddhartha Shankar Ray!
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Post by PKBasu »

Some tributes to Ambassador Ray from US Congressmen upon his departure from the US:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r104:E01FE6-255:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r104:E01FE6-210:
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Post by vkd_1717 »

the site u gave wrote:WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 31, 1996
thats very old news ... and what does it have to do with cricket????
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Post by PKBasu »

Sorry vkd_1717...if you looked at the previous post (before the one just before yours), you would know what this is about. SS Ray was a cricketer himself, and headed the Cricket Association of Bengal for more than a decade. He was the lawyer defending Ganguly before the ICC appellate tribunal yesterday, and was able to get the 2-match ban lifted entirely. That, in turn, led me to recount his important (but much under-appreciated) role in modern Indian history.
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Post by PKBasu »

It looks as if Pathan will replace Murali Kartik for the Eden Gardens test, which starts in less than an hour from now.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.p ... 1&id=61323

I wish they would also consider Kaif as a replacement for the off-form Laxman, but it seems such radical ideas have to wait.
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Post by PKBasu »

On a different note, Aakash Chopra may be struggling to hold his place in the Delhi team when Gambhir is available for Ranji trophy matches. The star of the India under-19 side at the last junior World Cup, Shikhar Dhawan, has finally made his Ranji debut and is out-scoring the former India opener. For Delhi against Railways, Chopra made 0 and 31, while Dhawan made 3 in the first innings but is on 55 not out in the second. Chopra has been in awful form in first-class matches all season, and it was absurd to have picked him at all for the tests given his poor form and less-than-stellar test record. (it's one thing to keep selecting Laxman on the basis of his magnificent past deeds, but it was quite another to have given Chopra the benefit of the doubt even despite his indifferent form and known injury that had kept him out of cricket for a prolonged period).
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