General Cricket Thread ...

[PKBasu]

Two players eligible to play in the Junior World Cup are not in the team because they are members of the test team (and need to rest over the next month): Parthiv Patel and Irfan Pathan. Especially in the latter's absence, the bowling is unlikely to be quite as potent as it was in the Asia Cup Under-19 event (which India won handily). Parthiv was captain of the U-19 team in the last World Cup two years ago!

[PKBasu]

India Under-19 won by a decent margin of 270 runs today.
Here's the scorecard:
http://www.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/2003 ... ml#current

Gupta (who, like Raina, has already played for UP in the Ranji Trophy elite group, and has a first-class bowling average of 25-ish) had bowling figures of 10-4-16-1. Looks very good. Raina has already made a Ranji century this season. Both are barely 17!
The cricket pipeline looks very good indeed (as indeed does the tennis pipeline).

[PKBasu]

India beat New Zealand by 69 runs in the Under-19 World Cup, despite a poor batting display in which No. 7 Sunny Singh (who, at 17, has already played Ranji Trophy for Haryana) top-scored with 68 (and Rayudu got 32).

[PKBasu]

There were a couple of sensational results at the Under-19 World Cup today. The biggest one was NEPAL's victory over South Africa (by 1 wicket, with 2 balls to spare!), but Zimbabwe also beat Australia by the comfortable margin of 7 wickets (with 32 overs to spare!!). Zimbabwe bowled out the Australian kids for a paltry 73!

[kathiresan_v]

wow, welcome Nepal to the elite group.

PKB, how Nepal made it in to the U-19 world cup(for those like me not closely following this tournament )

Kathir

[PKBasu]

This is the second time Nepal are playing the Under-19 World Cup, I think. They've been playing the Asia Under-19 circuit certainly, and performing quite reasonably.
I remember a lot of tearaway Nepali fast bowlers when I was playing schools cricket in Darjeeling (as an opening batsman, I remember struggling with a Kurseong bowler called Lakpa Lama who was very quick; ironically there is someone with that identical name in Nepal's current under-19 team). I always thought it was unfortunate that their raw talent was wasted because Nepal didn't play formal cricket. Clearly this lacuna has been addressed!

[jayakris]

Aha, that explains it PKB. That same dude must be playing for them, masquerading as a 19 year old. How the heck can Nepal beat RSA without some age-cheating?

Jay

[kathiresan_v]

Aha, that explains it PKB. That same dude must be playing for them, masquerading as a 19 year old. How the heck can Nepal beat RSA without some age-cheating?

Jay

u must be kidding knowing, which year schooling PKB is talking about? haha

(as an opening batsman....

pkb, u toooo...,

Kathir

[PKBasu]

It would be tough for anyone my age to be masquerading as a 19-year-old! But it was amazing to hear of Nepal beating RSA.
And Kathir, I stopped opening the batting after being hit (on the chest) by a beamer from a Pakistani (that I was trying to hook) in a match in Princeton, NJ. (I was a guest player for Princeton against a team that had five members of the NJ All-Stars!). Now, I play about a match every 6 months -- the last being a particularly enjoyable one in which I got 20 runs off 7 balls last September. (But, in the heat and humidity of Singapore, bowling 5 wicketless overs of medium pace really took the micky out of me).

[david]

Wow! Opening bat and mediumpace, thats something PKB. Nice to know that you are enjoying a game or two even now.

A PRESS RELEASE from MRF

Chennai, Feb 20: Pace bowling guru, Dennis Lillee today predicted that India would be the "next cricketing Super Power" as he saw definite signs emnating from the current team that exceeded all expectations by drawing the recent four-Test series 1-1 against Australia.

Speaking on the occasion of a felicitation function got up by the MRF Pace Foundation of which Lillee is a Director, the former Australian fast bowler heaped praise on Sourav Ganguly-led Indian team. He said it played extremely well in the Test series, but could not sustain the level of performance in the tri-series that followed.

"After drawing the Test series, the Indian players thought they had done the job, and were mentally down thereafter," he said referring to the string of defeats to Australia, including 0-2 in the best-of-three finals.

The MRF Pace Foundation felicitated Javagal Srinath, who recently announced his retirement from cricket and among the first of the fast bowlers to graduate from the Chennai-based Academy in the 1990s, Zaheer Khan and Irfan Pathan, both also products of this training facility.

Looking ahead to the Indian cricket team’s tour to Pakistan, Lillee said it would be a closely fought series and that he expected a good performance from the Indians.

In his reply, Zaheer Khan, who suffered injury during the tour to Australia, said he was working on his fitness, but declined to say whether he would be fit enough for the tour of Pakistan if selected.


(A few lines were deleted as its too long)

[PKBasu]

India lost a key Super League match in the Under-19 world cup to South Africa by 3 runs. The big disappointment of the tournament so far has been AT Rayudu, who was knocking on the doors of the full Indian team until 6 months ago but is being overshadowed by several of his team-mates in Dhaka (especially the openers Shikhar Dhawan and AR Uthappa).

[PKBasu]

India thrashed Sri Lanka and West Indies to comfortably make the semi-final. But Rayudu managed to get himself suspended for dissent (quite a shocker in a junior!!) and therefore missed the semi-final against Pakistan, which India lost after making a paltry 169. The medium-pacers Gaurav Dhiman and RudraPratap Singh had Pakistan reeling at 92/5, but then an 88-run partnership took Pakistan to victory.
India had ofcourse beaten Pakistan in the Asia Cup under-19 event, but they lost went it mattered -- in the World Cup. (It's worth noting of course that both Irfan Pathan and Parthiv Patel were eligible for this junior World Cup, but didn't participate -- while several other teams had their test/ODI players playing).
I think the big find of this junior World Cup has been the opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan. The other star finds were the two opening bowlers mentioned above, slow left arm spinner Praveen Gupta, and wicket-keeper-batsman KKD Karthik.

[PKBasu]

Rayudu was actually suspended for the slow over-rate by his bowlers in the match against Sri Lanka. I think suspension's a rather harsh punishment for this type of offense...

[david]

Its all over for the colts.

I think apart from dhawan, Karthik really kept well. On par with patel if not better.

[Dhruv]

Rayudu was actually suspended for the slow over-rate by his bowlers in the match against Sri Lanka. I think suspension's a rather harsh punishment for this type of offense...

I think it was more because of the fact that athere was a slow over rate, he was warned more than once to get the team to speed up the rate but they did nothing and may have made it worse. So basically it is taken as team showing dissent, captain responsible and suspended.