The Sports-India Community

The Supreme Court sacked the president and the secretary of the BCCI for failing to follow through on its orders. I hope these guys are tried for contempt of court and one of them who lied for perjury is thrown in jail. Anurag Thakur, BJP MP, is a special kind of vermin. Not because he is in the BJP, but, because he is shameless (see below). To be fair, I do not know if he is a good or bad cricket administrator. He maintained status quo at the BCCI, I think. But, at the age of 25, he was the president of the Himachal Pradesh cricket association because he was the son of the CM (or ex-CM). He appointed him as the chief selector and on the morning of the match with J&K, walked into the dressing room, appointed himself the captain of the Ranji team. Scored a 0 and got two tail-end wickets. J&K won. Why? Because he wanted to be in some position for which the BCCI wanted the person to be at least a Ranji player. So, he made himself a Ranji player by diktat. The shamelessness with which this was done says that he is a special kind of vermin, which seems to be the requirement to be a sports administrator. [Full disclosure, my grandfather led the Bengal Kabbadi Association and served at a high position on the Bengal Olympic Association. But, I hope he was not this kind of vermin. Don't know.] Anyway, wrt Thakur, good riddance. Now, he did help build a beautiful stadium at Dharmashala. I guess that counts as something. But, unless some of you know of great achievements by this guy, I am glad to see him gone. Good riddance.

According to a report, Kumble might soon be elevated to as team director as the CoA are keen on structural changes ... If this happens then the series against Australia could be his last as coach and he could take the new role on April 14 ... There are also talks of elevating Rahul Dravid from the A team to the senior side, in case Kumble takes up the team director’s role and decides against traveling with the side.

Anil Kumble, who has been coach of the Indian cricket team since June 2016, could be promoted to Team India director while Rahul Dravid, who is coach of the India A and U-19 sides, might become the new coach according to reports.

Indications are that the board is planning a structure similar to the England and Wales Cricket Board. The CoA seems to have given Kumble time to decide on the offer as it would require him to devote more time other than what he spends with the senior national team.

This might not be the only rejig. The BCCI is also not keen on having the cricket advisory committee, whose last job was to appoint Kumble as coach. Instead, to reduce Kumble’s workload if he takes up the director offer, one from the committee of Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly is likely to be entrusted with the responsibility of handling cricket operations of all BCCI teams.

Rahul Dravid to replace Anil Kumble as head coach after India-Australia Tests?

It is interesting to see how Sachin, Sourav, Rahul, Kumble and VVS have effectively taken over all key decision making about cricket at the BCCI!

On his Twitter page, Shaun Tait announced that he has become an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI).

Australian cricketer Shaun Tait becomes an Overseas Citizen of India

Chetan Chauhan is now a minister in UP (for Sports and Youth Affairs), while former UP first class cricket Mohsin Raza is minister for minority affairs.

Navjot Sidhu of course is a minister in Punjab.

Cheteshwar Pujara will return to Nottinghamshire to play county cricket, Ishant will join Worcestershire and Ashwin will be playing for Warwickshire. Jadeja apparently is also in negotiations with a county side. This is excellent preparation for next year's test tour of England.

Pujara has failed in his four innings for Nottinghamshire, failing to get to 40 even once. Ashwin (playing for Worcestershire) failed in the match against Notts, going wicketless and making only 19 with the bat. But Ashwin had a good match against Gloucestershire, taking 3/94 and a match-winning 5/68 (and also making 36 and 28 with the bat).

India A will play a couple of 4-day games against New Zealand A. The squad (for the hopefuls just outside the test team) is: Priyank Panchal, R Samarth, Sudip Chatterjee, Shreyas Iyer, Ankit Bawne, Karun Nair (capt), Hanuma Vihari, Rishabh Pant (wk), Shahbaz Nadeem, K Gowtham, Navdeep Saini, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Siraj, Ankit Rajpoot

Surprisingly, Sudip Chatterjee gets more chances. Sudip, I think, is technically sound and has temperament to be a good #3, but, I do not think he is that talented. Vihari is talented and if he develops could be India test material. Iyer, Nair, and Bawne are the best junior bats we have got.

What happened to Mukund as the opener? Or do the selectors think that he does not need any more A-team experience? Mukund has floundered in tests. Maybe he should play in the A-team and get some form back a la Nair.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/ ... ms-cricket

I didn't realize quite how many surgeries this guy had...

He is an inspiration. We won the world cup because our selectors chose the top 7 batsmen, we really did not have depth. And, they choose Munaf and Zaheer and they were backed up reasonably by Nehra. Ashwin bowled pretty well and Bhajji kept it tight. Nehra was the pick of the bowlers in the semis when we beat Pakistan. He kept it tight and finished it off at the end. He promptly fractured a finger and did not play in the final. Sreesanth played and stunk it up again showing lack of depth. We were lucky that we did not have any major injuries to our top 7 batsmen or top 4 bowlers!

The 6 for 23 against England at Durban in the 2003 World Cup will be my abiding memory of him. Definitely played a big part in winning us the 2011 World Cup too.
Nehra has announced his retirement from all cricket in early November (just over a fortnight from now).

Shocking to know of the untimely demise of M.V.Sridhar - A medical Doctor, prolific scorer in domestic cricket, and an able adminstrator.

Former Hyderabad skipper M.V.Sridhar no more

51 is way too young to leave this world. RIP, Doc!

- Varma

Really sad to hear about the demise of MV Sridhar. RIP.

That is shocking! For those of you that followed Ranji cricket closely (and Hyderabad team in particular), Sridhar was a stalwart. Lived in Azhar's shadow for too long but I watched him at his practices at the Secunderabad Gymkhana many times and always felt he could/should have played for the Indian team (especially when we lacked good openers).