Cricket Live

Trust Dhoni to come up with another set of excuses. What is it with Dhoni and this new-found self, where he just refuses to accept that his team played badly!

After all, after losing a game by 200 runs, one can barely make excuses. While losing the toss or an inexperienced bowling attack can be used as excuses to justify a loss, it is difficult to understand a 200-run loss by any stretch of imagination.

And why would he not answer a question thrown to him by the media. After all, it was not a derogatory question; only related to whether Rahul Dravid’s absence in the team. Dhoni could have easily said that his job was to play with the best team given to him by the selectors. Instead, he shot back that it was a wrong question to ask and that he wouldn’t answer it!

Then, he was asked about Yuvraj Singh’s form and he gave it back, yet again. Why? Isn’t that a valid question? Some may say that Yuvraj deserves a long rope in the side, while others may not. Why cannot it be answered straight?

Clearly, Dhoni is losing his charm.

For the umpteenth time, England’s Stuart Broad would have probably thought that he could get away. So, as he tried his level best to take a wicket in the second England-Pakistan Test match and failed, he thought that he could hit the Pakistani batsman and get away again. After all, his father is a match referee himself!

Thankfully, neither the ball hit the batsman too hard, nor did the match referee Ranjan Madugalle overlook the incident. Broad was charged by the referee and now stands to lose some money or a game. One can be rest assured that he will not be banned for a game, but at least it is a start.

Talking of a start, one wonders whether this is the start of a turnaround for the Pakistanis. They lost the first game by 354 runs to England, and followed it up with an 72 all out in the ongoing Test match.

However, in the second innings, when it looked like the game was going to be decided by an innings win, the likes of debutant Zulqarnain Haider, Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Aamer got together with the bat and ensured that the Pakistanis will fight till the last ball is bowled.

While they may still lose the game, it could just be the start of something new.

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It is difficult to define some of the shots that the Indian batsmen played on the third day of the third Test match against Sri Lanka.

While I agree that Virender Sehwag plays his game the way he always does, attacking and aggressive, he also needs to respect the opposition bowler to begin. Especially when his team is in a position from where they can collapse.

Then, there was Sachin Tendulkar. It was early on the third day and he hadn’t got his eye in, and yet, he played a stroke against Lasith Malinga, that, at best can be defined as avoidable.

VVS Laxman got to his half century, but was mesmerized a little by Ajantha Mendis. He could have seen off that period, but what he did was to play the ball straight to the slips. MS Dhoni got hit by Lasith Malinga once, and he tried to pull the next ball to the fence – instead giving a simple catch to the wicket-keeper.

One gets the sense that the top-order should have watched the way the Indian tail, especially Amit Mishra and Abhimanyu Mithun batted. They got hit many times, but failed to get ruffled and hung on for almost a match-saving partnership.

Sachin Tendulkar created history at the start of the third and the final Test match between India and Sri Lanka at the PSS in Colombo. By being a part of the Test match, Tendulkar became the first ever player in the history of the game to feature in 169 Test matches, something that no other player has ever done.

The previous record was held by Steve Waugh, who had played in 168 Test matches for Australia.

Tendulkar’s captain, MS Dhoni also entered the record books on the first day of this Test match as he lost his eighth successive toss and in turn was put into field by the opposite captain, Kumar Sangakkara.

This meant that the Indians had another struggling day in the field and managed to only throttle the Lankans without picking up too many wickets. Sangakkara was dropped early and looked set to get to his fourth successive century before he was dismissed.

The record for most number of successive centuries in Test cricket is held by Everton Weekes who had scored six in a row.

© CricPad

Top-ranked India will pray the coin drops in their favour as they attempt a series-levelling win in the third and final Test against Sri Lanka starting at the P. Sara Oval on Tuesday. India, who trail 1-0 in the series, were forced to bowl first in batting-friendly conditions in the previous two matches after skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni lost the toss both times.

It meant a punishing struggle for an attack shorn of injured pace spearhead Zaheer Khan, as Sri Lanka ran up 520-8 in the first Test in Galle and 642-4 on a featherbed wicket at the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) in Colombo.

Dhoni, who has now lost seven tosses in a row, refused to blame his bowlers even though they claimed just 15 wickets in the first two Tests.

“We have bowled first both times where there was nothing in the wicket for the bowlers,” he said. “In such conditions, it is difficult to either take wickets or contain the runs.”

Dhoni defended leading off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, who has managed only two wickets in the series so far at an unflattering average of 152, saying flat pitches rarely helped slow bowlers.

“There was no turn or bounce for him in both games,” the Indian captain said. “But he is a match-winner and if he gets favourable conditions, he will be a different bowler.” Read more »

Virender Sehwag became only the third batsman in the Test cricket world to be stumped on a score of 99. Yes, with the team looking to chase down a target of 642, Sehwag made the cardinal error of dancing down the track to a bowler who was bowling for the first time in the day and in the process, missing the ball and getting stumped.

It is a wonder that Sehwag has even got away doing this before. However, there is a difference between what he usually does when he is in the 90s (or 190s or 290s!) and in this game. On other occasions, he has had the measure of the bowler and hence realises what he is bowling. In this case, it was Suraj Randiv’s first ball of the day and he had bowled only three overs earlier.

This had happened in the 2008 edition of the Asia Cup as well when Sehwag had started off well in the final and looked like taking the game away from the opposition. Ajantha Mendis came on for his first ball and Sehwag tried to hit him out of the park and was stumped.

As it is seen here, he does not seem to learn!

Now that is good news indeed. MS Dhoni has had a plethora of excuses at the end of the first Test match in Galle about how the swing of Lasith Malinga was the reason behind their loss in the game. It has not been declared that Malinga has been declared unfit for the second Test match and will miss the game.

So, with Muralitharan out of the series with his retirement, and Malinga injured, India will be facing a virtually second-string attack. Can we expect a better performance from the Indian batting now?

No, not that one expects the side to win the game. Because to win a Test match, they will need to get the opposition out twice, and with the kind of bowling line-up that India has, it is almost impossible to expect that.

But, can we at least expect a draw? With a batting line-up like the one India has, it is a surprise that the side managed to capitulate twice in two days, but now that they are being helped with a reduced bowling, one can at least hope for that much. No?

There are rumours that the given Shahid Afridi has resigned from the captaincy of the Test match cricket, the captaincy of ODIs and T20Is may also be given to Salman Butt. One hopes for Pakistan cricket’s sake that this is not true, because that would mean that the hierarchy in the cricket board is shorn of any logic or rationale.

True that Afridi made a mistake in doing what he did, but that does not mean that the Pakistan Cricket Board also makes the same mistake. Under Afridi, the Pakistani side seems to be gelling well as a team, and to expect the same to happen under someone else in a set-up will be foolhardy.

Pakistan’s basic problem has been that their decision-making has been so haphazard that one almost feels that the time may be right to get in a new PCB chairman. Under Ejaz Butt, Pakistani cricket has degenerated like never before and one gets the sense that if this were to continue the way it is, life may never get back to normal for them.

And yes, Afridi should be reprimanded for being so whimsical about his decision to quit.

Warning signs are here for the Indians with the Test series against Sri Lanka to come. First and foremost they were handed a pasting when the second-string Sri Lankan batting hammered a 500-plus total at the run-rate of four runs per over, and then, the batting was made to struggle for its runs.

Of the two, the Indians will be more worried about their bowling. The batting was relatively better and managed to get to 300 at a decent run-rate with a century to Yuvraj Singh and an 89 for Gautam Gambhir. The rest of them were coming off a lay-off and seemed rusty, but come the 18^th of July, they can be expected to get better.

The question is about the bowling. Will the Indians have the firepower to take even ten wickets? Ishant Sharma is not only coming off a lay-off but was also injured before that. Abhimanyu Mithun has never played an international before. Munaf Patel always starts off looking half fit and progressively deteriorates after that.

Harbhajan Singh was unfit for the tour game, and the other two spinners were just taken apart. Pragyan Ojha captured five wickets and will partner Harbhajan, but will they have sufficient fuel in the bowling tank?

I don’t think so!