Cricket Mania

In his new book, Gilchrist accuses Sachin of being dishonest. If it was some other Australian player, I would not have been writing the post first thing in the morning. The text from various news agencies follow: "Gilchrist surprisingly hinted at tensions with Tendulkar, revealing he was "hard to find for a changing room handshake after we have beaten India ", and questioned his honesty during the Monkeygate scandal." "He also took aim at Tendulkar for changing his story in an appeal he described as a "joke". "Tendulkar, who'd said at the first hearing that he hadn't been able to hear what Harbhajan had said - and he was a fair way away, up the other end, so I'm certain he was telling the truth - now supported Harbhajan's version that he hadn't called Symo a 'monkey' but instead a Hindi term of abuse that might sound like 'monkey' to Australian ears," Gilchrist said. "The Indians ...

Mathew Hayden and Greatness (or his apparent perception of the lack of it) - could probably be the reason why this great Australian opening batsman regularly makes media comments which are either blatantly wrong or are done only to invite attention. There is something wrong with Mathew Hayden, an all time great in his own right with the bat in his hand but the complete opposite when he talks to the media. Look at his recent comments in reverse chronological order - India is a third world country leading to misorganization (probably his reason for Australia loosing the 2008 India series) - I have the better of Zaheer Khan (well, a few third ball dismissals lately help his cause greatly) - Harbhajan is an obnoxious weed (blah blah blah) - Ishant should meet him in the boxing ring (that is what he can do if he cannot play the bowler) - And numerous others such innane comments. Mathew Hayden, given his record, would have been any nation's icon and the cric...

Critics argue that Test Cricket would die & would be replaced by a more swashbuckling form of game (20/20).Recently the likes of Ian Chappell,Peter Roebuck and the entire Australian media accused M.S. Dhoni of being the prime culprit & there was widespread criticism of his 8-1 field setting on the third day of the Nagpur test. Stats revealed that Aussies were only able to score something like 172 runs in the entire day's play & termed it as "disgusting leadership" which made the game boring & insured that most of the stands were empty. But is it Dhoni's job to insure that people who just understand one language of game (bang-bang)don't lose their interest in test cricket? Purist would argue that sometimes the non scoring battles are just as exiting. Personally my best memories in tests comes from the Melbourne test in 1999 on the 2nd day post lunch session, where i witnessed three greatest in the battleground. Mcgrath & Warne v...

Yuvraj Singh is an enigma – yes, that’s what he is. We all know how prodigious a talent he is ever since he made those glorious 84 on debut against Australia. Since then he has pretty much lived up to his talent, but only in the shorter form of the game. While he has so far played more than 200 ODIs for India, his test caps are only 20 odd. Now after being dropped from the Irani Trophy squad, I don’t expect him to be picked for the tests against Australia. We might say that main reason for that is the presence of fab-four in India’s middle order, which leaves no place for him. And, whenever he has got a chance, he has scored runs – the latest example being the Bangalore test against Pakistan where he scored 169. But guys lets face it that the bigger reason for his exclusion from the test team is his weakness against the moving ball and his inability to play quality spin bowling. And his weaknesses were clearly visible in the series against Aussies and Sri Lanka. Wh...