Tendulkar and ineffective bowling drags India down !!

The more he scores, the more questions remain unanswered and that has been theme behind every innings of Sachin (not now but for several years now). His pathetic start (15 balls to open the account) and the maiden overs he gave in 24th over (and I think one more before that) are all an indication that fizz has long drained out of his efforts. Sachin was unable to break the shackles for long and his timing and placement was simply missing and in the end, his innings did more damage than good. He somehow carried on but his effort was painful and a scoring rate of 69 in this day and age is utter nonsense. The pitch was docile at best and the SA attack could be termed industrious and nothing more. There was the usual glare and stare from Nel and Ntini ran in fast but nothing earthshaking and nothing unfamiliar to Sachin but he simply choose to be an accumulator at a miserly pace until his innings ruined things once and for all. Dravid was ok (with a scoring rate of nearly 80) but he too should have pressed the pedal early but he was weighed down by the monotonous hogging of the strike by Sachin, who was simply unable to rotate the strike. I watched his run out amidst a small crowd of spectators and not one reacted with that 'robbed off a deserving 100' comment, when he got run out at 99 !! That said it all since there was a collective sigh of relief, when he got out.
The middle order/lower middle order of Rohit Sharma,Chawla and Powar showed their lack of class in batting by not applying themselves; India managed some 50 runs short of where there should have been, mainly due to Sachin's excruciatingly slow innings and clearly missed Dhoni's finishing touch.
When India bowled, they knew well that they have to get Kallis out but somehow they did everything except that. RP Singh, has somehow survived for so long without ever looking threatening. His wickets in Bangladesh were mainly some innocuous leg side glances going to keeper (except the odd good one) and here too he looked singularly unimpressive, even against Ireland. With Zaheer off color in the initial spell, it was left to Piyush for some magic. Chawla did not disappoint but SA was always under control and total was always gettable, as long as Kallis stayed and he did stay put. There was a breif period of hope, when Zaheer trapped Boucher and there was still some to get but Philander seems to be a good find and India drifted to another defeat. For some strange reason, Dravid refused to bring on Sachin and the common place stuff dished out by Yuvaraj is not going to win you games. Powar too is not going to be effective even against a lame duck side like SA, who can not handle spin. I was imagining how Srilanka would have played a similar match (1st of all, they don't have to be content with the non-performers, who chase records alone in the top end of the batting); they would have simply strangled SA with Murali's breath taking wickets and Jaya bottling one end up. Somehow, I got the feeling that India was afraid to win even; they never looked like running away with it, even though it was well within their grasp. So, another day and another loss- yikes, it gets tiring to repeat it over and over.

India Cap - Available for anyone with connections

A lot has happened since my last post. So, let me start with the team selection - for a full fledged tour like this and taking on a resurgent English side, India prepared itself in the worst possible manner. There was fiasco after fiasco - starting with the coach appointment and Ford ditching them. Then, there is the usual matter of botched selection attempts. Dilip Vengsarkar saw to it that he filled the team with non performers from Bombay - I could not understand the logic of dropping Viru (mind you; I am no fan of his inconsistent ways) as well as Bhajji. Both were decent in the Afro-Asian cup and I thought that both deserved a spot in the test team at least. I also thought that Murali Karthik, the only Indian with a full county contract this year (playing for Middlesex) should have got a recall but one must remember that his name is not ending with a 'kar' and he is not playing for Mumbai and hence there was little chance of he making the 14.
So, how did they come up with that name - Chandu Borde, the grand old man from Pune for the coach. Well !! if you want to have a hearty laugh, go through this and laugh till it aches
http://i3j3cricket.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/ford-gate/
Maybe the powers that govern thought that we need a 70+ plus man in the 75th year after India began playing test cricket in England. Anyway, I have nothing against Borde per se but question the relevance in this day and age, where the game has moved to a laptop age. You can duck under by saying that it is still a game, where someone has to hit it with a wooden piece as far as it can go but believe me, things have changed. All you have to do is to look at the ODI economy rates. There was a time, when an economy rate of 4 was considered decent at best; today, if you have 4, they will knight you in the 10th game itself.
So, India lands in cold Ireland (not an ideal way to prepare for a 80+ day tour) and begin playing against a lowly Irish side, whose players felt that they have better things to do than playing India. Then, half the team gets the flu and guess what - the back room manovours begin; the thank you messages for the vote banks are reciprocated and guess what some one called Arjun Yadav (who was best known for beating up Rayadu in Ananthapur in a crikcet match.. see this link.. http://www.cricketfundas.com/featuredec52005bvs.html) gets the India cap. My god - it is real cheap man..it is real cheap. Things can not get any worse than this.

Ford ditches BCCI !! Another Fiasco

BCCI ended up in another royal mess, when Graham Ford, whom they had selected to replace Chappel as coach, decided show them the middle finger. This is obviously not the 1st time BCCI had ended up with cow dung on the face and certainly not the last time also. The problem I have is that they never seem to learn from any of this mess, they are getting into.
So, why did Ford decide to dump arguably the most profile cricketing coach job especially after traveling all the way from London to Chennai. My guess - he got cheesed off, after seeing the BCCI chaos - the manner of selection, the general unpreparedness of the selection committee and perhaps even the delayed manner in which the presentation went (based on newspaper reports, the demi God of the Indian cricket {readers of this blog know who is the God!} Sunil Gavaskar, showed up just 10 minutes before arriving from Goa). Ford could have also felt the lifestyle change is perhaps not worth it but that is something he had already known before; lastly, the 1 year contract term, dished out by the mandarins of BCCI also did not deserve the merit, perhaps in his estimate.
So, what could have BCCI have done to end up where they did ? Well !! In such high profile jobs, there has to be a plan B always - BCCI should have come out a 2nd candidate as a backup and should have brought in a clause where in the event of 'Kent not releasing Ford', Embuery is the candidate (I am not sure whether John Emburey deserves the spot since he had no credentials coming from Middlesex who got relegate to 2nd division).
So, where do you end up with this kind of mess ? Well !! Back to square one as the demi God had put it.