While Ruchir maintains the daily updates, am working on migrating him, and other colleagues on this blog, to the new site. Will take a week, tops. In the meantime, Ruchir, Manish and others will be found here; I meanwhile have as of today begun posting, on cricket and all else, here.

I don't get it -- these guys are playing cricket every day, aren't they? Why then would they need practice before playing more cricket? Humph! These players and their newfangled notions -- I really have no patience with this s***.

'I', here, would be the BCCI, and its response to a request from the players that they would like some time for practice ahead of their Test tour of Australia.

How do you explain to a Niranjan Shah, or a Sharad Pawar that playing ODIs at home against Pakistan doesn't exactly prepare you for Tests against the number one side in the world? That even players who play cricket every day need practice time -- to work on faults that have crept into their game, to fine tune their play, to try new things, to learn, to improve?

Until someone finds a way to make money out of practice, I am afraid the BCCI response will always be the same: sorry, no time.

I did say I was taking a bit of a breather from the cricket (which will continue till Monday), but this one seemed too good to pass by.

The algorithm developed by Narayanan and Maini — published in the May edition of the actuarial journal The Actuary — tries to correct this. “The challenge was to somehow incorporate the ‘not out’ innings into the batting average while accounting for the fact that the batsman could have scored more had the innings continued,” Narayanan said over the phone from Singapore, where he works with actuarial multinational Watson Wyatt.

The new method includes the unbeaten innings in the denominator. But to be fair to the batsman, it gives it a fraction value.

This is done by comparing the average number of balls (ANOB) the batsman faced in an innings over his career with the number of balls he faced (NOB) in an unbeaten innings. Divide NOB by ANOB to get the “weightage” of the innings.

“If a batsman faces an average of 50 balls an innings, and faced 25 while remaining not out, this (unbeaten) innings would be considered half an innings (weightage 0.5),” explained Maini, vice-president of Max New York Life India.

If NOB equals or is more than ANOB, the weightage given is 1. The runs are now divided by the number of innings, which include the sum of the weightages for all the unbeaten innings.

You want more? Here is a link to the full article, from the current issue of The Actuary.

Your turn -- what do you make of it all? Will come back here Monday, to check.

Oh, brilliant. I did say I was going to be away from this blog till the middle of next week, but stumbled on this column by Harsha Bhogle, that I just had to throw up here for information and debate.

I am not surprised at all that there are few takers for India’s unnecessary venture to Ireland. If anything, it gladdens me because it suggests, as the financial analysts like to say, that there is a full blown correction on in the cricket equity stakes. Sponsors are asking for quality, they are unwilling to back lame horses, and that is a sign of health, not despair.

Since sponsors speak the language of money, and since that is the language that Indian cricket is most conversant with, they have a vital role to play in regulating Indian cricket. When they rush in, as part of a herd, they inflate prices and anything that is illogical and hasty is unhealthy. There is no doubt that the over-supply of money has fattened Indian cricket, and I’m not only talking of those that play the game but more of those that manage it, and has diverted it from its principal objective of producing winning teams.

It isn’t that the arrival of money is bad in itself but it tends to lull people into thinking that all is well. Indian cricket needs to be marketed too, its image needs to be looked after too especially at a time like this, when fans are feeling let down and the marginal followers have deserted it. This was the time to sneak below the radar and do some serious planning, take some hard decisions. Instead we are playing irrelevant cricket.

It could well be the best thing to happen to Indian cricket in recent times -- sponsors picking and chosing what they will back. Too often in the past, the BCCI has shoe-horned matches and no-account series into little gaps in the Indian cricket calendar, regardless of the damage such money-making exercises do. And they have done this because each series, no matter how stupidly planned and organized, has fetched them an extra few million by way of revenue.

For instance, ask yourself why, with the start of the England tour just a week away from that date, India would want to play South Africa in Ireland? More so as India and South Africa are slated to meet often enough over the next twelve months?

By turning an emphatic thumbs down on the series, the sponsors are sending out a message -- one that, hopefully, the BCCI will heed.

Very interesting lineup for the first Test in Bangladesh, I notice: Five bowlers with a three-pace two-spin breakup; no Yuvraj Singh or VVS Laxman (which means the team management, in picking Karthick and Dhoni over the two seniors, decided to go with current form over labels, glory be).

Watching the match, off and on, but not covering it either on Rediff or on here; working, for now, on the project I told you guys about.

Thus far, the domain is up, the blog software I want to use has been installed and is running, and while I haven't begun fiddling around with the look and feel, links, membership and such, I have over the last couple of days, as time permits, been seeding it with the sort of posting that I hope to do much more off when the whole thing is up and running.

This first look at what I am up to is primarily to ask for feedback, thoughts, suggestions, whatever. Do note -- this is a tenth of the finished product; hopefully, by the time it is fully up and running, it will incorporate blogs by various people, on their particular interests.

For now, while working on the back end of this thing, am lining up volunteers: If there is something you follow passionately -- news, either as a whole or some section thereof; current events; movies, sports - again, overall or any particular sport you are passionate about; arts; writing -- heck, if there is anything of interest that you follow with a passion, and want to write about, mail me and let's talk about it -- panix at rediffmail.com or prem.panicker at gmail.com are the ones to use, so my office mail doesn't get distracted with this.

Thanks much and see you guys around; I should be back on the cricket blog here middle of next week, once work on this one gets streamlined.

Let's see -- the latest sting operation "uncovered" the following:

#: Greg Chappell was at outs with Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar. That is new, from a coach who at the outset of his tenure suggested to members of the media that there were a few "cancers" within the squad, that needed to be surgically eradicated if the team was to function as a team?

#: Tendulkar and Ganguly were both vying for the captaincy, and their route to that ambition was to give the designated captain, Rahul Dravid, less than the fullest cooperation due to him. Simultaneously, they had created their own camps among the younger players -- who, while backing their respective candidates, were similarly at outs with Dravid.

#: Yuvraj Singh was a law unto himself.

#: Sponsors were fiddling around with team selection, in a bid to ensure that "their men" played.

#: The seniors couldn't stand Chappell, because among other things, he was too "big" a player for them to boss around.

That is a summation of the "startling" revelations -- so what exactly is new, or startling, about any of it?

Actually, there is one eye-opening aspect to the whole sting operation: the selectors, all of them, knew.

Yet, if you throw your mind back to the various stories that were flying around in the days before the team to Bangladesh was chosen, the refrain was: How can we drop the seniors? What cricketing ground is there to drop them?

Also recall the official statements being made by the BCCI: Everything was A-okay in the team, there was no dissent, no factionalism, it was all one happy family and no, sponsor pressure was not an issue, we lost in the World Cup because of the format of the tournament.

While all that pap was being fed to consumers, the BCCI knew what was going on, the selectors knew what was going on -- and clearly, there was no attempt to do anything concrete about it. Greg Chappell was offered the NCA. Dravid, who apparently had no control over the team -- seniors and juniors alike -- is still the captain. Rebels in chief Sachin and Sourav were "rested" for three ODI games, with the selectors going to great pains to point out that there was no question of their being disciplined -- they were being rested because there is a great deal of ODI cricket to play still.

In other words, dissent was okay with the board and the selectors; factionalism was okay with the board and the selectors; everything the players did -- all of which clearly undermined the team's prospects in the World Cup -- was okay with the board and the selectors; none of it is deemed worthy of salutary punishment.

So then, why precisely must the rest of us get excited about these "new revelations" that are neither new nor revelatory, since all of it is okay with those who run cricket in this country?

It had to happen sooner or later, with "stings" being in vogue in Indian media it was just a matter of time before one of them focused on cricket (Come to think of it, if memory serves me right, it all started with cricket: The first widely-known "sting" operation conducted by the media was by Aniruddha Bahal (then Tehelka) with the help of Manoj Prabhakar, focusing on match-fixing..).


Stand back and watch the muck fly. Appetizers here & here, more likely to come over time. *Sigh*

England's former assistant coach Matthew Maynard, now replaced by Andy Flower, is considering an offer from the Board of Control for Cricket in India to work at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore.

"I've been asked to go out to India to work with their academy, and I'm sure there will be one or two more offers coming in," Maynard told BBC Wales Sport.

From this story. Meanwhile, I wonder what the response to Kapil's request was? You really need three guesses?

Till date, various governments have said it was up to the players; the players of various teams have said it is not their business to decide whether to take a call based on politics on whether to play a decreed opponent or no. And the ICC, typical of a body whose working emblem is the ostrich, has said it doesn't have an opinion about anything at all.

That seems set to change, with the Australian government seemingly on the verge of pulling its team out of a scheduled tour of Zimbabwe, even if means ponying up a sizeable fine.

Interestingly, Cricket Australia had earlier said it cannot boycott Zimbabwe on moral grounds, at a time when Australia's government responded to this appeal by petitioning the UN to call for the indictment of Robert Mugabe for crimes of which this is merely one sampling.

Manish Varma points out that the ICC has weighed in on the squash-ball-in-glove furore with "rare commonsense".

Here is the link.

And there an end? Or will the reply elicit a response that will call for a clarification that makes everything as clear as mud?

In passing, I wonder if our favorite horizontal bat exponent, Virender Sehwag, might like a squash ball? Since the technique is clearly okay with the authorities -- and since it clearly works for the one player who has tried it out -- why not give it a shot?

India will play South Africa in Ireland on June 26, 29 and July 1. On July 7, India will play Sussex in the first of two warm-up games ahead of the first in a three-Test series against England.

Not wondering why we need to squeeze in three games against South Africa who we will play in June in the Afro-Asian Cup, then again in February-March in a triangular series in Bangladesh (Oh, by the way, we are touring Bangladesh again in February-March of next year, so we have another chance to "prove a point"); then we play South Africa at home in March, then we go to South Africa in April, then we again play South Africa in June in another edition of the Afro-Asian Cup...

Not suggesting this is insane scheduling.

Not criticizing either the BCCI or the ICC.

Just saying.

And what might they have to do with cricket, you might ask? Well, read what Osman Samiuddin @ Cricinfo has to say on this:

It's strange, in fact, how India and Pakistan resemble each other so. On the field, there has been a spooky sameness; results and performances in South Africa were nearly identical, the Champions Trophy and World Cup, both failures. Both batting line-ups struggle in alien conditions, as fielders both are poor and both leaders increasingly embattled and embittered. Both now rebuild.

Off it, they are cricket's Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. One, pure monied trash, influential for no other reason than having too much of it, the other straight-up trailer trash, cricket's true basket case. They are tabloid fodder, stumbling from one front page to another: religion, player factionalism, spats, coaching intrigues, politicking, doping and even possible murder. How much of the news that you have read about these two sides recently has been about their cricket?

Right. Hopefully, the comparisons stop right there :-)

or thanking you... They are merely waving their sponsor's ad plastered on their bats for all cameras to record for posterity. Or so says this article in the DNA.

Excerpts:

Batsmen are instructed to lift their bats towards the pavilion each time they crack a fifty to ensure adequate TV exposure for the brand plastered on it as well as twirl around to allow enough time for photographers to capture the image. Bats are also not hung down when a player walks to the pavilion after a good knock as he has instructions to wave it to the crowd and the cameras milking additional publicity. The longer the time spent and more the runs scored all have performance based clauses which influence the way the batsman behaves out in the field.

Mohd. Kaif used to be one of my favourite players in the Indian team. Dedicated team player, cool head, great attitude and temperament. So, it was kind of an unpleasant surprise to see him whining time and again demanding reasons as to why he was dropped.

Simple reason, mate: You didn't do well enough lately to cement your place in the side. Fair enough, you could argue that you were given somewhat of a raw deal in the Malaysia matches post the WI series of last year where you performed very well indeed, but you have done nothing of note subsequently, or prior to the WI series. And you cannot complain of not being given enough chances in ODIs either, unlike say a VVS Laxman.

Complaining will do your cause no good. And if you want to make a come back into the Indian squad, give a call to Zaheer Khan and ask him how to do it. And later on, don't forget to ask Saurav Ganguly either on how to cement your place in the side when making a comeback.

We always knew that anything related to Indian cricket is a safe (& lucrative) money-making bet, but with the WC just around the corner, the amounts being mentioned as being invested in media coverage for the WC offers a revealing look at just how much money is riding on this sport.

For instance, this report mentions that the media machinery is kicking into higher gear, with every outlet worth its salt hiring an "expert", or two. But just take a look at the amazing figures being quoted: Rs 2.5 Crores for Kapil Dev for (presumably) providing match-analyses and/or pontificate on the prospects of players and teams, just for the World Cup. I have no clue, but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire aggregate career earnings (on field), of Kapil was less than this. Lesser amounts for lesser known ex-players, of course; but even the likes of Nikhil Chopra(!!) have been roped in (More power to them, they are milking the opportunity, and rightly so).

However, what it means to average Joes like me is that it is just a matter of time before we are overwhelmed by the hype and the din created by these media outlets trying to cash in on the WC fervor. Wonder how many Mandira Bedis will be inflicted on us this time ;-)

Reading an interview of Vengsarkar about general selection issues and the WC squad, I did a double-take on this:


Apart from Powar, was any player discussed?
Yes. Ashish Nehra and Dinesh Mongia.


Whaa? Ashish Nehra??? I'm guessing here that Vengsarkar is merely stating the facts about the meeting, still, the name of Nehra even being discussed at all as a prospect leaves one filled with disbelief..He wasn't even included in the list of 30 probables, last that I remember..

Check out this story that says Shoaib Akhtar & Mohammed Asif have not yet undergone drug tests carried out by the PCB since they
are in London seeking medical opinion on their knee and elbow injuries which could put them out of the World Cup. They will undertake the dope tests as soon as they return from London, a PCB official said .

With my eyebrows raised and tongue firmly in cheek, I implore you to refrain from any speculation on the timing of these consultations.



Update: The media is speculating, now...

Ravi Shastri, writing in his column in the Asian Age (sorry, URL hard to retrieve) makes quite an interesting suggestion, and I quote:


This win though still doesn't crown a triumphant campaign which must now be India's aim. They can fine tune the team for Kingsmead by
bringing in Irfan Pathan and it would mean laying off Wasim Jaffer for the moment. It's a drastic measure and in no way is a vote of no-confidence against
the likeable Mumbai opener. It's simply what India need best to stay on top against an opposition who would now be an enraged beast.

Pathan’s assets are obvious: he has been on this tour for over a month and his batting is just getting in order on these pitches. He is a left-hander to boot which is always a drain on the concentration of a bowler. As a left-handed bowler, he could play a good relieving role for the present strike-forces of the team. It’s horses for courses really. Even Dravid opening can become a possibility.

After initially dismissing the idea as outlandish, I must say the idea of Pathan opening grew on me after a while. While it will be quite unfair on Gambhir, who was picked as the backup opener, and while there will be plenty of chest-beating over the "experimentation" should it fail, at the end of the day it looked to me as a bet worth taking. Pathan has been batting very well lately, with two chanceless & unbeaten knocks of 40 and 111 in the Pootchefstroom practice match earlier (where, notably, the only other Indian batsman to cross 50 was Ganguly). Like a friend pointed out, after all we discovered Sehwag the opener in a similar manner.I wouldn't consider the option of Dravid opening for an instant (as Shastri suggests); we all remember too well what happened the last time around when he opened in a test match in Pakistan;he is worth his weight in gold as the #1 down batsman. Another fast bowling (ok, make that medium pace) option to the Indian attack will definitely help on the Durban wicket, which is supposed to be even more pacer friendly that Jo'burg.

That said, I'm skeptical of it happening, given the noises that our Chief Selector Vengsarkar has been making lately, stressing a conservative approach and fixed batting positions at the top.

The team selection was pretty interesting for multiple reasons. For one, it clearly validated the buzz that has been growing increasingly loud in the recent days, that there is no talent good enough in the domestic circuit to break in into the national team.
Ganguly, I felt, made a comeback into the team purely on the basis of his experience, rather than any good performances in the domestic circuit (except one hundred recently, he had been having a rather poor run in both domestic matches and previously in the county circuit, where ironically Dinesh Mongia was prolific); which validates the "no young talent available" theory further. While whether he makes a significant difference to the team remains to be seen, but you can be rest assured that the media will have plenty of material over the next few weeks to drum up ratings (e.g. Headlines like "Greg raised his eyebrows at Ganguly", "Dada & Dravid seen in animated conversation in the mens room" etc).
I see his selection as a purely pragmatic move based on the current situation and the lack of domestic talent, and hopefully it will settle the Ganguly soap opera once and for all. If he performs, he deserves to be in the side; if he doesn't, unlikely that the question will ever be raised again.

Based purely on performance, Raina, Pathan, Sehwag and Mongia needed to be dropped, that Sehwag survived is to me a miracle. The only arguments one could make for Pathan surviving was either the long-term view ("young prospect with potential") that could've been applied to Raina as well, or the all-rounder theory, which doesn't quite wash given that the requirement for an all-rounder in test matches is somewhat lesser, than in ODIs . The case of Mohd. Kaif is the strangest one, and I suspect the ambivalence I have towards him is shared by other folks too. He does not seem to have enough talent to force his way into the side, yet you could not ask for a more complete team player. Take the case of how he was handled: Prior to the WI tour, he was having a horrendous run, and he should not have made it to the team for the tour. Yet, they showed faith in him, he went along, scored 3 fifties in 5 ODIs, and made a century and a fifty in the three tests that followed. Next thing that happens is that he is dropped in the first Malaysia match to make room for Tendulkar (in the chances he subsequently got he did no worse than the other stars in the team); and now in the first test series after that WI tour where he performed so much better than others in the test matches, he has been dropped again. Hell, they seem to prefer to include Dinesh Kartik in the team as a batsman over Kaif, as seen in the 20/20 match.
I, for one, was hoping Aakash Chopra made it back. His sticky style of technically correct batting and holding one end up would have been very useful in the current situation, where we barely seem to get a decent start. Gambhir, though, is a fair call given his domestic performance (though he might have to cut down on the risks he normally takes to be successful).

Sometimes, a story like this one in the Cricket sections of news sites can leave you speechless....