Is there a future for One Day Cricket? (or will the 2011 World Cup ever happen?)

I don’t have enough coherent thoughts on this, but I’ve been wondering if there is really a future for ODI cricket.. No, this is not a reaction to India’s early exit.. Well, maybe it is, but the fact is that cricket is going to look very different in 4 years than it does today..

The schedule for Twenty20 World Championship has been announced (and as expected, India and Pakistan are in the same group, as are Australia and England).. We’ll have a better picture once that is done, but my feeling is that Twenty20 is slowly showing the signs of being the next big thing. Outside the Subcontinent, it already has enough following.. As we get closer to September, it’s sure to gain a hold in India as well. And its gain would most likely mean One Day Cricket’s loss.

Cricket cannot support 3 different formats. 2 are bad enough.. Test Cricket is not about to go away any time soon.. it’s been around for over 100 years, and has too much going for it for people to stop playing or watching it. So it ends up being a contest between ODIs and Twenty20. If ICC wants to popularize cricket in other nations, ODIs cannot be the solution. There aren’t too many sports that go on for a whole day, and none of them is very popular. 4 hours are much more reasonable, I think.

Of course, Twenty20 is only just starting and there are several kinks that need to be straightened out.. The game seems heavily biased towards batsmen, but that may just be a reflection of the quality of bowlers playing in those matches. It will be interesting to see how things go in the World Championship when all the best players come in to play. It may still involve mindless hitting.. it’s much easier to do that for 20 overs than it is for 50.

More importantly, there is already a big gap between Test and One Day Cricket.. so much so that several teams, at various points of time, have opted to have very different teams for the two forms. Twenty20 will widen that gap even further. People like Dravid, Kallis, Bell, Yousuf etc. might find themselves without a spot because there won’t be a need to have someone to “play the anchor role”.. While players like Sehwag, Yuvraj, Gayle and Afridi, hard hitting batsmen who can bowl as well, may find themselves increasingly in demand.

None of this is going to happen in a hurry.. But 4 years is a long time.

Federer loses again!!

For a few seconds I thought BBC had messed up and were reporting a two week old news. Then I read more carefully.. Just a couple of weeks ago, Canas had beaten Federer in Indiana Wells, ending his hard court streak. And now, he’s done it again!!

Given the way Federer has been playing for the last couple of years, it’s almost unthinkable that someone, other than Nadal, can beat him twice in the same month! And Canas, if I remember correctly, is coming after a long injury layoff, must be dream comeback for him!

Of course, French Open is still a few months away, so need to start panicking just yet!

Six Sixes in an Over

Sir Gary Sobers. First person to do it in First Class Cricket.

Nottingham vs. Glamorgan. St. Helens, Swansea. August 31, 1968.

  

Herschelle Gibbs. First person to do it in ODI Cricket.

South Africa vs. The Netherlands. Basseterre, St Kitts. March 16, 2007.

A True Cricket Fan

Found this through a friend..

 

source: Trinidad Express

And so it ends..

At the time of writing, India still need another 122 runs from 16.3 overs. They have 4 wickets left, but really it’s all down to Dravid. So unless he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, this is as far as India goes in this World Cup.

And the Little Master, the best batstman in the World Cups and one of the best batsman ever, may have just played his last World Cup innings. A sad end indeed..

11.3	Fernando to Tendulkar, OUT, and Tendulkar goes! Could this be his last World Cup innings? The ball pitched outside off stump, nipped back, Tendulkar lunged forward, the ball hit the inside edge of the bat and crashed into leg stump, huge huge wicket for Sri Lanka and India are fading away.

SR Tendulkar b Fernando 0 (5m 3b 0×4 0×6) SR: 0.00

Other thoughts about the race

Quite interestingly, the top 3 drivers were all driving their first races for their teams.

It was good to see Jean Todt at the race.. He is, of course, the company CEO, but maybe he thought with Brawn and Stepney and Schumacher gone, it would be nice to have at least one familiar face around in the pits. But where was Michelle Yeoh?

Hamilton’s first corner maneuver to go from 5th to 3rd in a flash was positively the most creative driving I have seen since Renault’s amazing jump starts a few years ago.

Fellow debutant, Kovalainen, did no such thing on the starting grid, but he did execute a perfect 36o in his Renault! It cost him a position, but I say it was totally worth it!!

And talking about Renault.. they looked a completely different team from last year, and Fisichella needed all his experience to keep Massa away and bring home those 4 points. Just goes to show how much the team misses Alonso, despite whatever Briatore might have to say. Alonso may have a shot at completing his hattrick, but it definitely doesn’t look like Renault will come anywhere close to theirs.

Williams will have a few things to cheer about.. Rosberg equalled his best F1 finish. He’s a much better driver than that, though, and surely one to watch out for in the years to come. But the biggest news from the team’s point of view would definitely be that he finished ahead of both the Toyotas. Remember the Williams are running the same Toyota engine and they will be itching to prove that they can make a Toyota engine in a Williams car perform better than the Toyota engine in the Toyota car. What that would mean for Team Toyota, who are still searching for their 1st win in their 6th season? Only time will tell..

Another guy who should be quite happy with his performance is Sato.. Driving a car he had never seen before the weekend, he still managed a fairly respectable 12th. He didn’t get any points for his efforts, and in fact it was 2 spots down from his starting grid position, but at least he finished ahead of his former teammate, Button.

Barichello, in the other Honda, finished 11th just ahead of Sato, which basically means Honda won’t be making any big waves this season either.. Keep in mind that Honda had probably the best car on the grid in the second half of last season, with Button scoring more points than anyone else in the last 6 races. And Super Aguri is basically using that same car (some rules can indeed be bent!!). So, much like Williams, they are in a very interesting position to upstage the “real” Honda team.. now that would be fun to watch!

Oh, and Honda should get an award for the most creative paint job on an F1 car, ever! Almost no sponsor logos and a beautiful blue and green Earth.

As for other teams with customer engines weren’t that lucky.. Both Redbull cars finished below the Renaults.. and neither Spyker nor STR could come anywhere close to Ferrari. Except when they were being lapped, of course.

Albers had possibly the worst excuse ever for wrecking a car.. apparently he was distracted by his ear plug and forgot to brake. Hmmmm.

Perfect start for the Flying Finn

What a fabulous start for Raikkonen, winning his debut race with Ferrari! A wonderful race for Massa as well, starting from the back of the grid to end up with 3 points. Had the gearbox not failed yesterday, we might very well have seen a Ferrari 1-2. What way that would have been to start the season!!

Of course, McLarens shouldn’t be forgotten.. Hamilton, especially.. first driver to finish on the podium on his F1 debut since Villeneuve did it in ‘96, also at Melbourne!! and the first English driver to do so in over 40 years! And of course, Alonso just seems to have picked it up where he left off last year..

But the Ferraris are clearly the best cars on the grid at the moment, and the rest of the teams have a lot of catching up to do. This is more and more looking like a Ferrari vs McLaren season, although BMW looked pretty good at the start. Heidfeld did well to end up with 5 points, but they’ll have a lot of work to do before the next race to challenge the leaders. In Theissen’s own words they are not quite ready to win races on their own, but if they can pull things together soon, things could get really exciting this season!

   

PS: posted using a Ferrari. Acer Ferrari. hehehe

RIP: Indian Cricket Team

India 191 (49.3 ov)
Bangladesh 192/5 (48.3 ov)

Bangladesh won by 5 wickets (with 9 balls remaining)

     

Sad day for Indian cricket.. as one of my friends put it, given the way Sri Lanka have been playing, it’s very likely they will beat India as well, meaning Indians might as well start planning their return trip.

The only consolation, perhaps, is that they won’t be alone in that trip. It’s raining quite hard in Kingston (to quote Cricinfo), and with every passing moment it seems more and more likely that Ireland will beat Pakistan. Since Pakistan have already lost to West Indies, this would mean the end of their campaign.

There was so much noise in the blogosphere (I finally get to use that word!) about ICC fixing the World Cup schedule when their official website proclaimed that there will be an India-Pak match on April  15.. Ah, the irony!

In which Gibbs destroys the Dutch bowling attack

29.1	van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Violence! Gibbs charged down the track and hoicked it over long on.

29.2	van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Murder! Floated on the leg and middle stump line and Gibbs sends it soaring over long-off.

29.3	van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Carnage! Flatter one this time but it makes no difference to Gibbs. He just stands there and delivers. This one also has been sucked over long off

29.4	van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Wah Wah! Low full toss and guess where this went Yep. A slap slog and it went over deep midwicket! He is going to go for 6 sixes in this over!

29.5	van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Short in length, on the off stump line and Gibbs rocks back and swat-pulls it over wide long off. SImply amazing. What a batsman. This is pure violence!

29.6	van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, He has done it! One-day record. No one has hit six sixes in a row. GIbbs stands alone in that zone. And the minnow bashing continues! Full and outside off and bludgeoned over deep midwicket

353 from 40 overs.. makes you wonder where they would have ended if this had been a 50 over game!

Gibbs got out shortly after his record breaking effort, but Boucher and Kallis made a ridiculous 139 from the last 10 overs (175 from the last 11 if you include the over mentioned above). If this had indeed been a full length match, who knows, Ian Chappell’s prediction might very well have come true!

AB de Villiers.. go kick yourself!!

Ducking the World Cup

Years of dreaming.. Months of practice.. Weeks of planning.. and it doesn’t even last a few minutes!

A look at two of today’s World Cup debuts that ended within the first two balls..

0.1	Stelling to de Villiers, no run, Billy Stelling switches on the right channel. Just outside off, short of driveable length, hint of away movement and left alone

0.2	Stelling to de Villiers, OUT, Gotcha! Stelling nails de Villiers. Short in length, well outside off and de Villiers couldn’t resist a flash. All he got was a under edge which was safely pouched by the ‘keeper.

AB de Villiers c Smits b Stelling 0 (2b 0×4 0×6) SR: 0.00

0.1	Franklin to Joyce, 1 no ball, a no-ball to start with, fullish and dug out into the covers

0.1	Franklin to Joyce, OUT, (almost) perfect start for new Zealand. A soft dismissal, short outside off stump, almost a long hop, which Joyce swishes at and gets a thin but audible top edge to and McCullum flings the ball high. An easy catch and a real sucker punch

EC Joyce c McCullum b Franklin 0 (1m 2b 0×4 0×6) SR: 0.00