Analysis of Cricketing Event of the Week

When India landed on the shore of The Thames, during the last week of June, there was never any doubt that this English Side, will be up for a tough challenge, even at their home turf. Such has been the limited over prowess of the Indian cricket team, in recent times, that an in form English Team, who recorded the highest score in ODI a few weeks back, began the series as underdogs. There was no doubt, that the Indian bowling had much better quality, variation & steel, within, as compared to the recent opponents, that the England team faced of late, in their limited overs assignment. With the World cup, less than a year away, the eyes of the experts were on how, Indian players adjust to the English conditions, and vary their game, to deliver the best possible performance.  The break point of the this tour was supposed to be the Indian wrist spinning duo of Chahal & Kuldeep. They had wreaked havoc on the opposition batting line-up for the last couple of years and ...

CricAnsys after a gap of 2 months is about to write on the same topic once again. The much criticized, the much publicized, the much moral policed ball tampering saga- which threw Australian cricket out of the track a couple of months back. I wrote a blog on that incident at that time, where I had quite reasonably supported the decision of Cricket Australia, to punish the trio of Bancroft, Smith & Warner, with a year long ban. You can read the detailed blog here .  However, I did not expect, that only a couple of months after the mighty controversy regarding the ball tampering saga, there will be one more international captain, who will dare to try the same thing and hope to get away with it. But, as it was found, that Dinesh Chandimal, the Sri Lankan captain repeated the same offence in the 2nd Test Match vs West Indies, at Gross Islet, St Lucia. On the second day of the Test Match, in the last session, he was found applying some mint along with his saliva on the bal...

This story does not begin on the 19th of June, 2018 at Trent Bridge, Nottingham. Rather, I would say that the highest score in ODI cricket history that the English recorded in the third ODI against a battered and bruised Australian side, was the climax point of a 3 year old story in English cricket  - the climax of the same story which began on the 9th of March, 2015, at the Adelaide Oval. So, let's see what actually happened on this specific date, 3 years ago. England- The Mighty English, got knocked out of the 2015 cricket world cup, in the group stages, by none other than the perennial minnows of World Cricket, Bangladesh. That Rubel Hossain yorker, which uprooted James Anderson's off stump, on that fateful night, was the moment, English cricket woke up from a nightmare. Pre-2015 Cricket World Cup If you look at the phase, English Cricket was going through prior to the 2015 cricket world cup, they were living in a self induced bubble of pride and ego, regard...

Dear CricAnsys readers, let us start today's story with a forgotten hero. The reason, I call him forgotten, is because, I do not expect most of my readers to be acquainted with a 1970s school headmaster from Wellington, New Zealand, Mr. Bruce Alexander Grenfell Murray. Yes, this school master played a bit of cricket, and even went on to represent his country, but his international records are nothing close to stellar. As an opening batsman, he scored 598 runs from 13 test matches, an extremely average record at international level. But, the reason , I bring him up today, is that he came out in the open, to criticise professional level cricket in the early 1970s, stating that professional cricket made players more self centred and less of team-men. He even went on to say, that the notion of professional sports is an oxymoron, as it wasn't sport. It hardened players big time and made them selfish & narrow minded, in their views of the world. So, why have I brought...

When Afghanistan squared off against Bangladesh in the 3 match T20 series, very strangely, the Afghans started off as favourites. To be honest, I was surprised by the approach of the Bangladesh team management, in the press conferences, leading up to the series. Shakib himself showed wariness about the opposition, in the press meets, making it seem, as if they were playing against a well experienced test playing nation. That to me was quite baffling, because, Bangladesh has been having a dream run in international cricket, for the past few years, be it qualifying for 2015 WC quarterfinals, be it finishing as Asia Cup Runners up 2016, be it playing the semifinals of Champions Trophy 2017 or be it almost winning the Nidahas Trophy 2018. For a side like Bangladesh, which has been experiencing their best phase in international cricket of late, it was vastly disappointing that they went under-confident, into a bilateral series, specially against an Afghan side, which is yet to make the...

The glitz and the drama and the controversy and the joy and the emotions around the World's Greatest T20 league is over and suddenly, as a weekly cricket blogger, you start to discover that you have a dearth of topics to write about. Is it? Or, is it so, that once the hullabaloo of IPL gets over, and the dust around it settles, as a cricket fan, you start to find out, that there are personalities in the game of cricket, who may not have this larger-than-life image, like the Dhonis or the Kohlis, but they carry out their responsibilities, in a quiet & understated fashion, even today. But wait.. This blog is supposed to analyse the cricketing event of the week. Why is the writer trying to give this impression, that he will analyse an obscure cricketing personality, in the blog today? Well.. I will definitely analyse the cricketing event of this week, but unlike the last 7 weeks where I analysed IPL, and you readers, knew, what I was talking about, this cricketing ev...

A GAME PLAYED ON THE STREETS There is always a charm about listening to former legends of the game, maybe none so greater than the ‘Morgan Freeman’ of cricket- the great West Indian fast bowler, Michael Holding. In a recent interview Holding pointed out that he rarely watches one day cricket because he believes T20 cricket is more often a ‘circus’ than a sport. And I don’t think anyone who watches and understands the game even to a meagre extent would disagree that Test Cricket is the highest and the purest form of cricket. But, a recent incident made me rethink the fact. I saw a group of 8 to 10 year olds playing cricket, and almost half of them trying to emulate Rashid Khan and his leg spin. Rashid Khan, being no stranger to us for his heroics with the Sunrises Hyderabad, has surely left a deep impact on IPL 2018 and its audience. Another interesting story was once narrated by former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist. He described how when he was very young h...

IPL 11 has been a grand season in so many ways, that experts already started terming it as the best ever IPL season played, even before the playoffs started. As a cricket fan, I never really bought into those comments, as I felt, I have witnessed better IPL seasons than this one, in the past- until & unless I saw what transpired in the playoffs. I have written in my previous blogs on IPL, that 3 teams actually played the best cricket and got into the playoffs and as far as RR was concerned, they just got a bit lucky to find themselves in the playoffs. But, when the playoffs began, in the final week of IPL, the standard of cricket played actually portrayed that the 4 deserving top teams of the league are actually fighting it out in the middle, for the coveted title. So, without further delay, let us get to the individual playoff matches & analyse, the performance of the teams. Qualifier 1 This match reminded me of a match, played 15 years ago, at St. George...

Sir/Mam, The reason why you are reading this letter, is either because you have trolled IPL 'n' number of times, claiming the entire tournament to be fixed, or because, you, being a true cricket fan, are absolutely tired of listening to the fixing allegations about the consecutive close matches of IPL. If you are in the group of the former, then, the blog is for you; if you belong to the latter group, maybe this is what you wanted to shout out loud & tell the world, for long. So, let us begin with something that has been rocking all social media platforms, for the past few days.  KKR vs CSK- The advertise for the fixed IPL final, that was supposedly webcast on hotstar. The entire twitter & media went gaga over this, claiming its a fixed tournament and the finalists of the tournament are already decided by the organizing body, before the tournament began. Now, let us look a bit deep into this. I strictly believe there are 2 kinds of fans who follow ...

The round-robin stage of IPL has come to a conclusion at the end of the 6th week of the league, and probably this has been the most mind blowing version of the league after the much talked about 2014 edition of the competition. We will go into the detailed analysis of the teams & their performances in the later parts of this blog. However, to be short & crisp, CSK, SRH & KKR really slogged their back sides off to reach the playoff stages and for RR, (just because the term 'lucky' has got way too cliched in sports), let us just say that their prayers were stronger! Before, I get to the analysis of the final week of the league matches, I will request my first time readers to go through the analysis of the blogs of my last few weeks on IPL (links given below). While that will improve reader experience, at the same time, I have a habit of referring to my previous blogs, while writing. It will be comfortable for readers to follow any such references I make to m...