My Interview with AZ Central: July 2009

Buying a cricket bat online

Buying a bat online can be risky and at times you might not get what you want. We always want to feel the bat before we buy it as we used to do as a kid. But unfortunately, here in Arizona, we do not have many choices to go to the shop, see everything and buy a bat. We only have a shop run by Paul ward in Mesa. You can visit his website to get more details about that. If you find something fitting your choice and budget, Great. Go and buy it locally.

However, you would always like to do research to get better and cheaper things. Choice wise, you would only be limited to Gray Nicolls at Paul’s Shop. Basic thing is we need to do a bit of research, probably spend half an hour to 1 hour on a few websites. For example, let us say I like the below mentioned BAT.

Reebok Bat at Amazon

I would go and search the same bat on different cricket equipment website. Some of them are:

1. www.cricmart.com (KCC member gets up to 15% discount and free shipping)
2. www.desiSport.com
3. http://www.bigbluecricket.com/ (Currently 10% discount and free shipping)
4. http://shop.dreamcricket.com/dreamcricket/pavilion/pavhome.asp

Search for the same bat on the above websites, read its specifications, see the pictures and you would get a good idea about blade, curve and weight. Some of them specifically mention the weight etc. 2lbs 10 Oz is the weight of my bat and its medium weight. I am sure most bats that we have in the team are in that range. You can get a fare idea about the bat specification from this article. If you are still not sure you can contact the website owner and shoot your questions.

So spend sometime and order it as soon as you want to play. You would need 1-2 week to prepare it.

Summary: If you spend an hour or so, minimal risk is involved :)

Cricket Bat Maintenance:

Sometime back, I had collected a few articles on this and posted them to 123kings.com. Please click here to visit the page. You can also Google and get many related articles.

Finally Bowlers seem to get a hold of Twenty20 in IPL

When most of us first heard about Twenty20 in general and IPL in particular, we all heard and thought that it is purely a batsmen's game. For many cricket fans, It was all about hitting those massive SIXes and flurry of boundaries. It was perhaps all about making the bowler repent for his chosen career path in Cricket world. Cricket purist often criticized this form of the game citing the logic that it is a harakiri for the bowlers as they doesn't stand any chance in this format. Well, in the IPL opening ceremony game and for the next few games that followed, all such notions were well supported with big 100s in a Twenty20 game by Mccullum, Symonds, Hussey and Gilchrist. Umpteen number of countless sixes which has been rare even in the 50-50 format was easy to see af if a video game was being eye witnessed. Mouth watering for many and more success and dollors for IPL and Bollywood.

But it seems, slowly slowly the pattern has been changing and it has stabilised to some extent now. There could be many reasons for example exodus of the international stars, most importantly the australians, the amount of cricket being played and its tiring effect on the players etc. All these reasons have been suitably explained it one of the earlier posts of Mrigank.

However, After a bit of analysis, I do feel that bowlers are now finally getting a strong hold on the subject matter of T20. Initially they must have followed more or less the same approach as they do in regular ODIs if not test matches. Obviously that was not to work as this format gives more freedom to play your shots as you have 11 batsmen to play in only 20 overs. But the bowlers seem to understand a few basic things for their T20 bowling armoury:

1. Bowl lot many slower bowls and mix it well with your faster ones. It is learnt that Shane Warne had this plan for Sehwag and had asked his team members to bowl only slower bowls to him and frastrate him as the bowl would not come to the bat easily. Hard hitters always love it when the bowl comes to the bat really good.
2. Avoid full pitched bowls. As the boundaries have shrinked, chances are what would possibly be a catch near the ropes would be a comfortable SIX in this format. So bowl flat but short of a length. This is what Balaji did against Punjab Kings XI.

When the tournament started off, a dot ball was a Mallika Sherawat (rarity), forget about a Katrina Kaif (maiden over). But as the tournament has progressed, we have seen bowlers coming with many dot balls in overs and in fact we do see 1 or 2 maiden overs every match. In fact there has been instances of maiden wickets. See below.

Bowlers Bowling a Maiden

Mdns	Bowler	For	Mts	Overs bowled
2	IK Pathan	Moh	9	35.2
2	GD McGrath	Del	10	40
1	M Ntini	Chn	3	11
1	ST Jayasuriya	Mum	8	13
1	SM Pollock	Mum	8	28
1	SK Warne	Jai	9	29
1	I Sharma	Kol	9	30.4
1	P Kumar	Ban	9	32.4
1	RP Singh	Hyd	10	36.5
1	M Gony	Chn	10	37

Bowlers Bowling a Wicket-maiden

Bowler	For	Vs	Venue	Match	Batsman dismissed	Over #
Glenn McGrath	Del	Jai	Delhi	3rd	Taruwar Kohli	3rd
Ishant Sharma	Kol	Hyd	Kolkata	4th	Y Venugopal Rao	4th
Shane Warne	Jai	Ban	Bangalore	12th	Mark Boucher	12th
RP Singh	Hyd	Mum	Mumbai DY	14th	L Ronchi	3rd
Sanath Jayasuriya	Mum	Kol	Kolkata	16th	Mohammad Hafeez	14th
Praveen Kumar	Ban	Moh	Bangalore	25th	Yuvraj Singh	11t

Do not forget the two hattricks. Balaji and amit Mishra both have taken hattricks already. Had anyone ever thought something like this happening in T20?

owler	For	Vs	Venue	Match
L Balaji (5-24)	Chn	Moh	Chennai	31st
(victims-IK Pathan, PP Chawla & VRV Singh (all caught)
A Mishra (5-17)	Del	Hyd	Delhi	37th
(victims-DB Ravi Teja (Ct), PP Ojha (Ct) & RP Singh (St)

More importantly, I could count as many as 7 instances where the bowlers have won the game because of a terrific spell/over.

1. Sohail Tanvir [ 6/14 against Chennai]
2. Amit Mishra [ 5/17 against Hyderabad including a superb hattrick]
3. L Balaji [ 5/24 against Delhi]
4. Shoaib Akhtar [ 4/11 against Chennai, Daredevils might lose a semi spot because of this terrific spell]
5. GD Mcgrath [4/29 against Bangalore]
6. SM Pollock [3/12 against Kolkata, Kokata slumped to their lowest total of IPL]
7. Ashish Nehra [3/13 against Rajasthan]

There are many other small instances where the bowlers have contributed significantly. You can analyse the data in cricinfo in detail.

As someone has aptly said - "Throw a true sportsman to a challenge and he would raise his game". No matter what the format would be, everyone would have a day of his own to prove his calibre. It might need sometime and some motivation. This change also augurs well for the cricket pandits who were against T20 because it was a bowler's grave. Now they also have a reason to rethink and probably embrace this format.

I feel more happy as it seems to give chance to every participant to turn a game around just like we have been seeing those magical spells, magical innings and stunning catches in the regular forms of the games. And I hope it balances out more and it doesn't turn the NBA way?

Jaipur Bomb Blasts and IPL

As expected the Jaipur Bomb blasts on 13th May, have not only rocked the pink city but has also rocked the Rajasthan Royals as the foreign players have expressed a concern on continuing in the IPL especially after BCCI declined to move the games from Jaipur.

As for as the concern of foreign players goes, it is completely justified. After all, any sports require a peaceful environment to showcase its talent. A player can not concentrate in the game when there is always a possibility of a bomb explosion near the stadium or the hotel or anywhere they are. At the end of the day, all of them have families like we do. Although it is said that the terrorist have nothing to do with the cricket and the cricketers in particular, I will not buy the words of those people who are involved in such a inhuman act. And so why would the foreign cricketers buy the same? In fact many of the domestic players too would have the same concern. Shane warne has been reported to have said to an Australian daily - "I would not have come to play in IPL had it happened before I flew from Australia". No wonder, recently because of similar concerns, Australia canceled the whole Australian trip. Question is: how do we see IPL without those foreign players, especially without the Australians?

This incident at the same time has put BCCI on its toes. Lalit Modi, the IPL chairman, declined any such reports about Australian's not continuing the game but It is yet to be seen, how BCCI has prepared itself for any of such unexpected events. This probably has given them a chance for future if they have never thought about this. I sincerely hope they have not been completely lost in the million dollors. They can devise and come up with a strategy to tackle such a situation. It is going to be an inconvenience for the viewers, but it should not bother anyone a bit, where the lives of so many people are at risk.

I guess BCCI can follow a simple Strategy in the future. In addition to these 8 stadiums, it can think of another 1-2 reserved stadiums. These reserved stadiums should not be declared public to anyone. In case, something like this happens and there is a high concern, the games should be immediately moved to that location. It would not take much effort because BCCI would have already planned about most of the things. Of course beefed up security system is a part of any process by default. The organizers would incur some loss because of this sudden move, but I believe it is worth taking. It is only going to increase IPL's reputation in its initial years. Remember, most of the foreign players have been the super stars so far. Without them, IPL will only be slightly better than the existing domestic tournaments. What about the Rajasthan Royals? Would they remain the same Royals if Warne and watson depart midway? BCCI should make every effort to make sure they are convinced about their security.

This article has already been published in www.cricweed.com

Beerwala blames Dravid and Charu Sharma for Lack of Royal Challenge

The internal dispute of the bangalore team is finally out in the open for public masala and I am enjoying it. Vijay Mallaya is shouting that "He virtually had no say in the player's selection for his own Team".

"When Rahul Dravid was not present in the second auction, I wanted to acquire some players but Charu Sharma was very tentative about them. I mean I bought Misbah-ul Haq because I was determined to do it. There were other players I was discouraged about,".

This statement makes reader believe that Rahul Dravid and Charu Sharma had together hired Vijay Mallaya for Bangalore team and it is not the other way around. I mean how can Vijay Mallaya now complain about not having his say on his own team? Cut the crap.

I do not see it more than a result of extreme frustration, loss of self belief and fear of losing that macho attitude. ATTITUDE? You remember that line after the IPL auction? "Give me any team and I would make it glamrous". With KK? bole to Katrina Kaif?

Well Mallaya saab, you did try your best to make your team one of the most glamorous of all IPL teams. The red skin cheerleaders, gorgeous Katrina kaif and many such things surely would add to the G factor. I would clap for you for your innovations in your area of expertise. You have probably given a new face to Twenty20 in India and many people are enjoying it more than the cricket. But thats about it. What about T20 factor? Have you been so busy in the G factor that you completely ignored this T-20 factor? You didn't even know if the persons you hired were good enough untill the results are showing that. You have proved that you were not good enough for cricketing matters. You can vent your frustration by firing the CEO, and all other staffs, but the at the end of the day Royal challengers have not produced even a bit of a challenge in the IPL so far and you have to now live with this fact. A complete lack of Royal challenge.

Cricket is sports. Glamour can pull you crowd and fetch you money, but that can not win you matches. You simply forgot this basics. Now that you made the statement that "At the end of the day, people need to understand that the IPL has a corporate side to it, and a very definitive corporate side. It is not at all cricket in the traditional sense,", it is pretty clear that you are taking it as a corporate loss and I am afraid to sense that you might even take it as a personal loss, Bangalore's loss. Afterall you might not like to lose. Would you?. Now to run away from the face of defeat, you are trying to blame every TOM, harry and dick so that at least, your face is not defamed. You are blaming everyone but yourself for the outcome. You need to understand that in sports, you can't change things by hiring and firing. You need to have the morale and the enthusiasm of your team players at all time high and positive. You can not achieve all this with this blame game ever. After all it is a runtime team game and there is no retake in this. It needs extreme level of planning and execution of all those plans in a timely manner.

The IPL story so far would suggest to anyone that Rahul and Charu sharma were definitely not the right persons to select the T20 team. They probably lacked the imagination and the experience for this format of the game. But having said that, It is hard to believe that they almost forced Vijay Mallaya to go with their selected team. They didn't pay any hid to Mallaya's cricket experties?. Probably Mallaya saab was more busy in planning for those red skin cheerleaders, Katrina Kaif and in changing the face of Indian cricket.

This is also a perfect example of what association of corporate giants into cricket can do to the game.When businessmen buy teams and spend exorbitant sums to become owners of cricket celebrities, the rules of the game are bound to change. The focus of "corporate culture" is only on winning and on returns. The end product of their entire endeavour is profits and the Indian Premier League has given them an opportunity to build their brand image. They will do anything for that. Afterall, this corporate attitude has to win at any cost with the morale banner running high.

I do feel sorry for Rahul Dravid that a person who would virtually have no knowledge of Cricket (in comparison to Dravid for sure), is now blaming everything to Game's one of the most respected cricketers. This will only exert more pressure on the cricketers and the cricket in general. I won't wonder if we can see some match fixing stuff re-surfacing again in years to come. And ofcourse cricket being the team game wherein the team's spirit plays a big role, I would not be surprised to see complete lack of Royal Challenge from Bangalore.

This article has also been published in www.cricweed.com

Rural T20 OR GP T20 OR just a mere election compaign?

As we are discussing heavily about IPL T20 and other formats of cricket, I read an article about another tournament going on in the election constituency of Rahul Gandhi (AMETHI). Purely on numbers, this could be the largest cricket extravaganza ever on earth. But is this really cricket?

Numbers suggest:

1. number of teams playing the IPL is eight but in the rural Twenty20, the total number of teams is 1857.
2. The IPL has only 128 players but the rural Twenty20 has attracted more than 27,000 players.
3. The IPL has a schedule of 59 games in two months while Rahul Gandhi's Twenty20 tournament has 150 matches played every day.

Cricketnext.com reports:

Majority of the boys who are playing cricket hardly get to see television as Rahul Gandhi's constituency Amethi gets only five to six hours of electricity every day.

In my opinion this is not more than just a rigorous election campaign. In the title of the blog, GP T20 meant Gandhi Pariwar T20 .

It is not that I favor congress a bit, but I am impressed with the medium they have chosen for their own self interest. Cricket is the strongest medium that can be most easily spread out. They have also launched it at a time when IPL fever is catching whole nation, so they have also got the timing correct.

Are we going to see the following tournaments in the coming days?

JMM T20 in Jharkhand Villages

BJP GUJJU T20 in Gujrat Villages

CPI T20 in Bengal Villages

BSP T20 in UP Villages

and many more like that?

This article has also been published in www.cricweed.com