While book cricket and audio cassettes are now relics of a happy past, Tendulkar is still very much a part of our lives — though not for very long. In about two weeks' time, he will walk out to bat for India for the last time ever. Some of the televisions that will be turned off after he gets out in Mumbai during November 14-18, 2013, may never turn on a cricket channel again.
The trouble with a tournament as long as the Indian Premier League (IPL) which has two games almost every day is that unless those games are punctuated by performances like David Miller’s whirlwind century against Bangalore, or Chris Gayle’s fearsome assault on Pune, or Kieron Pollard’s blinder against Hyderabad, even the most hardened fan would be hard-pressed to recall the results of matches that happened less than a week ago. Even by those low standards of recall, and notwithstanding the performances mentioned above, this has been a forgettable IPL, owing almost entirely to off-field controversies, and some on-field ones.
Unless they have a burly, broad-shouldered tree of a man called Jacques Kallis in their squad, most teams these days — regardless of the format — invariably starts a game with a four-man attack. In limited-overs games, they then hope to squeeze in the fifth bowler’s quota from bit-and-pieces players or even batsmen, praying all the time that the runs they concede don’t turn out to be the difference between winning and losing a game
By Akash Kaware
Picking a balanced playing XI in a cricket match is hard enough, but once a captain gets past that hurdle, it is important that even within that XI, he uses his resources wisely. This is especially true in a T20 game, where unless you get your batting order right, your best batsmen would be left with too few balls to face, while the effectiveness of a decent bowling line-up may be drastically compromised unless each of the bowlers is handed the ball at exactly the right time.
MS Dhoni has always liked to have the cushion of seven batsmen.
Last week, one the same day that Shivnarine Chanderpaul put up a familiar rearguard in the first innings of the first Test against England at Lord’s, two other West Indians distinguished themselves on a cricket field too.
When the end came, it was typical of the man. No farewell match.
The rotation policy that Mahendra Singh Dhoni has chosen to implement in the series has drawn the most flak.
Barring some amazing performances in the World Cups of 2003 and 2011, and an occasional innings here and there that turned back the clock, the second half of Sachin Tendulkar’s career has seen him transform from a marauding strokemaker to an efficient accumulator, a journey from Viv Richards to Sunil Gavaskar.
Zaheer, Ishant, Umesh Yadav, Ashwin and Ojha that will decide India’s fate in the series.
