Kridaya Cricket Blog

In his early career days, when people used to talk about Sehwag, some compared his physique and batting style to Tendulkar, implying that he was a poor imitation. Over the years, Sehwag has created a different legacy for himself even outdoing Tendulkar in some cases with his triple centuries and almost-borderline manic batting in huge innings.

What was always struck me as strange is Sehwag’s great Test average (52.50) compared to his terrible ODI average (33.98). A few have pointed out that the different ODI fielding settings may have something to do with this. Plus Sehwag’s brain-fade when he tries one too many times to assert his authority over some bowler.

But even Sehwag’s Test average seems strange. He has the most Test double-centuries by an Indian. He could have had the most Test triple-centuries if he had made a few more runs yesterday. And when he gets a century, he invariably makes 150+. So why is he still in the low fifties when he could be in the sixties or upper fifties?

To understand that, I compared Sehwag with another great batsman of the same era, who has a similar average and played roughly the same number of Tests. Sehwag has 6248 runs at 52.50 in 123 innings. Kumar Sangakkara has 7545 runs at 55.47 in 147 innings. Not exactly the same, but will do for our purposes. Here is the breakdown of their innings:

One of the first things you will catch is that Sehwag has a much higher percentage of scores below 25 (46% versus 41%) and below 50 (71% versus 64%). Sehwag has 30 scores under 10, while Sangakkara over more innings has 28. But once you start looking at scores above 50, Sehwag looks much more attractive. He has been able to convert more fifties into hundreds and those hundreds into huge scores that have made a big difference to India’s results.

So for the opposition, Sehwag is easier to get early. But once he goes past that fifty, start saying your prayers because he is going to make you pay dearly.

India just marked their 100th Test victory with a thumping win against Sri Lanka. It was interesting reading the statistics of India’s Test history.

India is the nation that has taken the most number of matches (432) to reach 100 Test wins. The previous entry was Pakistan at 320 Tests. Sri Lanka have 60 wins in 191 matches and surely should make it before 300. Of course, they had a lot of help from Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, but still.

The only other nation likely to ever reach 100 wins is New Zealand who have 66 wins from 354 matches and are sure to beat India’s record. Bangladesh (3 wins from 61 matches) has a loooooooong way to go!

India has made a lot of strides in this decade, with more wins abroad than in the rest of their history. Many reasons, but a few I can think of: Sourav Ganguly’s captaincy, Rahul Dravid’s form abroad, Kumble turning around his overseas form, India holding their own against Australia in Australia, the decline of the West Indies, England no longer a threat, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe.

On the other hand, India has had a few setbacks at home. They lost a series against Australia after decades. They have conceded matches against South Africa, England and Pakistan. More aggression at home would have made Win #100 come earlier. We haven’t seen a whitewash for sometime now.

Many series are going on at the same time: India versus Sri Lanka, Australia versus West Indies and England versus South Africa.

But the best play right now is the Test match between New Zealand and Pakistan.

New Zealand, put into bat, lose their opener off the first ball and limp to 211/6 where Vettori, as usual, leads the fightback with a 99. New Zealand end up with 429, a challenging total.

Pakistan have their own collapse when the Akmals pull them from 85/5 to a respectable 332. Bond takes a five-for on his return Test.

New Zealand have the chance to put Pakistan out, but Pakistan is no mood to allow them. New Zealand are 152/9 as I write this.

For the Indian fans, there is nothing more joyful than seeing India destroy Sri Lanka by an innings, but in terms of entertaining cricket, the Pak-NZ Test is the best thing going on right now.

What was the difference between the India of the 1st Test against Sri Lanka and the India of the 2nd Test?

OK, I will wait while you compare the two scorecards.

The only difference was Mishra and Sharma went out, and Ojha and Sreesanth came in.

The batting pretty much clicked in both matches, but the main difference was the bowling.

It bears repeating. Batsmen do not win matches. Bowlers do.

From 1990 to 2000, recall how many matches did India win when Kumble (or Harbhajan) were on fire. How many did they win when neither clicked?

As a nation, we are too obsessed with the big-hitters and ton-makers. Spare a thought for the hard workers who convert the zero in a Test series to natural numbers.

What in the world has happened to the Indian cricket team? Before the series, I thought an Indian whitewash was a slam dunk. Instead, I look at a 165-run deficit with Sri Lanka still having 5 wickets in hand, and I cannot see how India is going to perform a rescue act.

But for Dravid’s huge ton on the first day, India would have already been sunk. Amazing!

I plead guilty to mocking Sri Lanka throughout this year for their meaningless triumphs against Bangladesh. But this year has really been a turnaround year for them. Beating Pakistan and New Zealand at home and before that, a good performance in a truncated series in Pakistan. And no single person responsible. A true team effort.

I still hope India can save this match. But Sri Lanka has all the cards. A hundred runs more and India will have to work really hard to avoid losing by an innings.

Going by some of the comments on this blog, I think quite a few Tendulkar fans do not know how he became India’s opening batsman in one-dayers. Here is the information right from the master himself:

82 (off 49 balls) against NZ as opener in 1994

I was the vice-captain then and our regular opener Navjot Singh Sidhu woke up with a stiff neck. I requested Azhar (Mohammad Azharuddin) and Ajit Wadekar (coach) to “just give me one opportunity and I am very confident of playing some big shots. And if I fail, I’ll never ever come to you again”.

I remember playing cricket on the same day (March 27, 1994). Since the match was in New Zealand, it took place much early with respect to Indian Standard Time. So we could go and play in the afternoon. And everyone who watched Tendulkar’s innings wanted to imitate it and belt the ball to every part of the ground. A defining innings in every sense of the word.

Today’s loss against Australia at Guwahati meant that a full-strength India lost a home series against a depleted Australian side with one match to go. It is too early with respect to the 2011 World Cup to hit the panic button, but make no mistake, this is a serious setback to India’s preparations. And the Indian management have to think deep and hard about the choices that they need to make.

Apologists for India’s performance would point to three close matches that could have gone either way and to Tendulkar’s brilliant century. They would also be right in suggesting that a weakened Australia still has considerable strength in its ranks and also that the experienced team members (Ponting, Hussey) were in good form.

This obscures the details. First, the close matches were bolstered by a rearguard performance from Harbhajan and Co. Tendulkar’s 175 stands alone in a batting scorecard that shows no significant support. India fielded its best lineup in both batting and bowling, and were bowled out for 170 and conceded 350.

There will be a few scapegoats to be sacrificed at the end of this series. Probably one or more of the bowlers will be axed, and perhaps we will see a new No. 6 or No. 7 in the team. But that is not solving the problems that we saw in this series.

The first problem is that the bowling, for the most part, has been toothless. Unable to pick wickets when needed and unable to control the acceleration. Australia crossed 250 four times in the first five one-dayers. This was emphasized clearly when India used 9 bowlers in the just-concluded match to try to force the Australians to make a mistake. Usually, that shows a captain trying hard, but today, it just showed desperation.

The batting has been better, but it has not come together as a unit. The contributions of the lower order has masked the poverty of the performances. It doesn’t look likely that India will change their top five, except if forced to by injury. So it is time for them to step up.

The one blessing of this series has been Dhoni finding his place at No. 5 and not floating around. That is a good spot for him in my opinion and if India can find some better team performances from the top order and get a couple of good allrounders for the next two spots, the batting should be India’s strength at the World Cup.

Which of the three formats of cricket do you like best?

• Tests
• One-dayers
• Twenty20

Click here to answer the question.

The first match of the Australia-India series had some fireworks towards the end, but it didn’t quite end in the right climax. Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh took India to the cusp of victory, but then gave it up. So Australia continue their excellent ODI streak (just the one loss to England in a dead rubber match). This was the second time in recent time they have kept their nerve, the last one being against Pakistan in the Champions Trophy.

Interesting lineup for India: Sehwag, Tendulkar, Gambhir, Kohli, Dhoni, Raina, Jadeja, Harbhajan, Praveen Kumar, Nehra and Ishant. This seems like a good template for going into the 2011 World Cup. Assuming no injuries hit and Yuvraj is back, we should see something like this:

Sehwag, Tendulkar, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Dhoni, batsman/allrounder, allrounder, spinner, fastbowler, fastbowler, spinner/fastbowler.

It is difficult to predict the bowlers for two reasons. One is injuries, obviously. The other is that there are several months before the World Cup where you have T20’s and other World Cups. It is quite easy for a good bowler to get smashed up badly in a critical match and then be dropped and not be considered for selection. The top 5 of the Indian batting lineup don’t have such problems.

I am of the opinion that Raina and Ishant be dropped. Neither have done much in recent times. Raina doesn’t have a great career record to begin with. And Ishant’s body language surely speaks volumes about his low confidence.

I am rather worried about the spinners. Harbhajan Singh has been on and off, but we don’t seem to have any good alternatives, either. The pace front doesn’t look too bad, but it is a matter of clicking at the important moments.

Still, it is early days. Let’s wait and watch!

An all-round performance by Brett Lee (5 sixes and 2 early wickets) did the unbeaten T&T in. Unlike the Cape Cobras, New South Wales were much more professional in the field and didn’t give any chances away to the West Indian team. Sweet revenge for an earlier loss to them in the tournament when it mattered.

As one user on Cricinfo said, Australians now own the World Cup, the Champions Trophy and the Champions League. The two teams which have won the Indian Premier League have both been captained by retired Australian players. Is there anything left for Australia to win?!

Maybe the Twenty20 World Cup, but that is coming up next year and Australia will surely win that. Perhaps in the same manner that they took a few attempts to win the Champions Trophy and now you cannot take it away from them.

On one hand, this domination is amazing. On the other hand, it is boring. Cricket needs some new narratives than, “Australians win again!” For years now, we have seen India and South Africa (and at one time, even England) challenge the dominance of the Australian team, but the depth of the talent in Australia is simply too much.

In a way, Australia is like the Brazil of cricket. There will be setbacks once in a while, but Australia have made a habit of coming back strongly from them.