A lot of changes

All those who think the blog is dead ... well, u r almost right!!!

A lot happened in my life since my last posts, and yeah I know those weren't exactly very regular.

I shifted my location to outside India, I became a dad, and I have even less time than usual for blogging. However, I am still blogging for the www.aol.in website since of course, they pay me. To check out that blog, check out http://cricketblog.aol.in

In the next couple of posts, I will try to make up the links of those posts which I have put on AOL.in

If anyone wants to contact me, I am available at sriram_ranga@hotmail.com and sriram.ranga@gmail.com

Cheers

The Chuckster

My eleven for the Sydney test

It is always fun selecting a team, and this being the Indian cricket team, it is funnier still because you know that each selection is probably going to get mud on your face the next time the selected player goes onto the field. However, since that is life for a sports blogger, here goes nothing!

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Patriots game to knock the BCCI's block off for dishonouring country?

When India took the big hit it did in the first test at Melbourne, inevitably one of the reasons trotted out was the "need more time to acclimatise" thingy that we all knew would come up sooner or later. It is so convenient; lose and shout "we need more time", win and say "Rahul played great, Sachin is a genius etc".

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SRT shows the way - what happened to his role in the team?

It was a strange experience watching Tendulkar bat today, on the second day of the 1st test against Australia in Melbourne. He didn't play amazingly as he played in his prime; he didn't play shuffle-poke-prod cricket as he has in his recent past; what he did was back his skills as they exist today and take the attack to the opposition. More than the 65 odd runs he made, it was the way he made them that made an ex-Tendulkar fan glad.

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Team man Rahul Dravid bogs down the team

If the Indians have to learn something from the second day of the Melbourne test, let it be this! Being a team man to the core is admirable but when the team man bats as Rahul Dravid did while donning the unfamiliar role of opener on the 2nd day of the test, it is better to be slightly selfish and say "Sorry mate, I don't think I can". The team might fare better for that piece of selfish honesty.

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Ganguly the enigma gets a 100

A toast to Ganguly seems to be the order of the day with all news channels carrying quotes from his teammates, past and present, his family, and his friends. I don't go much for accolades for momentous occasions like 100th test, etc.. because they are filled with a lot of sugar and sweetness, some of it false, but this Is definitely a nice time to look back at the various phases of Ganguly, see how it went and how it could have gone if things had been slightly different.

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Sehwag or Yuvraj for the first Test? Both, of course!!!

I talked earlier about Sehwag's inclusion in the Test squad for Australia being a good move on the part of the selectors. However, after seeing him sit out the practice game against Victoria, I wondered if it was just to be a matter of a good pick and nothing else. However, the stars seem to be in his favour, and with some luck, he might be walking out to open in Melbourne.

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Pre-Melbourne posts - India's bowling nice and fresh after practice game washout

It's a weird title for the post but I tried to be optimistic about things! Four days to go before the Boxing Day Test, and India have managed a grand total of less than one day's practice on Australian pitches, with the bowlers getting none at all. Frankly, there is no reason for optimism here, but looking at the current bowling attack, I can see a slight silver lining (but only if I peer hard enough).

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Priorities, Guru Gary, and Sehwag's pick for Australia

A matter of priority - As I watched the "national flag dishonor at the Eden" controversy on Times Now TV for the thousandth time, I wondered as I often have before as to why we insist on spending valuable time and money over arbitrary issues that arise out of random acts of ignorance, frustration or even arrogance, and forget the significance of the word "random" in it.


Here is to Guru Gary - Gary Kirsten is making all the correct noises after being (contract not yet signed as of the time of writing the article) appointed the coach of the Indian cricket team. He talks about the respect for the Big 3, the honor of coaching India and how he wants to blend in with the thoughts of the team, rather than dictate things as his predecessor famously failed to do.

Sehwag's pick a good choice - When I initially heard the BCCI's squad of probables for the Australian tour, I could spot two gaping big holes in it, one which probably could not be helped and the second which I put down to dumb-headedness of the selection committee. Later, when the final squad was picked, out of the blue came in one of my picks, who wasn't even in the list of probables, and I couldn't help but applaud the selectors for once. Picking someone who wasn't in the probables sounds dumb but doing the right thing even at the risk of looking dumb is praiseworthy.

The idiot who became a monkey

To hear the hullabaloo that the Australian media is creating about how the Australian public is going to give it back to the Indians when they tour there later his winter, it might seem that poetic justice is being meted out for a grave sin committed against the Australians.

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It is not that hard to drop the seniors ... err, make that 'Drop Dravid'

I knew that when it came down to it, showing Dravid the door would be a hundred times easier than doing it to either of the other two golden oldies, Tendulkar and Ganguly.

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Indian crowds and racism

There is a lot of discussion happening over whether Andrew Symonds had been racially abused or not. I have read so many articles on this that I feel compelled to put in my two cents on something I felt would blow over on its own, simply because it was too small. Don't get me wrong here; racism by itself is not a small matter to be dismissed lightly. But everything has to be seen on a case-to-case basis.

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India awesome, Chappell laughing, Luck with the Indians?

India has been awesome - Everyone has his own biases, little or big, and I am no exception. If I write this post tomorrow or after the Twenty20 final gets over, definitely the bias of the happenings in that match will reflect in my assessment. So based on the Indian team's performance at the Twenty20 World Cup, up to and including the semi-final against Australia, here goes nothing! Click here to read complete article

Chappell's vision was not so bad after all - Somewhere in Australia, a man reviled in India not so long ago must be having a hearty laugh. When Greg Chappell became the coach of the Indian team, he brought a vision with him. Click here to read complete article

Luck favours the brave - While there is a lot of euphoria over India's Twenty20 win, there are also those who look to throw cold water on the achievement by quoting the luck factor. There aren't so many right now, but I am sure that with the passage of time, and assuming India don't always win every match they play from now on, I can see many in the fickle Indian public, including the "experts" on TV, joining the current minority. Click here to read complete article

Captain Different

Captain Different - Maybe this was destiny's way of getting India its next good captain. It probably said - "Oh heck, the BCCI can't do it in a million years; I gotta take a hand myself." Out of the blue, the big three decide not to participate, Yuvraj gets into the bad books of the BCCI, the players start playing like demons and India under Mahender Singh Dhoni absolutely smash their way into the Twenty20 finals.

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Going strong on AOL.in

To those who missed me - thanks! To those who don't - Hmm, why don't u?

Anyways, blogging going strong at AOL.in and I won't say I don't regret stopping my own blogpage here, but frankly it is not possible for me to spend more time in addition to what I am spending at AOL.in.

So I came up with a good idea (heh heh, this is my blog and I get to decide which ideas r good). Everytime I post there, I will post the first paragraph here with a link to the complete article on the AOL blogsite.

This way I get to keep my blog running ... and I still blog for AOL (for the guy who asked previously ... yep, I do get paid but no one tells me what I can write and what I cannot ... that is still my discretion).

My last few posts -

Twenty 20 - not bad by half - Today, I enjoy watching Twenty20 more than when I did at the start of the ongoing World Cup. I can safely say it is growing on me. Earlier, I had watched the Twenty20 match in South Africa which was won by the heroics of Dinesh Karthick but it really needs a tournament like this for a person to see, evaluate and reach judgment. Today, I can see good points and bad points in the format which some days back only seemed to me to be 'circus cricket', for want of a better phrase.

Dravid needs to sing like a lark - There are a lot of people who think what happens in the dressing room ought to stay in the dressing room. In most cases, I would agree with the same but the strange case of the captain who resigned when at the top suggests to me that it might be better to change the rules a bit here.

12 'O clock, Dravid resigns as captain and all is well; 1 'O clock... - I borrow a paragraph from this article, though it has no relation to cricket. I can't say it better if I tried my damnest - In a recent 'Wizard of Id' cartoon strip, the town crier announces, "Six O'clock and time for lies, distortions, and half truths." A citizen pokes his head out the window and asks, "What happened to the news?" The crier replies, "This is the news!"

Answer - Twenty20 IS an old man's game - Ah, the answer to the question I put up in the last post! Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly will indeed be part of the new slam-bang quickie format, named the IPL, or the Indian Premier League. How could they ever not be?

The BCCI's Twenty20: Is it still a young man's game? - The Twenty20 league being planned by the BCCI is going to put some current Indian players in a fix. None more so than the big three - SRT, Ganguly and Dravid.