Men in White

Ponting's Point

"Ricky Ponting has accused India's early-series attitude of being "fake" after their behaviour turnaround during the third ODI on Friday

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

"Ricky Ponting has accused India's early-series attitude of being "fake" after their behaviour turnaround during the third ODI on Friday. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India's captain, publicly complained about "harsh words" from some of the Australians during the 47-run loss, but Ponting claimed Chris Broad, the match referee, congratulated him for the way his side approached the game." (report in Cricinfo).

To raise useful levels of friction You need to sledge with conviction A quality that's wanting, In Indians, said Ponting.

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Comment of the week: A pundit from Pakistan

How a reader's comments can be constructive, expressive and delightful

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

Furqan mailed in two comments on the Scenes from a Final post which are near-perfect examples of a) how disagreement on a blog can be firmly and civilly expressed and b) how a great contest ought to be celebrated. This is part of the first one:

"I was personally quite disappointed with Mukul's article. Yes, it was wonderfully written, factually accurate and it conveyed some excellent arguments. However, as his first post after the spectacular end to a fantastic final, I thought it was rather sour to focus half of the article on Shoaib Malik's crass comments. There were so many positives from this tournament, none more so than the excellent final, and after the turmoil that has affected cricket over this year I think it would have been far more apt to express gratitude and praise for the recovery of the game. I think any reasonable person can conclude that Malik's comments were in bad taste. I'm a Muslim in Pakistan and they certainly made me wince. However I think a paragraph expressing distate for the comments would have sufficed, rather than the torrent of negativity shown by Mukul and in numerous comments since..."

And in a second comment, he shows us, with joy and passion, how the thing is done:

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Who will be India's next Test captain?

I was thinking about who the next captain of the Indian Test team might be (or should be) when I read this first-rate post by Kaushik Sunder Rajan on his blog DailyCric .You can read it here

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

I was thinking about who the next captain of the Indian Test team might be (or should be) when I read this first-rate post by Kaushik Sunder Rajan on his blog DailyCric.You can read it here

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The future of Twenty20

After the disastrous, 50-over World Cup in the West Indies where the death of a coach, an absurdly stretched-out schedule, exorbitantly priced tickets, and the early exit of India and Pakistan meant that everything that could go wrong did go wrong,

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

The matches have attracted respectable crowds, the South Africans have been efficient hosts, the abbreviated format which many thought would make cricket a meaningless slugfest has resulted in matches played on remarkably level terms with canny bowlers more than holding their own against rampant batsmen.

25-Feb-2013

I know it's silly to get carried away, but not since Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi have Indians watched their cricket team being led with such nerveless flair. And the Nawab was born hosed and shod with Winchester to help and a silver service in his mouth. Our current skipper does a commercial where he talks about how he could have been a ticket-collector in the railways! There's something about Dhoni …

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Pietersen and Greig

Kevin Pietersen reminds me of the young Tony Greig

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

Kevin Pietersen reminds me of the young Tony Greig. They're both South Africans who switched countries as young adults to become stars in the English game. Talented cricketers with a flair for finding the limelight that amounted to genius, they managed to persuade an English cricketing public hungry for greatness — England hasn't produced a great batsman in forty years — that they were the real thing.

They had a genuine claim to being innovators: Tony Greig pioneered a fielding position, silly point, and a remarkable new shot, the upper cuff (where the batsman deliberately helps the ball over the slips) against that demonic fast-bowling firm: Thomson & Lillee. Pietersen's on-side play is original, specially his stork shot, where, one-legged on his front foot, he smacks the ball hard through midwicket.

As a spectator, though, I found the way Greig played to the gallery irritating and I find Pietersen's narcissism tiresome. Fans willingly indulge genius: I was happy, for example, to watch Shane Warne act out his little turns, ball after ball — the pantomime anguish, the chin-in-hand Thinker — because he was the best bowler in the world and his antics seemed part of the riyaz, the routines, of greatness. With Greig and Pietersen (good players, not great ones) the look-at-me mannerisms came across as a huckster's props; there was always the nagging feeling that their onfield swagger was a bluff waiting to be called.

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ICL and posterity

The historical significance of Zee's league is that it has goosed the BCCI into announcing the Indian Premier League, a Twenty20 competition

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

When Mohammad Yousuf signed up for the ICL, I felt a stirring of anticipation. Every other signee was a has-been or a never-will-be. But Yousuf was different. He was Test cricket's best batsman last year, he has years left in the game, and if someone like him was willing to take the risk, maybe there was something to Zee's league after all.

But keen though I am to see a commercial league for cricket in India, I don't see Zee delivering it. They don't have the grounds (though that's not an insuperable problem) and, more importantly, they don't seem to have the attention of India's current players. No one in India is going to turn on their sets to watch Andrew Hall bowl to Rohan Gavaskar. Anand Vasu's excellent survey in Tehelka of all the obstacles that made Zee's league a long-shot, ought to make Kapil Dev and Subhash Chandra nervous.

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More than Muralitharan; bigger than Bedi

Bishan Bedi has been sent a letter by Muttiah Muralitharan’s lawyers for comments he made recently about the off-spinners bowling action and newspapers report that these lawyers are threatening to ‘drag him to the courts’ if his response is

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

This still does not rule out the possibility that in the heat of battle Murali may consciously or unaware, flex his arm to really rip the doosra. Bedi has made a serious point about the supervision of the game in general, not just the matter of policing Murali which the ICC needs to take seriously. Murali isn’t responsible for his imitators, but the ICC’s rulings change cricket from the highest level to the lowest, and I’ve seen children in neighbourhood parks manage very creditable imitations of Murali’s bowling style, happily bending and straightening their arms because they know its allowed on television. When Bedi says the ICC has created a monster, he doesn’t mean that Murali has horns: he’s being metaphorical.

But Bedi doesn’t seem to realize that what really annoys Murali’s fans and supporters is the implication that the ICC introduced the 15 degree rule to fit Murali in. The truth is that to start with the ICC introduced differential limits of flexion (5 degrees for spinners, 7.5 degrees for medium pacers, 10 degrees for fast bowlers) and when the unfairness and impracticality of this was pointed out, abandoned this plan. The fifteen degree rule happened after a study of the actions of international bowlers revealed that nearly every bowler bent and straightened his arm, including fast-bowling paragons like Glenn McGrath. Critics of Murali like Holding did an about-face when shown the evidence and by and large, the cricket world followed suit.

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India's grade card

Before the one-day series against England begins, it might be useful to take stock of our standing in the only arena that counts, Test cricket

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

One of the hardest things for a fan to do these days is to retain in his mind an uncluttered sense of how the Test team is doing. Test match tours are tacked on to one-day contests, one-day tournaments (the World Cup, the Champions Trophy,) keep elbowing and shoving their way into your consciousness, players are picked and dropped from Test match teams on account of their limited-overs performances, and all these things together create a hybrid sense of well-being or despair.

So before the one-day series against England begins, and before its results colour our feelings about the Test matches that have preceded it, it might be useful to take stock of our standing in the only arena that counts, Test cricket.

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On the importance of being "visibly sheepish"

Mukul Kesavan compares Michael Atherton's opinions regarding Sreesanth's beamer and Brett Lee's tactics two years ago

Mukul Kesavan

25-Feb-2013

This is what Michael Atherton had to say about Sreesanth and the beamer he bowled at Kevin Pietersen in the Sunday Telegraph

Mirroring the ICC's misguided sense of priorities, there was little comment in the media about Sreesanth's 'delivery'. This is partly because only one man, Sreesanth himself, knows whether it was deliberate, partly because a coterie of former bowlers in the press box (Mike Selvey an exception) are inclined to take the charitable view that it was not, and partly because there was so much more, other than the cricket, to talk about. But I have no doubt that Sreesanth's rancorous spell, which included the beamer and the no-ball, was the most glaring example in the match of something that ran completely counter to the spirit of the game. Forget the jellybeans and inane chatter.

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