Posts

Showing posts from 2007

Oh my captain, do not go

Image
Rahul Dravid's decision to quit the captaincy certainly is a bolt from the blue. When such a proud and commited individual takes such a decision with the team is in a transition and knowing how much the team depends on hin, it must raise raise the question as to the circumstances which compelled him to take the decision. I suppose it was a combination of factors, starting with the world cup debacle. Chappell had to go after that but Rahul bravely soldiered on, reportedly on BCCI's request. You get the feeling he never got to impose his style on the team, something Ganguly did so famously. Part of the reason was because Chappell already had the team playing according to his theories. It is hardly a secret that Rahul is a player who thinks about each aspect of his game meticulously so in making him the captain Indian Cricket had an oppurtunity to have a captain who went with more than just his instinct. Most of Ganguly's successes as a leader, I thought were more to do with h

Victory, sweet victory

Image
What a coincidence! In all my life of following the Indian Cricket team we have never won in England and now that I'm in England, they go ahead and beat the British at their own game! I would never forget the two tests I watched here at the Lord's and the Oval. And years from now, when people talk of the last time Dravid, Sourav, Kumble and Sachin played in England and won a test series, I can claim 'I was there'. It was very heartening to see the Indians play like they did. They were ready for the long grind, and what's more, seemed to enjoy it too. The two big totals posted in Trent Bridge and the Oval were built upon a string of partnerships rather than the old habit of two batsmen putting on 300+ and the others managing 200. The bowlers were able to bowl England out in 5 innings out of 6, which is quite simply the main reason we won the test series. Pakistan, for instance, have a much better 'away' record than India since they have always had bowlers who

Wimbledon

Image
The name itself evokes memories of Sampras ruling the centre court. Having grown up watching players like Sampras, Graf, Sachin, Lara etc dominate everyone else, it is hard to call any new players 'great', even though the word is quite liberally thrown about now a days. Being in London in June threw up the opportunity of watching Wimbledon so myself and my good friend Kalyan who had come down from Derby hopped over to Wimbledon as early as 7.30AM (we had to get up at 5 for the 1 hour train journey to Wimbledon!) to get into the queue and hopefully watch some action later on. The schedule for the day had Leander, Paes and Sania's matches in addition to Hewitt and Rafael Nadal! We were hoping to get to centre court or court1 which would have allowed us to watch all the seeded players but even a ground pass which we eventually got was hard fought, what with a three hour queue! The center court and court1 tickets, we were told, we sold out first thing in the morning and were g

First spell

I had been thinking about getting a blog started for months now, there used to be one in my office but then they sent me to London and I dont have access to it anymore! But I have got too far - guess I must introduce myself to anyone who cares to, or has the time to, read these things. Well, I'm a 24-yr old from the charming city of Hyderabad in central (okay, southern) India. I did my engineering almost by default, and entered into an 'IT' profession after that again, by default and currently working in London. I hope to return to my dear Hyderabad after finishing my 'sentence' here. I follow Cricket as no body in my acquaintance does - I even have what I call a 'Cricket collection ' where I maintain a record of all the matches, events in the world of Cricket through collecting scorecards and articles from newspapers and pasting them in a scrapbook. This way I have followed every match played by India since 1993 and every international match since 1996. May