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Showing posts with label Azhar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Azhar. Show all posts

Sunday, May 16, 2010

India's T20 WC 2010 Debacle - Who is to blame?

Today is the final of T20 world cup between Australia and England. India got out of the cup 4-5 days ago and since then every news channel is discussing the reasons for the loss and making their own predictions regarding who will be out of the team and who will be retained. From late night brawl in West Indies in which Nehra is accused of misbehaving with the others people in the bar to Kirsten one-o-ones with 7 players, everything is being debated day and night in media.

Here are few reasons which I feel are responsible for India’s debacle.

IPL

I don’t think 14 matches are responsible for India’s loss in world cup, not even IPL parties. IPL matches used to end at around 11.30 so what if players came to a party for 1-2 hours to relax and enjoy. Players are expected to be professional and if they feel that they bodies can’t handle the glamour of girls and drinks of IPL Nights they should have controlled themselves. This is at least expected from senior players. IPL nights might have done harm to younger players. Arjun Rampal’s wife the organizer of IPL nights might have said that players were not forced attend the parties but I think their owners might have pushed them to attend these. Sachin could say no to these parties because he is Sachin no player can dare to fight against the BCCI, if you dare to fight you will be kicked out for sure.

Illogical traveling around the country for the matches is the main reason for fatigue and tiring bodies. If a team is playing match in Bangalore schedule should be made such that if plays its following matches in Chennai, Hyderabad so that traveling is less.

Dhoni has given an invalid reason of IPL nights being responsible for the failure.

Team Selection:

I am not lover of BCCI infact all useless sports bodies of India being run by old politicians who I am sure would not clearly know the rules of the sports for whose body they are head.Chief selector is ambassador of Chennai Super Kings, Srinivasan secretary of BCCI is owner of CSK are they working for BCCI of CSK.

Bindra is handling a big Punjab lobby. Arun Jaitely head of Delhi cricket association. n number of politicians are head of their respective sports bodies why because cricket has money and power simple.

Punjab lobby pushed for Chawla as a spinner in Indian team despite the fact that Pragyan Ojha and Mishra. Robin Uthappa is getting huge sympathy votes for not getting selected despite being in from. Sehwag was fit to play matches in IPL but as they were kicked out of IPL he got injured, its clear he wanted to make money playing IPL matches he should have the guts to say that he is injured during the IPL tournament. He clearly put DD over ICC World Cup.

Yuvraj who is now filled with fatty acids and loads of chicken tikka should have been dropped, he is so sad after being kicked out of captaincy of Kings X1 team that he has started eating chicken in breakfast , lunch and dinner.

Shortpitch Delivery

In the last WC we failed against the short pitch balls, this time it also happened. We are vulnerable since time immemorial against the short ball. Its just the last 4-5 years when greats like Sachin, Dravid , Laxman were there in Indian team who could handle short ball easily that opponents stopped using the weapon.

We need to practice for these type of deliveries, point is we don’t have time to practice. BCCI wants to mint as much money as possible by playing use less tournaments against Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Srilanka again and again. We have played I think every second month against SriLanka in the past year. Thanks to India being no-1 in test that BCCI now is trying hard to convert 7 ODI series to 2 test 3 odi wherever its possible but to BCCI it’s a loss of huge revenue as ODI gets more ads. Weren’t the BCCI a charitable body who is evading taxes since many years and filling their coffins?

When the player can go to National Cricket Academy to practice?

Poor Fielding and Running between wickets:

Outfield is very slow in west indies and one needs to run fast b/w the wickets but Indians players are adapted to hitting 4s in flat pitches in India. There was no practice match or time to practice in WI so we couldn’t adapt. Who is at fault again here – BCCI.

Player Fatigue:

We play lots of matches round the year. In 90's we were playing 35-40 ODI's are year and now we are playing lot of T20's ODIs round the year. Tours after tours is the routine , we will be playing in Triangular series in Zimbabwe, Asia Cup in Dambulla, Test series again in Sri Lanka , Triangular Series with NZ , SL in August. Australia coming to India and what not.

Ok we can't lesson the tours so lets make a bigger pool of players lets rotate them but that is also not possible till now. Players want to play as much as possible as you never know when you get kicked out, Fear of BCCI. ODI teams are not getting selected on basis of IPL performance which is wrong. Where is our bench strength. How many India A team tours to Australia , England , NZ took place in last 2 years. If same 15-18 players are playing so much cricket they will obviously get tired and fatigued, lets enlarge the pool and try to start rotation policy.


Indian crowd also need to understand that these are players not super humans. Saying that they keep on doing ads, party a lot and not play at all is wrong. Its good they lost now they will focus on test cricket which is the best.

Its very sad that we are having very less test matches when we have players like Sachin, Dravid , Laxman. Australia plays 8-10 tests a year and we should have used given these great players lot more chance to play test cricket in these years.

Its time to celebrate Vishy victory again, its a very big achievement to beat Topalov in his home. Indian hockey team is also performing well reaching the finals of Azlan Shat Tournament , today is the final.







Friday, February 20, 2009

Cricketers: Let's Play Politics

Yesterday we saw one more crickter entering the political fray. Ex-Captain Mhd. Azharuddin joined the Congress Party and he is expected to contest the upcoming elections from one of the three constituencies of Hyderabad.  He is one of the biggest names to join the politics. Last being Mr Pataudi some 30 years ago. 

He will be projected as the minority face of the congress in the upcoming elections. In an interveiw to a news channel on being asked about match fixing allegations he said " I know the issues will be raised by politicians but his job is the work hard and ignore certain things which no more matter now "

He is life banned for playing cricket by BCCI. The case is challenged by Azhar but its dragging on in the court. 

He is not the first cricketer to join politics. Here are the few and their performance in the politics.


Navjot Siddhu is one of the most versatile cricketers in the hostory. He has played cricket, done commentary, acted as judge is a laughter show, acter in films and is in politics also. You will not find any other cricketer who has washed his hands in so many things.


Sidhu was elected as MP from Amritsar constituency but resigned later due to his conviction in a murder case of 1998. Sidhu appealed in Supreme Court which stayed the judgement and allowed him to contest in the election. He won again in 2007. He is projected as a long term player in Punjab politics and is groomed by Arun Jaitely

Sidhu is very active in politics and recently he was involved in stopping a train in Punjab to protest against the non inclusiont of Amritsar in the Mumbai-Ludhiana rail corridor. Recently he was given poor rating by Punjab Government and he has protested against it.

Chetan Sharma has recently decided to join the politics, but he is the first one not to choose either of the mainstream parties BJP and Congress. He has joined Mayawati's party BSP and will be contesting the elections from Faridabad in Haryana. Can he match the aura of 

Kirti Azad is the other cricketer who has met with success in politics. 83 world cup team member became MLA from Gole Market in Delhi and later on won the Lok Sabha seat from 


Tiger Pataudi one of the youngest captain of Indian cricket team at the age of 21 also tasted politics in 1971 when as a candidate of Vishal Haryan Party contested from Gurgaon protesting about the abolition of Privy Purse in India. He is known for his fighting spirit and zeal, despite loosing his right eye vision in a car accident with his zeal and love for cricket he overcame his handicap and led India. 

Saurav Ganguly is on the radar of many political parties to join the politics. But he is keeping his cards closed and has said that he will contest from Bangal only if he ever join politics.