T20 cricket .Case of sour grapes for Tendulkar,Lara and Company.

Initially I was going to include a question mark at the end of the title so that the title would read "T20 cricket .Case of sour grapes for Tendulkar,Lara and Company ?". But then I did not , beacuse I have an doubt that T20 cricket in indeed a case of sour grapes for Tendulkar , Lara and many senior players.
For quite some time now Sachin Tendulkar ,Brian Lara and other's have been making degrading comments about T20 cricket . Sample these .
"T20 cricket is like dessert . How much can you eat dessert ", Says Sachin .
"Anybody can swing bat in T20 for few minutes and became famous" , one more gem from our own Sachin
"Test Cricket is the real cricket " , says Brian Lara .
"T20 cricket is the chaddi cricket" , Navjot Singh Siddhu .

I am quite amused at this childish and pathetic attempt by these players to belittle T20 cricket. T20 is shortest version of Cricket .But still it is cricket ,just played at a comparatively furious pace .

I am most surprised at Tendulkars comments .I think he has realised that it was extremely dumb of him to withdraw from the T20 World cup in 2007. Nobody had forced him to do it .It was his decision . Unfortunately India won the T20 World cup and IPL further cemented the place of T20 cricket as the saleable product of the cricket . And Sachin is not part of this product .It must have hurt him a lot .But nobody has stopped him from plying T20 . His game is most suited for it.But he is an adamant guy .He will not play T20 for India .Because if he does play then it will be prooved that he made the biggest blunder of his cricket career by not playing T20 World cup .The least he can do is not make such stupid comments about T20 cricket .

Marathon, 5000 metres , 800 metres , 400 metres , 110 metres hurdles and 100 metres all belong to the track and field athletics category .It is just that 100 metres is the most glamorous and most awaited and most watched event of the track and field category . I have never ever heard any marathon or middle distance runner belittle 100 metres race and say that marathon or 5000 metres race is the real race.


If Sachin thinks that it is so easy to score consistently in T20 at a strike rate well in excess of 100rpb then he should come out of his T20 retirement and play T20 for India .Let us see if he scores.

Very conveniently Sachin Tendulkar has forgotten that 50 overs cricket , the format in which he is unarguably the greatest player, was called Pyjama cricket by some who had only played test cricket. Sachin Tendulkar is no different from these guys .I had expected something significantly better from the best player of his era .

Indeed a case of sour grapes for Sachin,Lara and company .

How good is Andrew Flintoff ?

Andrew Flintoff took a fiver at lords test grinding Australia to a 115 run defeat . Flintoff belongs to a category of very very rare species named All-rounder . He is a genuine Allrounder , not a utility player . He can easily find a place in the England team as a batter or a bowler . Right now there is no match for Andrew flintoff as an all rounder , however as compared to other great all-rounders like Sir Garfield Sobers, Kapil dev,Ian Botham , Imran Khan , Shaun Pollock where does he stand ? Frankly he along with Shaun Pollock and to some extent Abdur Razzak are the only genuine allrounders in the last decade or so .
However Andrew Flintoff is not better than the illustrious all rounders mentioned list above . In the early part of his career he struggled with weight issues . He was bulky which was bound to take its toll on Flintoff.What the heck !!!! a fast bowler bowling in excess of 140 kmph cannot carry around that much weight . He resolved the issues and came back . But the damage has been done .For a brief period he was almost unplayable and he played some very very crucial knocks. But that was it . He was plagued with injury .
On the skill level he might be on par with likes of Botham , Imran khan ,Kapil Dev and Shaun Pollock . But he did not look after his fitness in the way a professional player should have , especially in the initial yeras of his career . That has been his undoing . Fantastic player with amazing potential ,which was never tapped fully . What a waste!!!

Saina Nehwal : Making news for right reasons .

Saina Nehwal is on a Roll . For the uninitiated , Saina Nehwal is the 19 year old Badminton Champion from India . Saina's current Badminton World Federation ranking is six .

On june 21 2009 she created history when she beacme the first Indian to win a Super Seris Tournament in Jakarta by clinching the Indonesian Open .
Ranked 86'th in the Philippines Open , she became the first Indian Woman to win a 4 star tournament.
In 2006 Saina was the runner-up and in 2008 she was the winner of BWF World Junior Championships(World Junior Badminton Championships)
In September 2008 she won Chinese Taipei Open.
Saina was named the Most Promising Player in 2008 .She has lived upto that tag.
Her rise has been stupenduous and meteoric . On her way to the 6'th rank Saina Nehwal has deeated some of the top chinese ,malaysian and Indonesian players . This is an achievement in itself .
There was a time when Prakash Padukone had phenomenal success upto 1980's . But then Chinese came onto the scene . Prakash Padukone just could not handle them . However Saina Nehwal is doing quite well against these players and has scalped quite a few topseeds . She is almost on par with players like Prakash Padukone and her mentor Pullela Gopichand , both winners of All England Champioships .
Unlike Tennis star Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal is making news for her Badminton and not for frivolous stuff like Sania Mirza who has not won anything substantial in a long time .

Saina Nehwal says , "Right now, my focus is to play 100 percent and beat the player, not to take unnecessary pressure on my shoulders.

"I should not start thinking I have to play for the people or win for them.

"When I go onto the court, I should think I'm playing for myself, and I'm happy doing that."

That says it all.

Welcome Back Rahul Dravid .

Rahul Dravid played his last ODI against Australia on October 14 2007 at Nagpur . With the emergence of fresh "Talent" like Rohit Sharma , Suresh Raina and Yousuf Pathan , Rahul Dravid lost his place in the ODI team .These players scored heavily on flat pitches , however on hard bouncy surfaces and in seaming conditions these "talented" players fell flat on their places .These guys were literally exposed against some quick short stuff in England and West Indies . Meanwhile Rahul Dravid shed his image of a defensive player and played some great knocks in the IPL 2009 scoring at a strike rate of 115 .This brought home the reality of the importance of players like Dravid .
The BCCI selection panel has taken a positive step by including Rahul Dravid in probables list for the Champions Trophy which will be played on hard and bouncy pitches in South Africa. Without doubt he will be in the Indian team heading for South Africa .
It is good to see Saha , Nayyar and Bhuvneshwar singh in that list .They deserved it .

Here is the Probables list :
MS Dhoni, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Suresh Raina, Yusuf Pathan, Abhishek Nayar, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh, Praveen Kumar, Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Ravindra Jadeja, Dinesh Karthik, Munaf Patel, R Ashwin, M Vijay, Amit Mishra, Ajinkya Rahane, Dhawal Kulkarni, S Badrinath, Ashish Nehra, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar Singh, Wriddhiman Saha, Pankaj Singh