ICC WC 2011 - IV - IND vs ENG (Keep the faith!)

The India vs England match has just ended in a tie and in a way is a result which would make both teams unhappy on the day, however has not hurt either's chances in the tournament.

India did almost everything right for the entire 50 overs of their batting and did almost everything wrong during their bowling which was identical to the way England's innings went.

First the Indian batting. Sehwag was scoring briskly however he always seemed to be living dangerously and duly succumbed early in his innings. At the other end, Tendulkar was looking comfortable but was finding scoring not as easy. Given that Gambhir was finding the boundary regularly in the early part of his innings, Tendulkar could take the time to settle in. Once past his 30s, Tendulkar was batting with authority and duly scored his umpteenth century. I thought there would be a good contest between Tendulkar and Swann, however Tendulkar dismantled Swann with two successive sixes, reminiscent of the way he had attacked Warne a decade ago. It was clear that Tendulkar had studied Swann and had found a way to counter him.

After Gambhir went (looked like a lapse in concentration), Yuvraj Singh looked like he was finding his touch and with Tendulkar now scoring freely, a total of 350+ looked on the cards. However once Tendulkar lost his wicket (during the batting powerplay - which is turning out to be a millstone around the batting team in recent times which was proved again during England's innings), the momentum shifted towards England and only some good hitting and bad fielding allowed India to post 339. It was now up to India's bowlers to restrict England - which given the total should have been well within their capabilities.

England's batting started positively and Pietersen was looking ominous though Strauss was the one finding the boundaries. Pietersen left to a piece of bad luck, his rocket of a drive found Munaf parrying the ball into the air and completing the catch in his follow-through even as he fell down. Trott had a decent partnership with Strauss but left when he was looking good for a big score. Now came the brightest part of the match for England in the partnership between Strauss and Bell. England were now ahead of the run-rate and it seemed like India was dead and buried.

It took a resurgent Zaheer Khan for India to pull back. First, Bell popped one into the air towards extra cover and Kohli made no mistake. Next ball, Strauss was caught on the back foot and was plumb LBW (though he went ahead and referred the decision, it stood). The run rate started mounting up and India bowled some tight overs. Collingwood departed quickly when he skied a ball high towards mid-wicket and Raina calmly took a catch that was not that easy.

It now looked India's game as Prior and Yardy also fell quickly, however Bresnan, Swann and Shahzad had other ideas. All three struck the ball cleanly and suddenly it was raining sixes. The equation came down to 24 off the last 12 balls and it was decision time for Dhoni. Munaf Patel was to bowl the last over and Zaheer and Harbhajan had finished their quota. It was a toss up between Chawla, Yuvraj and Pathan and Dhoni gambled with Chawla. Chawla went for 15 in the over though he got the wicket of Bresnan with his final ball and suddenly it was down to a manageable 9 of 6 balls. Munaf bowled tightly but England ran the twos well till it came down to 2 runs off the last ball. England could manage just a single and the match was tied.

England were cruising towards victory and should have won comfortably had they got the batting powerplay right or had either of Collingwood, Prior or Yardy stuck around till the end. India would have squeezed through if it were not for the penultimate over bowled by Chawla. In hindsight, giving it to Pathan would have been better. Pathan may not have gotten a wicket but would have been harder to hit for a six than Chawla, who tends to give the ball much more air.

England can well and truly now consider themselves a batting unit (though their lower middle order is suspect), however need to improve their ground fielding to progress beyond the semis. India have some thinking to do in their bowling department. Harbhajan is the only one bowling well with Zaheer and Munaf doing well in patches. The fourth and fifth bowlers are a worry, Yuvraj/Pathan combo works well for about 11-12 overs but a regular fourth bowler is a must, unless Sehwag starts bowling again and India then manage to play Raina in the eleven (which would be a very defensive move in going in with only three specialist bowlers), so the load of 20 overs would be shared between Yuvraj, Pathan, Sehwag and Raina.

As for the other matches, New Zealand succumbed tamely to Australia (Ponting still needs to get some runs), Bangladesh just about managed to shut out Ireland (lack of experience of the Irish more than any dominating performance by the Bangladeshis), and Pakistan managed to outwit Sri Lanka (in my view, pressure of playing at home told on Sri Lanka, whereas Pakistan has started showing their strength in bowling and their middle order with Younis and Misbah is looking good).

Still early days in the tournament, but the stronger teams are beginning to assert themselves.

ICC WC 2011 - III (Dutch Courage)

England vs Netherlands (22 Feb 2011)

England supporters must consider themselves very lucky that England managed to squeeze out a win against the Dutch. Before the match, all the experts were talking about how England needed to "make a statement" which I think England ended up doing, but not quite the statement that they would have wished to make.

The English commentators were running out of ways to describe England's poor performance in the field which in my view seemed more like a lack of motivation. Given that the Dutch had beaten England the last time around, it should have been the opposite, ie. England to have an excess of motivation to ensure that there was no repeat. Another aspect is also likely to be that the World Cup is coming immediately after a grueling Ashes tour Down Under where despite the Test win, they were thumped badly in the one-dayers.

Back to the match, the Dutch without seeming to be on top of the bowling were still managing a respectable run rate of close to 5 for the first 40 overs. Ryan ten Doeschate (a name which is likely to become much more familiar to Indian fans since he has been signed up by KKR in the IPL), played very well and was not troubled at all by the bowling. The English bowlers were in general OK, with Swann being very tidy without seeming dangerous, though Anderson was very disappointing. James Anderson is considered one of the top 5 bowlers in the world today though whoever saw today's performance would be hard pressed to believe it.

England were plain shoddy in the field, with a couple of absolute sitters being grassed, Swann's miss in the last couple of overs was particularly terrible as also a mix-up where the ball dropped mid-way between mid-wicket and long-on and two fielders stopped short thinking the other was going for it. It could happen to any team, but to have multiple such occurences on the same day has to be a worrying factor for England.

Before you knew it, the Dutch had posted 292 and there was no easy way to win for England. Luckily, their batsmen bailed them out with all the top order contributing. Pietersen looked good but was strangely subdued when he should have gone hell for leather once he was set. The rate kept mounting till Collingwood and Bopara hit out towards the end though the Dutch could have ran them closer with tighter bowling in the middle overs.

England have a lot of thinking to do before their Sunday match against India and the Dutch must be ruing a missed opportunity.

The rest of the matches to date have been quite ordinary, with Australia managing to struggle against Zimbabwe whereas New Zealand and Sri Lanka managed comfortable wins.

ICC WC 2011 - II (India vs Bangladesh)

Well we are off finally .. The World Cup began officially with the inauguration a couple of days ago. Given that it is a tournament about cricket, I couldn't quite see what all the so-called cultural programmes were about, not that I watched too much of it. I also couldn't understand the point of cricket being played vertically on a building .. and it was funny hearing the commentators and poor old Alan Wilkins trying to fit superlatives for the amazing cultural displays ;-)

Match 1 - India vs Bangladesh - February 19, 2011

The first match produced a flood of runs which is likely to be symptomatic of the rest of the tournament. Tendulkar and Sehwag got India off to a flier, more because of the waywardness of the Bangladesh bowlers rather than any over-aggressive intent. It didn't seem like Bangladesh had their minds focused on the match at all and it took a tragic mix-up for Tendulkar to be run out, completely against the run of play. The rest of the Indian innings built on the opening stand and Kohli continued to impress one and all, and was duly rewarded by reaching his century with a ball to spare in the innings. Sehwag ensured that he cashed in on Bangladesh's lacklustre display and ended up with 175 and the man of the match award.

The Bangladesh innings got off to a very streaky start. Unfortunately Sreesanth suffered on a couple of occasions and ended up losing his focus and ended up conceding far too many runs. If Nehra is fit for the next matches, then Sreesanth is likely to have played his last match in this World Cup, which is a shame. Munaf Patel showed that being steady is a virtue and I have a feeling that this is going to be Harbhajan Singh's best one day tournament to date.

India's bowling and fielding display was average, with the huge total providing a cushion to smooth over lapses in the field. If a couple of Bangladesh batsmen had stuck around then the spinners could have come under pressure, but Bangladesh proved to be gracious hosts and duly lost comprehensively.

One positive aspect was that I was *very* pleasantly surprised by the TV coverage. No intrusive pop-up ads and the number of advertisements between overs was restricted to just two. We also did not have abrupt cuts to ads and could see the beginning and end of each over. The commentary though remained true to form and was very ordinary. I hope the TV coverage continues like this through the tournament and if it does then ESPN-Star Sports is indeed to be commended. Well done, ESPN-Star Sports, if you have a page on Facebook, I will go there and "like" it now !

ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 - I

Due to popular demand, well at least from one person :) I am going to blog about the soon to start World Cup.

First, let me get this off my chest. Enough with this, "Lets win for Sachin" already ! Yes, winning the World Cup will add a missing feather to his hat, but then so would have winning the test series in South Africa or Australia. To consider the World Cup as his crowning glory is doing disservice to his outstanding achievements. On a different note, I think action speak louder than words, so it would have been better for Dhoni, et al to have declared that we won it for Sachin, *after* winning the World Cup rather than before. Also, the way everyone is going on about it, it almost looks like a fait accompli, ie. the Indian team just has to turn up on the ground and the opponents will meekly roll over and hand over the cup to India.

Second, I hope the coverage does not sink to the abysmal lows of the coverage of the South Africa series, with L shaped ads and pop-ups on screen when the ball is in play. There was an interesting (though inconclusive) discussion on the topic of TV coverage of live cricket, hosted by Harsha Bhogle on cricinfo. My take is that intrusive advertising is there to stay for cricket coverage in India and regardless of whether the Indian consumer is unhappy or not, given that there is no viable alternative, we have to grin and bear it. I only hope that the quality of commentary improves, I am getting tired of the same old people trotting out the same tired cliches. Most times, I watch with the volume turned down.

I will not spend too much time on the selection of Team India, however will say only one thing, I am glad that Sreesanth found his way into the team. I think he is one of India's most talented bowlers and despite his attitude issues, he should play for India for a long time to come.

There is a lot of talk about new tactics, however lets wait for live action to begin before speculating on these. Many teams look well prepared and any of Australia, England, India, South Africa or Sri Lanka (no favourites, all in alphabetical order!) could win it. I don't think West Indies, New Zealand or Banladesh stand a chance, though Pakistan is a perennial dark horse, if they can string together two or three consecutive victories, they could become dangerous, but I suspect they will tend to self-destruct rather than click as a unit. Other teams are no-hopers and just make up the numbers.

Yesterday's warm up game between Australia and India was a little surprising. I didn't watch it, except at the very end, however I am surprised at the low scores. I think the two heartening features were Sehwag's fifty and Harbhajan seems to have found some rhythm, will reserve judgement on Chawla for the moment.

New mobile - LG Optimus P500

After a few weeks of dithering, I finally bit the bullet and bought the LG Optimus P500. I had set out my criteria in an earlier blog. Its now been about a week since I bought it and my initial impressions are quite positive.

It worked well out of the box and did not require any elaborate setup. Given that this was my first touch screen phone, it took a little getting used to, however I soon got the hang of it. The interface is reasonably intuitive and user friendly. I could also get Wi-Fi working without any problems and managed to connect to my home WPA2 enabled WiFi network easily. Voice quality is quite good, however have not evaluated the speakerphone completely as of now. Camera is quite acceptable (3 MP) and photos taken are quite crisp, have not tested videos much right now.

Now to Android. I have just one word for Android - Fantastic! I don't know how we have lived without it till now ! I have Android 2.2 (Froyo) and the phone comes preloaded with a set of neat apps and of course access to the Android store. A few nice apps were the Indian newspapers app and the weather app. Standard apps like Gtalk (however I can't see myself using Gtalk on my phone), Gmail, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are also preloaded.

I was a little wary of keyboard input using the touch screen, but that barrier was also crossed without pain (the auto switch to landscape mode when you change the phone orientation is neat). Two thumb typing is quite easy and I could reuse my skills from my Nokia E61i.

The sound quality when music or youtube videos are played is pretty good and the volume is also quite reasonable. Some minor glitches till now - the screen orientation does not always change quickly when you hold the phone sideways, I found the response a little sluggish at times. I need to explore Android more to tweak it further.

It ended up costing me about Rs. 12,500 (2 GB card included), and right now I think it is money well spent. Overall it is looking to be a very good buy and I am quite satisfied with it.

As an aside, I also bought a Samsung bluetooth headset and it can connect to two bluetooth devices at the same time which is a feature I had been on the lookout for a long time. I use two phones (one work and one personal) and when driving (especially when I am driving between Pune and Mumbai) it is a problem when I connect my headset to one phone and the other rings. Problem solved! It can have another application when you connect the headset to your laptop and your phone so that you don't miss a call when you are on Skype, etc.