Expert Blog

Friday, March 05, 2010

IPL predictions, anyone?

It’s that time of the year again when all eyes will be on the T20 action from the third season of the Indian Premier League.

There are many ways to try and look ahead to the IPL. You could be a fan, in which case your predictions are more expectations than anything else. You could go by your gut but you could miss out little facts. Or you could follow the Castrol Index, both the player index and the team index, to see if a prediction is possible.

The last of those is the least subjective so we will wait for it to throw up contenders. But till then, we could put an analyst’s hat on and see what we come up with. Royal Challengers Bangalore are looking the best balanced, if anything they have almost too much choice. But they have covered for Ross Taylor and Cameron White very well by signing on one of the most exciting players in the world, Eoin Morgan. They have strong Indian players, especially with the bat with Dravid, Pandey, Kohli and Uthappa and I think have made a very wise pick with S Sriram in case spinners start doing well and they have no room for Roelof van der Merwe. It seems the best structured team of the tournament.

The weakest are the Rajasthan Royals. And it cannot help that Graeme Smith is injured. Warne is moving on, Mascarenhas looks good but his numbers are ordinary but as leader, Warne has always come up with something special. And I think the dark horse of the tournament could well be Shaun Tait. Kamran Khan is fit apparently and so who knows the mavericks might still surprise us. But on paper, they look in dire need of Indian batsmen.

The defending champions have a pretty similar balance to their team this year as they had last year. That means they rely too heavily on RP Singh, Rohit Sharma and Pragyan Ojha since there seem to be no back-up players there. A bit vulnerable, as indeed are Kings XI with injury and availability.

I think there are four middle-of-the-road teams in Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders and Delhi Daredevils. Of these, the Daredevils have possibly the most explosive batting line-up and would be disappointed not to make it to the semis. At this stage, it could come down to two of Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata for the last two slots.

Friday, February 26, 2010

The Tendulkar blitzkrieg

Harsha Bhogle reflects on Sachin Tendulkar’s marvellous double hundred in the second ODI against South Africa – a first for the 50-over version of the game.

Sachin Tendulkar didn’t just steal Mamta Bannerjee’s rail budget, he gave us a reason to feel good. It was an astonishing innings but one that was helped to some extent by the prevailing attitudes towards batsmen and bowlers. The pitch at Gwalior was dreadfully one-sided, the ball on the outfield was like a car on an autobahn, the boundary ropes were inching in to say hello and there were, as is now the norm, 20 overs of field restrictions.

In fact you must have noticed that Tendulkar’s big surge began with the batting power play; a luxury that batsmen did not enjoy till recently. That momentum kept him going and it would be a worthwhile debate to ask if he would indeed have got there without that power play.

Now, having said that we often have conditions in our favour but are unable to convert them into results. This is what Tendulkar has been so good at doing. Indeed it is a feature of this extraordinary twelve-month period where he is at his most prolific. Would be interesting to see how this compares with other highs in his career.

Particularly loved his wagon wheel which showed how straight he was playing. For a while he had lapsed into playing the paddle shot and other more plebeian nudges. Now he is back to doing what he is best at. Hitting powerfully down the ground and putting fear into the bowler. I think it is also a measure of how he feels about his game. He has always been supremely confident but now that he is fit he probably feels a lot better, much more positive.

Wonder what a Tendulkar batting curve over the years looks like. Once we generate it maybe we can show it to the stock market experts who can advise us if there is a correction or a spike on the way!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

India’s bowling woes

Harsha Bhogle reviews the first ODI between India and South Africa in Jaipur that concluded in a last-ball thriller.

I was afraid dew might play a part in Jaipur and that would have meant a total of 300 wouldn’t have been good enough. As it turned out, it was, though India were given a scare by their own bowlers. The cupboard is so dreadfully bare with new ball bowlers! Nehra will have one good game, one good spell, one good ball but consistency is not his strength. You cannot throw a ball to your lead bowler with a prayer on your lip! And Sreesanth is taking forever to remind us of his class. Maybe he just needs to bowl for a whole season and learn to stay fit.

Interesting that Jadeja emerged as India’s best bowler. He has a point to prove and I am sure he realises that he is just the player India needs in these conditions. It was a bit of a luxury to go in with both Yusuf Pathan and Jadeja but given how the lead bowlers are going, Dhoni might well feel that is the way to go. I suspect he is missing Yuvraj though and news that he is on his way to Australia to see a doctor suggests there might be some bad news for Kings XI in the IPL.

I am very concerned that the groundsman in Gwalior is proud of the fact that he thinks no score is defendable on his track. I hope someone reminds him that that is precisely the definition of a bad wicket. A cricket match is a contest and there has to be a total that is difficult to defend, one that gives the side batting first a good chance and a third that they should be comfortable defending. That total may vary from pitch to pitch but that total must exist and it cannot exist in the region beyond 350.

I’m yearning to see a one-day game with a 75-80 yard boundary and a pitch with some life in it. Is that like saying I’m yearning to see Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro again? Will it never happen in India?

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Instinct or numbers?

What sets the criteria for a player’s selection to the national squad? Can instinct overpower hard numbers? Harsha Bhogle throws some light at some recent selections in the Indian team.

You can either pick a player on a hunch or on solid numbers. It’s an old argument with a few things to be said in favour of either side. Sometimes you see things in a player that suggest good numbers are round the corner; or maybe even inevitable. At other times you evaluate the hunch by going to the numbers and letting a player go because he hasn’t delivered.

I thought of that as I pondered over why the last spot in the Indian team for Nagpur had gone to Rohit Sharma and not to either Virat Kohli or Cheteshwar Pujara or even Manish Pandey. Rohit hasn’t exactly set the Ranji Trophy on fire; lots of others had been more prolific and more consistent. His recent form in one-day internationals or T20 had been ordinary and yet he has impressed almost everybody who has seen him bat.

So here is a case where a captain goes by a hunch, someone who he believes has ability that hard numbers don’t justify. By a cruel quirk of fate, Rohit was laid low by that modern enemy of cricketers, the pre-match football game. I have yet to crack the secret behind its use.

Rohit was replaced in the team by Wriddhiman Saha, a free stroking wicketkeeper from Kolkata who hadn’t quite delivered for Bengal as a batsman in what was a difficult season for them. The reason he was in the squad was that the selectors wanted to look at someone other than Parthiv Patel or Dinesh Karthik. It’s a fair reason but it meant India ended up playing a batsman who wouldn’t have been in the top ten on their wish list. Opportunity knocks in strange ways sometimes!

If Rohit was selected in spite of his numbers, Badrinath was the opposite case; someone who always had excellent stats against his name but never got the opportunity since there was no slot available. So to be fair the selectors have given him the opportunity the moment a position got created. As it turned out, it wasn’t one but three that got created!

But in every problem there is opportunity. This is our first look at how the middle order will look in the near future. Meanwhile the search for bowlers continues, with promise withering and no significant numbers anywhere on the horizon!!

Friday, January 22, 2010

Prolific Gambhir shows the way

Gautam Gambhir’s splendid form is helping the young cricketer scale new heights, while Bangladesh have certainly proved they are not to be taken lightly.

Bangladesh weren’t ordinary as Sehwag thought they were but they weren’t good enough. But make no mistake, they had India hopping for a while and they must go into the next Test aware of what they can do. This was just the kind of cricket Bangladesh need to play and they will now have to show that they are good learners, unlike what we have seen at various stages in their evolution. This looks like a good, settled line-up; it could still do with some more solid players in the top order, but they have now got a lot right.

Meanwhile, Gautam Gambhir continues an astonishing run. Part of the evolution of a player is to cash in when the going is good, put a price on his wicket. We saw that during the double hundred against Australia and that fantastic innings against New Zealand at Napier; one that was in contrast to what we thought we knew of him. He had suggested till then that he was a dasher, we now know that he is a very intelligent young man.

He is the kind of cricketer India needs; someone who can play in any form. I often look at Gambhir and wonder which form of the game he is best at. And I do not know the answer. South Africa in December will be a test but he doesn’t need to lose sleep over it. There are lots of fine young players around him and they can look up to him rather than to a relatively insurmountable Tendulkar or Dravid.

India’s other big plus was the return of Ishant Sharma to wicket taking ways. Now here is another very gifted young man who, like Gambhir, plays in all three forms. But, unlike with Gambhir, you can tell which version he is best at. He seems confused when playing T20 and needs to be better at the death in 50 overs cricket. Test cricket gives him the freedom he needs.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Team versus Stars

Our expert shares his insight on how having too many star players in the same team is not really a blessing.

It’s a question we have often asked ourselves. How important is it for a team to have a lot of stars in it? And what exactly is the role of the star?

The final of the Idea Cup provided an answer we perhaps knew all along. India were without Tendulkar but Sri Lanka were without the three players who had virtually shaped their side in the decade gone by; Murali, Vaas and Jayasuriya. For once, the conditions didn’t play a big part but Sri Lanka easily outplayed India. It showed that there is always something beyond individual skills that matters. If that wasn’t so, all you would have to do is create an individual index, add the numbers for the eleven players taking the field and determine the winner!

And therefore here is an interesting thought. In history, are there teams which do not have really standout individual indices yet which punch well above their weight? Meaning, is the team’s success index out of proportion to the sum of individual indices? And if we can indeed generate such numbers can we look at instances in a team’s history where this might have happened and at others where it might not have?

To my mind, this will provide very interesting insights into leadership and team bonding. Was there, for example, a period where they had a strong leader? Was there a phase when a development programme suddenly bore fruit? I can think of some examples from the top of my mind. India, at various times and Pakistan, at most times (except when Imran Khan was captain) would have had lower team indices than the sum of individual indices. Maybe, New Zealand would be an example of the team doing better. And Australia in its turnaround phase under Allan Border.

It is also my hypothesis that having a lot of stars is not just unproductive but sometimes, counter-productive. Maybe such indices can provide answers to this theory as well!

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Lessons from cricket

Harsha Bhogle gives us his view on two contrasting games of cricket and how the game is never over till the last ball is bowled.

A one-day international in poor conditions and a Test match in an outstanding atmosphere gave us valuable lessons on the game and indeed, about life itself.

This is not the best time of the year to be playing day/night cricket since in our part of the world, cricket is a winter sport and there is always the prospect of a lot of dew. In Dhaka, it is emerging as the biggest factor in the game and when external conditions seem to overcome playing skills, it is never very good. But Sri Lanka have stumbled onto a fundamental truth amidst those conditions.

With injuries the flavour of the season for them, Sri Lanka were almost forced to play Thilan Samaraweera. Sometimes we make the right decision, sometimes we stumble onto it. It had baffled me all along that Sri Lanka chose to play little bits and pieces batsmen over genuine class. Inevitably then, the top four had to carry the batting. But in a 50 over game, there is always time for class to stamp itself and that is what we saw with Samaraweera. I won’t be surprised if he plays the kind of role Rahul Dravid did for India. He will also fill a troublesome spot for them at no 5.

And away in Sydney, Australia showed that in Test cricket, as in life, there is always a second chance if you hang in there. Most teams would have believed the game lost after a first innings score of 126. But Australia hung in there, fought for every run and eventually made 176 look a much bigger target than it actually was. In doing so, they also showed that no game is lost till the last ball is bowled. I also believe Australia’s approach shows why process driven teams will always beat those that have little going for them other than instinct.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Series in retrospect

Harsha Bhogle shares his thoughts on the Kotla fiasco and on the India-Sri Lanka ODI series that just concluded.

When we were doing the Champions League in October, it was clear that the surface at the Kotla wasn’t conducive to good cricket but we also knew that much could happen, if accompanied by intent, in two months. Obviously that has not happened and whichever way you look at it, this is reason for embarrassment but also an occasion for stock taking. Delhi has not been a particularly distinguished cricket association for a long time now and it has to get its house in order.

Intriguingly, it is also producing the best cricketers for India at the moment. Sehwag, Gambhir, Kohli, Ishant, Amit Mishra, and Nehra makes it six from there in the national side; and with Shikhar Dhawan in good form, there must be something about the city. Maybe they just learn to live with uncertainty and chaos and so become very good at seizing the opportunity that comes their way. Maybe the system creates disillusionment and allows only the strongest to come through and so young men coming out of the system are ready!

And so we either produce pitches that give bowlers no chance at all or come up with something like this!! It suggests to me that we tend to be enamoured by what is in the public eye and not care too much for other critical areas. And so pitch development, or junior cricket will go under the scanner.

It also meant India won the series comfortably and that was appropriate. They were the better team, more rounded and seemed to have the better bench strength. Sri Lanka have tough decisions to take with Jayasuriya and a replacement for the evergreen Murali. I suspect they are missing Chaminda Vaas too and while there are some impressive seamers around they are not as consistent. Consistency is a genuine indicator of class and they are struggling a bit there.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Stellar performances

If you haven’t watched the India-Sri Lanka ODI series so far, our expert tells you what you’ve been missing.

Virender Sehwag is looking so good he could, as we sometimes say, bat with a toothpick. And once he puts that away, Tillekaratne Dilshan could pick it up and score runs with it! But the man who is carrying the broadest bat is still Sachin Tendulkar! Twenty years after he first played international cricket he has the hunger to give it all and at Cuttack, on a quixotic pitch, he paced his innings like a master. And he could do it because he knew that he could be there at the end. The ability to finish games is the real mark of a master and Tendulkar played like a master.

The Castrol Index rated Ravi Jadeja very high and there is no doubt he deserved the man of the match. But my eyes were on another cricketer who I believe is very gifted but who allows himself to be inconsistent. The grouse I have with Yuvraj is the grouse I have with Harbhajan and he showed his class by varying his pace. When he is relaxed and tossing the ball up and giving it time to do things, there are few spinners better than him in the game. His action means he will get bounce naturally but he is also a big turner and he got both right in this game.

Now both sides must show how quickly they can adapt, especially with the new ball. Currently it is vanishing faster than Usain Bolt and both teams need to figure out how to use it as an attacking weapon; or at any rate, to ensure that it doesn’t provide the opposition with the start they need. I hope Ishant Sharma sees this is as an opportunity on his learning curve and takes it up as a challenge. These are the little things that show how hungry a cricketer is.

Two games to play. Sri Lanka are still looking top heavy with the batting. They need one of Kandamby or Kapugedera to fire and their reserve bowling isn’t looking too hot. Their batting has too much to do and that is why I think India will be disappointed if they don’t win the series.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Run machines

In recent times, ODI cricket has seen a surge of big impossible-looking scores. Is that helping the game at all? Read what our expert has to say.

There was a time when 300 was considered almost unthinkable and just over ten years ago, when India chased down 314 against Pakistan at Dhaka, we reacted as if a summit had been reached. 300 is still an outstanding score and guarantees more wins than losses but it must remain a distant target. Anything more than that should be the result of an extraordinary batting performance. But when you start nudging 400, and 350 starts appearing a little more frequently you start to wonder if the contest is getting redefined.

At its heart, cricket must remain a contest between bat and ball, and anything less than that demeans the sport. When it becomes a contest between one set of batsmen and another, it robs the game of its very essence. And that is why scores in excess of 350 leave me a bit cold. I have always felt that a boundary should be an event, where the batsman triumphs over a bowler’s skill and his field placement. That event cannot be trivialised. I still believe that the best one-day game is where a side makes 270 and the side batting second struggles to get there.

Having said that, there is something else that must worry supporters of good cricket. India’s fielding is hitting rock bottom and we aren’t even talking about singles becoming twos as a matter of routine. In days gone by, we used to joke that if India made 300, the opposition had to chase 275 and that if they made 300, India needed to get 325. Those days are upon us, just as the days of routinely delayed flights are. The quality of fielding is a barometer of the attitude of a team and I hope a lot of the Indian players are feeling a bit stupid watching their own replays.

But this giant cloud has a pretty silver lining. Virender Sehwag, in this form, presents a spectacle that is eminently watchable. He is perhaps Indian television’s biggest TRP grosser at the moment!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

A real test for Team India

What led to India’s poor outing in the first T20 game against Sri Lanka? Harsha Bhogle throws some light on the loss.

As India ascend to the top of Test cricket, a format they have been accused of neglecting, they continue to slide in T20, a form of the game they seem tailor-made for. They were woeful at Nagpur; the bowling and fielding wasn’t good enough at this level and the batting had a touch of the bizarre.

The shorter the game, the more critical the role of fielding and catching. Truly, the much neglected third arm of the game becomes an almost equal sibling to batting and bowling and India were all over the place. The Castrol Index worm will show you that the turning point of the Sri Lankan innings, indeed of the match, came when Yuvraj put down a sitter of Jayasuriya in the 4th over. He promptly seized the initiative and allowed Sangakkara to play an innings of extraordinary versatility.

Sangakkara is one of modern greats, capable of playing gritty innings in Test cricket but also of carving out run-a-ball 50s and 60s in a 130-140 kind of game. And at Nagpur, he showed he is as good as anyone when it comes to producing a flier. It is further proof that the best can play well in any form of the game.

And India virtually surrendered after Gambhir’s wicket. With 123 to get at 11 an over, India could have paced themselves to about 40 in the next 5 leaving 80 in the last 6. Sri Lanka got those runs when they batted because they had wickets in hand. On that surface, India could have given themselves that option especially as they lost a couple of wickets.

And in any case, you cannot take the field with 8, 9, 10 and 11 incapable of batting. The Castrol Index rewards non-core skills but a team must possess them. No. 8 has to be able to win you a game in the last three overs and no. 9 should be able to hang around.

It could all change in game 2 but India need to look at their composition.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Setting benchmarks!

Harsha Bhogle evaluates the respective bench strengths of Australia and India, and finds much disparity between the two.

I must confess I am not surprised that Australia won the one-day series. Very often, while looking at teams, we do a man-to-man analysis and that can be illuminating. But, as it was with the Rajasthan Royals in the first year of the IPL, there is one other factor that you cannot quantify and that is attitude. The more players Australia lost, the harder they tried. And in doing so, they showed the depth they possess in their domestic cricket.

It is now a cliché to say that the strength of a side is the strength of its bench. But clichés are true and Australia’s bench was of high quality. There is a reason for that. When a young man qualifies to play for his state in first class cricket, he has already gone through a fair level of competition and so is largely ready to play at that level. Our domestic cricket, in spite of the two tiers, creates a readiness gap; if you are excellent at domestic level, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are good enough at international level.

India have a few other problems to solve. Too many of the younger players are hitting a wall. Suresh Raina is the latest. Since England and the West Indies bounced India in the T20 World Championship, he hasn’t been the same cricketer and dropping him down the order, maybe in search of a safe position, isn’t helping him. When a player is down, he needs to be fed confidence and the only way to do that was to see that he played at number 3. Now, in case the leadership has lost confidence in him, then he shouldn’t be in the side at all.

I think we need to worry about how good cricketers like Raina, Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa, RP Singh and Piyush Chawla are losing their way. Maybe there are cricketing reasons but maybe there aren’t and it is time we looked at that. And we need to worry about our medium pacers (I would have loved to say fast bowlers but that would be a touch dishonest!). The selection of Sreesanth, who has played cricket and been in the news for the wrong reasons, is an admittance of shortage. Irfan Pathan and RP Singh are in no form, Munaf Patel rarely inspires confidence and Ashish Nehra cannot yet play four-day cricket. Sreesanth has not been selected, he is the last man standing after an elimination process!

Friday, October 23, 2009

Fantastic cricket, but who’s watching?

The Champions League has been a wonderful platform for a lot of cricketers but with no Indian teams in contention for the title, the tournament has not gone down well with the Indian masses.

So has the Champions League been good? If you asked the cricketers, they would say yes pretty resoundingly; especially those from overseas for whom this is a great, and lucrative, stage. Also the idea of franchise-driven teams is refreshing because it allows more players a shot on the big stage. If, eventually, the game has to grow, I suspect it needs to follow the football model for part of the way and from that point of view the Champions League makes a lot of sense.

To be honest, the cricket has been really good. I wish more Indian fans would wake up to quality cricket beyond our shores but that is prevented to some extent by the amount of cricket we play here. But the top four teams were eminently watchable; they showed enthusiasm which was fantastic to watch and reminded us of the value of homogeneous, well-bonded teams.

It raises questions about the IPL where teams come together for short periods, have only a little time to get to know each other (indeed, they often don’t) and then disperse. The football comparison isn’t really valid here because those teams get into training well before the season starts and play together for almost six months without wholesale changes year upon year. It gives the players time to know each other and that then leads to playing for each other which is at the heart of all good teams.

However, I am not sure the commercial partners would be as enamoured. From what I have read in the papers, the ratings haven’t been sensational, which is a pity, and that means that in the festive period, people did things other than watch cricket. Does that mean there is viewer fatigue or is the market getting rational? I think as the various formats settle down we will get a better idea but on the fact of it, I suspect viewers have started prioritising.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

In a League of its own!

Harsha Bhogle sizes up the Champions League action so far and proclaims his favourites for the big prize.

For all the planning that goes into the staging of a huge event like the Champions League, success often depends on how a couple of little things work. The marketing of the League has been extensive and good, the facilities have been excellent and some of our stadiums are actually getting better! But all that doesn’t count for much if the pitches aren’t good and I’m afraid the Champions League has been playing to mixed reviews on that one.

Hyderabad produced a beauty for its first game and that was so good to see given the amount of rain here in the build-up. Bengaluru is always pretty good but Delhi has been awful. Everytime someone goes out of the way to say the pitches will be excellent, it is time to get worried.

Typically, pitches must afford equal opportunity to bat and ball. Not every pitch can be 50-50 but a suitable interval on either side is acceptable. However, Delhi has been low, slow and very poor for strokeplay. If a total of 120 can be defended easily, there is either a problem with the chasing team or with the surface and in this case, the surface has just not allowed good cricket. I desperately hope they can do something before the first semi-final. The Champions League needs two great semi-finals to establish itself and while you can still get a close game, you need one that has also produced excellent cricket.

I quite enjoyed watching the one-over eliminator. I thought with the demise of the bowl-out, an inadequate but thrilling solution to a tied game, we might miss the drama. But this more than makes up for it. It demands a little more from the player and that is what sport should be.

At this stage, the Aussie teams are looking good but I just like what I see with the Royal Challengers.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Australia were deserving champions

By winning the Champions Trophy a second time, the team from Down Under showed just why they are the best side in world cricket.

The best team won the Champions Trophy and any format that allows that cannot be all wrong! Australia won because they were versatile; they could be patient and attacking, they could win with their top order and their tail enders, they could win with quick bowlers and spinners; their batsmen could bat on flat decks and lively ones while the bowlers could get their lengths right on slow tracks and bouncy ones.

India were slow and inadequate, Pakistan were fiendishly volatile, South Africa were too inflexible, New Zealand overcame their inherent limitations till the final, the Sri Lankans were limited by the surface they were playing on, England by their own diffidence. I have not mentioned the West Indies though I do remember seeing some men in maroon. But even they gained. We are going to see a lot of Kemar Roach.

But Australia could adapt. They were tough as nails and they could mould their game. They were made of steel but like clay they could assume a different form on different days in different conditions. It is a great combination at the heart of which lies intelligence, a fierce desire to win and a great work ethic. Unlike any other team, they left the competition with a more complete team; everyone else discovered cavities. They actually gave fifty overs cricket a shot in the arm.

New heroes have emerged. Grant Elliott had his fifteen minutes of fame while Shane Watson made the inevitable move towards becoming a batting all-rounder. His bowling registered on the speed gun but didn’t worry the batsmen too much. And he batted like a genuine top order player. Graeme Smith played the bravest innings of the tournament and Wayne Parnell was the strangest of them all; taking wickets and conceding runs with the same abandon.

Now T20 must take centre-stage. The Castrol Index has worked quite well in this format so far. Soon much more will happen on this site.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Indians in comfort zone?

The rain-abandoned game against Australia has only compounded matters for India who now find themselves in a not-so-happy situation at the Champions Trophy.

I am afraid when the rain came down, Australia seemed to have lost more than India did! I suspect India got away with one point more than they might have! Our scorer told us the Duckworth-Lewis target was 153 which India might have fancied but as they watched the thunder and lightning, they would have realised they don’t have the bowling to win this tournament.

Praveen Kumar over RP Singh seemed a good move. Praveen doesn’t have the spark that RP has, or indeed the ability to be a match winner but he is far more consistent, doesn’t have the fade-outs that seem to characterise RP’s short career; which is a pity because India are losing out on a classy bowler.

But the disappointments on the day were Ishant Sharma, who looks like he needs a bowling makeover, and Harbhajan Singh who hasn’t been able to come to terms with this surface. Funnily, these two would have been top of Dhoni’s go-to list before he came here. In fact till Ishant came on, India had made a decent start, Nehra and Praveen Kumar had bowled a lovely length, and the track was looking a bit trickier. But in his first over, the pressure that had been built up vanished and Ponting showed us why he is such a class player.

I believe Australia were on course to go past 300. Cameron White had already shown what a powerful hitter he can be and with Hopes and Johnson to come, they had a lot of firepower left. And chasing 300 with a batsman short wouldn’t have been easy. Should India go out of this tournament, and things are almost entirely beyond their control now, they need to ask themselves hard questions about the seamers. This spike-and-drop product life cycle isn’t working. Every bowler is down on pace, Praveen Kumar was bowling just over 120, and if there is a pattern there has to be a reason.

It could be that they are playing too much cricket. Or it could be that they are getting into a comfort zone. Why do I get the impression the latter is truer?

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Pakistan could go all the way!

This Champions Trophy, Pakistan might just be the team to beat. Harsha Bhogle shares his thoughts on last night’s India-Pakistan match .

If India want to be looked at as the number one team in the world (and not make a fleeting appearance atop the ICC rankings), they will have to build a strong bench. Against Pakistan, you couldn’t help thinking that India’s team was characterised by who wasn’t in it rather than who was. I fear this is especially true of the bowling for it is a long time since I have seen anything as ordinary as this. Dhoni was right when he said at the press conference that there were times when he thought he was three or four bowlers short .

Harbhajan had a bad day and clearly Dhoni had budgeted for him bowling the difficult overs later on. Sadly, he seemed to make no effort to change his length even later in his spell. One bad game doesn’t make him a bad bowler but I hope he is provoked into a better performance when he realises he was rather comprehensively outbowled by Saeed Ajmal who looks a better bowler every time I see him bowl.

The seam bowling cupboard is starting to look very bare. With twenty Power Play overs, teams need three seamers and so India are being forced to play only one spinner. A couple of years ago, it seemed those three slots would witness fierce competition. But look at the ease with which Ashish Nehra has walked back in—and looks the best!

As well as Shoaib Malik and Mohammed Yousuf played, you couldn’t help feeling that the settling in period was almost too easy. As a result Yousuf was able to rotate the strike easily, and stylishly, and it gave Malik to bat his way back into form after looking like he might struggle for a while.

And here’s a sobering thought. India lost by 54 runs after being gifted almost 35 by Pakistan through wides, no-balls and free hits. Otherwise, it might have been a drubbing. Pakistan are looking very dangerous with two key players back in form. Don’t be surprised if they go all the way.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Little things determine the big verdicts!

there has been much criticism of mahendra singh dhoni’s tactics in this world t20. i am not trying to stand up for him or absolve him of misjudgement, he has admitted to most things anyway, but i think we need to take a step back and look at things dispassionately sometimes.

dhoni’s instincts were lauded when he threw the ball to joginder sharma for the last over at the 2007 world t20. he could have asked harbhajan to bowl but his instinct told him that joginder was a better option. and instinct is something a leader must follow in a crunch situation. now if misbah’s paddle sweep had got a couple of more yards on it, dhoni would have been roasted. we would have used the great boon of hindsight and told him what he should have done and everyone would have called for his head. 
agreed the decision to send jadeja at no 4 wasn’t the greatest, or using an out of sorts ishant for an extra over, but think about this. if stuart broad had been three inches shorter, jadeja’s shot might have cleared the boundary and the game might have turned. again dhoni went with his instinct and fell marginally short. often it is the little things that determine which way the big verdict goes. 
personally i am delighted that the west indies and sri lanka have got so far. sri lanka are again showing, like delhi daredevils did, that if you have a fine bowling line up and a couple of batsmen in form you can go far in this format. the return to form of jayawardene could well be the clincher for sri lanka because they have seemed a bit short of ideas when the openers have failed. i think the best time to attack sri lanka is in the first six overs when they bat and in the first four when they bowl because they are a bit uncertain of when to begin using malinga. 

sri lanka v south africa would be the fairest final but sport never works that way! pakistan are looking dangerous after razzaq because it is taking the pressure off afridi. if they get a good start they could trouble south africa.

England played better, with more intent and they won.

this is not the time to burn effigies since showing disappointment doesn’t mean demeaning yourself. india got it wrong tactically and that happens even to the most hardened, analytical business heads. dhoni made mistakes and i am sure he knows he made them and who knows he might emerge a better captain after this.

this is not the time to burn effigies since showing disappointment doesn’t mean demeaning yourself. india got it wrong tactically and that happens even to the most hardened, analytical business heads. dhoni made mistakes and i am sure he knows he made them and who knows he might emerge a better captain after this. 

if there is one aspect that stood out for me it was that india played cautious cricket. this is not a format that allows such an attitude and maybe india were uncomfortable with their new reputation and felt the need to play to it. it is an interesting evolution that has many parallels. 

teams that are not expected to win play fearlessly and surprise people, even win sometimes. then the expectations around them rise and they feel the need to play differently to live up to those expectations. but that is something they are neither comfortable with nor experienced at. the trick (and as i write this i am acutely aware, as i have often stated, that the game is easier from 100 yards away!) is to stay as close to your natural style as possible. 

you could sense the caution in the thought behind sending jadeja at no 4. it was a situation that was crying out for yuvraj. people rise in the eyes of the world when they take on the opposition and play a match winning innings. this had to be yuvraj’s moment. i am sure as a senior player he could have made a strong case for batting himself and hopefully he did. 

there will be much breast beating, much analysis but in the end the better team on the day won. india had the greater potential, were the better side on paper, but that counts for little. england played better, with more intent and they won. 

in the end, it is a sport and we must move on.

india’s future is in their mind and in their speed on the field

india might still turn things around but they have been disappointing. i have often talked about this new generation being fearless but twice in two games (an under strength ireland side isn’t the right laboratory for observation) india have played cautious cricket and that is inexplicable. and on each occasion they have needed yuvraj singh to bail them out. against bangladesh india looked headed for 150 when gambhir and dhoni were limiting their vision with singles and against the west indies india were 66-4 in the 13th over. the young men who were the cream of their ipl franchises are leaving their supporters a bit worried.
against the west indies, india’s dot ball percentage was 48 and that is unpardonable. you can get away with it if there are a lot of boundaries but letting ones and twos go means you are letting go the opportunity of scoring risk free runs. 
in particular i have been a bit puzzled by dhoni’s batting. for a long time we have tried to explain it by saying he likes to control the innings and brings a sense of calm to a side that seems to play in fourth gear all the time. but i have begun to suspect that batting for so long in one style has made this his instinctive style. it can happen. an off spinner who only bowls doosras loses his offbreak. a serious writer in search of parody loses his sense of gravity. maybe the way out is to rediscover his old, destructive style of batting in the nets. one hopes that in adjusting his style to balance what the others are doing, he hasn’t lost his own. 
if india play with freedom they will beat england. but if they look weary (there are too few fielders in this side who allow use of the word brilliant alongside their name) they might get some rest they don’t need. india’s future is in their mind and in their speed on the field

IPL has emerged as the global sport brand from India!

whichever way you look at it the ipl has been a fantastic success. it has had its detractors, not everyone was convinced about the move to south africa and some countries are still in denial over the t20 format. they are entitled to their view, that’s perfectly acceptable, but the evidence after this year’s ipl is that more people are in the aye camp, less in the nay.

south africa has been magnificent. the decision to keep ticket prices low was a very good one. as i have always maintained it was the crowds that made ipl1 and this year they have not let us down either. it helps that watching cricket in south africa is easy, things happen as they are meant to, hardly ever has there been chaos and almost everybody has been happy.

but most important, the move has been a blessing in disguise. the ipl has taken first steps towards becoming a global brand. when we were kids, we thought of wimbledon, the ashes, the all england…and in course of time the nba, the epl, augusta masters. it had been a dream that a big global sports brand should come out of india and even though this is a work in progress (this is only year 2), it is what the cricket world is talking about. indian initiative, indian finance, indian ownership, for my generation this is huge.

and the competition itself has been good. in more demanding conditions the better players have come out on top, leadership has emerged as a quality factor in a team’s chances and we have had unforgettable performances. it’s been good so far.

and there can be few better sights than being high up in the wanderers looking down at the kumbles and gilchrists warming up for the final.

Often teams are not bad, they are just playing badly

i’m delighted that the knight riders won a game. after all that has happened around their team, some self-inflicted some uncalled for, they must have enjoyed the winning feeling. i suspect the arrival of david hussey would have played a big role. at t20 level he is a genuine match winner and apart from the runs he will score he can deliver at least two overs a game and like almost all aussies is an excellent fielder—perfect combination for a top order batsman. 
i’m pretty certain too that he would have brought in fresh thought and fresh optimism into the side. sometimes failure can become a habit because after a while a team can get numb and failure can become a self fulfilling prophecy. often teams are not bad, they are just playing badly and it requires a little trigger for them to rediscover their worth. i think their batting is still too thin but if you get a good start then 20 overs is not a lot. watch out too for wriddhiman saha who looks a fine young player and should soon, with abhishek nayar, be on the fringes of the national t20 team. ( to know more about player performances visit http://www.castrolcricket.com/IPL-2009/players)

brett lee seems to have invigorated the kings xi punjab as well. not only is he bowling well he is providing support for sreesanth who has to rediscover what bowling at this level is all about even though he seems to have no problems with his antics. they come in the way of his success. they are looking a better side as the tournament has progressed and a fair bit of that has to do with the performance of irfan pathan who in spite of the odd off day is bowling better than he has had for at least a year now.

and the super kings found out, much to the anger of their captain, that if you bowl length balls and full tosses in the end overs no target is too big. i am afraid they are another side where the indian contingent is not pulling its weight in the field. for all his brilliance had suresh raina been at the bowler’s end to collect the throw from dhoni they might have tied, or even won the game. tough to quantify those!

And my choice of the most valuable player this year is….

three matches to go as i write this. so who is the most valuable player of the tournament. the castrol index will throw up its choice and it would be interesting to compare that against perception. so all you lovers of numbers and cricket, put down your choices and then look at the castrol index to see how your choice stacks up against numbers. in an ideal world the two should be identical except of course that you could include the captaincy factor which is virtually impossible to quantify.

the popular choice at this stage should, i guess, be a toss up between mathew hayden and suresh raina. the big aussie has been awesome and has scored many runs very quickly. but he has done something else. he has made all other teams spend a lot of time thinking of how to bowl to him and in doing so has constantly played on their minds. ‘what if hayden gets away?’ would be the fear in the opposition camp and if he has a couple of good overs teams very quickly start thinking of plan b. so for his aura, hayden gets a few more in the qualitative analysis.

raina, stockily but much smaller built, seems to hit the ball as long; certainly he hits it long enough (it doesn’t really matter whether a six is 80 meters long or 100! and in any case i am not sure how those distances are measured!!) and unlike hayden has emerged as a valuable bowler for dhoni and the chennai super kings. in test cricket it is unlikely he would bowl,in 50 overs he might turn his arm over occasionally but in t20 it very often comes down to a ball-to-ball contest. and raina has succeeded because he seems to be very cool and balanced at the time of delivery. he is a shrewd young fellow, occasionally just stops fleetingly in his arm swing to get an idea of the batsman’s footwork, and then pings the ball where he wants it to. he has bowled valuably in the death and catches well.

many others would make the cut; ab de villiers, rohit sharma, dirk nannes, anil kumble. that is like a wimbledon seeding list. let’s see who wins. currently i am tied between raina and hayden. if it were an sms poll in a reality show, both would lose because the chennai vote would get split!!!

T20 is about guerrilla warfare, not a military campaign!

batting in the ipl seems to have fallen into some kind of rhythm which is so unlike what t20 cricket is all about.t20 is about following your instinct, catching your opponent unawares, it is more like a guerrilla strategy than a military campaign which is what test cricket and now, even 50 overs cricket feels like. and hence the surprise at the manner in which teams are going slow, protecting wickets and leaving things for the end over melee. isn’t that the plan with long distance running? or the way 50 overs cricket used to be played? 
i can understand that teams do not want to lose too many wickets and with the conditions helping bowlers somewhat there are bound to be casualties in a run chase. but it is quite apparent by now that once the asking rate touches 9 an over with about 10 overs to play you are asking for an extraordinary performance to help you win the game. and far too many games are being lost in the overs 10-15; or for that matter between 8 and 14. 
i would therefore like to see teams nominate one player to turn things around in the middle overs. keep the rohit sharmas and de villiers’ to finish games but have a couple of people to make their job easier. i know pitches are slow, the ball is gripping but the essence of t20 hasn’t changed—that you have 11 batsmen in 20 overs. deccan chargers for example came out of jail against the kolkata knight riders but didn’t quite come off against king’s xi punjab. (Check out Deccan Chargers’ Index on their team page at http://www.castrolcricket.com/IPL-2009/team/DECCAN-CHARGERS)

i wonder if two batsmen can take the same risks in the 11’th and 12th overs that they are happy to take in the 17th and 18th. with the deccan chargers for example maybe herschelle gibbs, if he is around at that stage, or andrew symonds can be that person. the royal challengers need ross taylor to finish so maybe virat kohli can be that man. the only team i suspect that would be game to do that is the rajasthan royals who have completely won me over by the manner in which they have approached t20. but their problem is they don’t have the people to do it!

Teams playing above themselves are always fun to watch!

so the mumbai indians are out of this year’s ipl and they have four long days to endure before their last match, and their flight to mumbai. yes, i did say “out” because while there is an elaborate set of events that could materialise to put them into the semi-final, they will be the first to put their hands up and say that they are not among the top four teams this year.

so then, why are they not among the top four? when the team was put together it was clear that there were two assumptions on which a good run in the tournament was based upon. that in itself is not unusual—delhi daredevils bet heavily on the indian bowlers in their ranks, deccan chargers bet almost entirely on the overseas batsmen. however neither assumption came good. a good attacking number three in shikhar dhawan hardly got any cricket and had to go home with injury and the wicketkeeper didn’t come good. mumbai indians played pinal shah for a long time and you can only play a keeper who can’t really contribute with the bat if everyone else is pulling along nicely.

but the major reason is that the major players didn’t deliver. jayasuriya had a couple of moments—he was nowhere near being the dominant player he was last year, tendulkar tried different positions and looked good without scoring as many runs as he threatened to. in retrospect number three was probably the best number for him with duminy to follow. zaheer khan was injured midway through and couldn’t play too many games and harbhajan singh blew hot and blew cold.

there was one other reason, symptomatic of a deeper malaise. everytime the game got close mumbai indians seemed one step behind the opposition. you saw that in ipl 08 and now again in ipl 09.every close match was lost and there has to be a reason. my feeling is that there was anxiety about winning and often that is the greatest hindrance to winning.

the teams that are playing the best are also the teams that seem to be enjoying themselves the most—delhi daredevils, chennai super kings, rajasthan royals and deccan chargers. the last two are playing above themselves and it is always great fun watching teams like those.

A Hayden off-day in the league stage will help Chennai!

the most fascinating paradox at the ipl is that the first team into the semi-final has done so with very little contribution from its opening pair. in the build up to the ipl, when teams were being analysed, the presence of sehwag and gambhir at the top for the delhi daredevils was considered one of the most crucial areas. they might still fire but they represent only one of many assumptions that have gone wrong (gambhir 204 from 11 innings and sehwag 107 from 7). they are classy players and may still come good and delhi are lucky that they have a few more opportunities before the knockout phase begins.

one possibility is that the spongy bounce here is not helping their timing. both are players who like the ball coming on and often, the quicker it comes the quicker it goes. unlike in the fifty over game (i actually heard one of my commentary colleagues refer to it as the “longer” form of the game!), they don’t have the time to assess the pitch and adjust. and you’ll often find good players who are not in the best of form backing themselves to play the shots that they otherwise would have.

you’ll notice therefore that if de villiers and dilshan fail to get going, delhi look vulnerable with only karthik really around to bail them out.

the other interesting thing that is happening at the top of the order comes from the chennai super kings. at one end they have a world beater, at the other it doesn’t seem to matter. mathew hayden is comfortably the highest run scorer in the tournament (486 runs from 10 innings) but his majestic batting has concealed the fact that at the other end, his partners, parthiv patel, murali vijay and badrinath have scored a total of 109 runs between them. the danger with such skewed run scoring patterns (as with the daredevils) is that if the lead player has an off day he creates a situation that the side is not used to. it might almost benefit the super kings if hayden fails in the next game and the rest rise to the occasion.

Are spinners doing better than seamers on the tired wickets of South Africa?

in a tournament where slow bowling seems to hold the key, and where fast bowlers seem to value the slower ball more (on another note, if you bowl four balls at 110 kmph and two at 135kmph, are you bowling four slower balls or two faster balls?), it is interesting to see who is taking most wickets and who is being most stingy?

a look at the leading wicket takers reveals (isn’t that a nice sounding word for a glance down a list!) that the top five positions are held by the quicker bowlers, the first spinner (jakati) comes in at number six and there is only one other (ojha) in the top ten. shouldn’t there be more? (see the list at http://www.castrolcricket.com/IPL-2009/players ) two reasons spring to mind. one, quite simply, most teams play more seamers than spinners so there are just more of them around. the second is a little more interesting because you need to see who is bowling when?

last i saw the maximum number of wickets fell in the end overs and the power plays (the 11th over phenomenon is petering out!) which of course is where the quicker bowlers tend to bowl. the less happening overs on the fall of wickets scale are the middle overs, say 7-15 where the runs per over is also significantly less. the list to look at therefore is the economy rate and see who is doing well there. not surprisingly 6 out of the top 7 bowlers are spinners (among those who have bowled more than 20 overs; if you don’t, jadeja and raina feature prominently as well).

so then are the spinners doing better than the seamers on the tired wickets in south africa? or is that more in focus because no one expected it and we are all just so thrilled at the idea that spin has a prominent role to play in t20? clearly a combination of the two (taking wickets and saving runs) matters and that is why on this site we look at something called the bowling efficiency which looks at wickets taken and economy rates achieved. that is one of the factors in determining a player’s castrol index and to see where your favourite player is on the castrol index just follow the link on the home page!

Southpaws dominating down south?

i have found over the years that the most studied explanations of events come from enthusiastic bloggers—the kind i hope frequent this site and make occasional forays towards this blog. so here is one for you—why are five of the top six positions in the list of leading run-scorers at the ipl occupied by left handers? (see the list at http://www.castrolcricket.com/IPL-2009/players) the traditional explanation is that because most batsmen are right handers, bowlers get used to bowling to them and never really get used to bowling at someone who stands the other way. it is not an explanation that should hold at this level and i am tempted to think, not being possessed of the acumen of a malcolm gladwell, that this is just one of those things that happens from time to time.

but then it seems to happen with bowlers as well. 6 of the top 10 wicket takers are left handers. interestingly though as you go down that list, the right handers start to come in (strength of numbers maybe?) and in the top 20 wicket takers there are only 8 left handers.

it would be interesting to compare these trends with other activities but then no one knows how many surgeons or soldiers or tailors or chefs are left handed. so let’s stay with sport. funnily very few left handers in golf (in spite of weir and mickelson) and a few in tennis with nadal leading the way; which suggests to me that the best comparison is probably with cricket’s long estranged cousin, baseball. so any of you who follow major league baseball, is there a similar trend with left handed pitchers for example? do they swing the ball into the body of the right handed batters (a word that seems fine in baseball but so terribly crude in cricket for some reason!) and by similar reasoning, do left handed batters cope better against them?

just some thoughts as i look out of my window in port elizabeth! back soon with some cricketing thoughts on bowlers taking wickets and being stingy with runs!

Empowered young names are winning games

with one quality bowler (rp singh), another untested at this level (ryan harris) and absolutely nothing else to write home about, the deccan chargers defended a fairly ordinary score on a good batting wicket against the mumbai indians who are fast running out of steam. it showed once again that a team of committed players with nothing to lose has a chance against bigger names who seem to be labouring under the weight of expectations.
duminy is an interesting case. his average is excellent but his strike rate isn’t. part of the reason is that he is playing in a team that has a tendency to capitulate. yet, he needs to improve that aspect of his cricket—play the big shots irrespective of what is happening at the other end. he is currently an excellent support player but the problem is that there is no one to support. 
the other problem with the mumbai indians is that the bowlers don’t bat and the wicket keeper at no 3 looks a bit out of his depth. at this level harbhajan should have been the bowling all rounder that teams crave for but after an excellent tour of new zealand, he is being outbowled by part-timers. that is the great thing about the ipl that you may not see in tournaments like the t20 world cup—enthusiastic young men taking on the big names and giving them a fight. 
‘leaden’ i think is the word that best describes the mumbai indians and maybe, they need an ashraful in that line-up. but you have to hand it to gilchrist to take the field with that attack and believe he had a chance of winning. at the risk of repeating myself, it is the empowered young men who are winning games. man for man the chargers and the royals should be jostling with the knight riders at the bottom. but isn’t it fantastic that in sport, as in life, you hang in there and you back yourself and the big names can be toppled?

the flair captains

the flair captains have been doing well at the ipl. adam gilchrist was able to sneak overs out of a very limited attack against mumbai indians, shane warne got one out of rob quiney and from time to time will get abhishek raut to turn his arm over but perhaps the most dramatic example of this has been the decision of ms dhoni to go to suresh raina in the game against the kings xi. 
dhoni has done this before, when he got raina inside the power play and turned the situation around. but there are two aspects to raina’s two astonishing overs against yuvraj and jayawardene when the match seemed to be slipping out of the super kings’ grasp. one, that raina was able to bowl the line he did (flat and full on leg stump against yuvraj) and that he had the cricketing acumen to know what to do in a situation like that. two, that dhoni believed in raina’s acumen. 

often it is not the possession of skill but the ability and confidence to deliver it when it most matters. interestingly, harbhajan is possessed of far greater skill than raina when it comes to bowling off breaks but at the ipl, he is not using the skill that he has. eventually it comes down to the state of mind and that is where the dhonis, gilchrists and most visibly the warnes are scoring—putting their players in the right frame of mind. (to compare player performances visit http://www.castrolcricket.com/IPL-2009/compare_players)

the other observation, and one that is a bit worrisome, is that far too many catches are going down.  if i was in charge of indian cricket, and i loved it deeply, i would be on the line to some of my coaches asking what is happening to young indian players. 

but to return to the ipl, here is my hypothesis. in terms of qualification, i fear that the league stage is either already meaningless, or will soon be rendered irrelevant, since out of the mid-table jostling, four teams have taken clear steps ahead and short of a complete collapse, rajasthan royals, deccan chargers, chennai super kings and delhi daredevils will be standing on the 22’nd of may. (to know more about your team’s performance visit http://www.castrolcricket.com/IPL-2009/teams )

The X-factor makes the difference

here’s a quick one for all you to ponder over while you think about all the different ways in which this year’s ipl is different. the top two teams lost on saturday and there were key performances from abhishek raut, sudeep tyagi and shadab jakati. if you were part of a quiz show and were asked what these three names did you might have been forgiven for not saying ‘cricket’. but they are doing well and looking good. there must be a reason.

t20 is not a great respecter of reputation or tradition—that is why it connects so well to younger people around the world. the longer the game the greater the need for traditional skills, the shorter the game the greater the rewards for initiative, flair and explosive skills. a lot of young men in india, and indeed everywhere, have them but they need to be identified and tapped. having done that i believe we need to go one step further. we need to believe in them or, at any rate, give them the impression that we believe in them.

that is what extraordinary captains do and that is why the rajasthan royals are playing well over where they should be playing if you did a player by player analysis. we do that with teams sometimes—see how they stack up man for man. it is not a bad thing to do as a preliminary exercise but you need to include an x-factor—how driven are the players, how empowered are they by their captain? the last is crucial and maybe one of the x-factors as we try to put together a captaincy rating into the castrol index is to see how unheralded players are doing. or maybe to see how many of them are playing above expectation. it is a preliminary though but i am now more convinced than ever before, after watching the knight riders and seeing the royals that leadership and empowerment are the key factors in successful teams.

Who should have been the player of the match?

today’s blog is the story of two performances; both outstanding, both deserving of much credit but creating a vastly different impact on the match.

look at the scorecard for game 29 between the deccan chargers and the chennai super kings who are at last looking like the side they are. their impressive young left arm spinner shadab jakati had figures of 4-0-22-4. you cannot ask for more from a bowler in a cricket match. you look at the economy rate, you look at the strike rate and on both counts it is very impressive.

now look at the scorecard for game 28 between the mumbai indians and the royal challengers, bangalore. in his first game in the ipl, dillon du preez had bowling figures of 4-1-32-3; again excellent, even a maiden over in between, but really no match to jakati’s figures. as it turned out, neither jakati nor du preez won the player of the match award-in the first case arguable, in the second inexplicable.  but why?

when jakati got the ball, there was a counter attack on from dwayne smith and rohit sharma but the chargers had their back to the wall having been 1-3 and with little batting to follow. 4 wickets was excellent but it came against a side that was already hobbling. in his favour he dismissed both the dangerous batsmen but it was apparent that the game was over.

now du preez bowled when the match was wide open and by taking three wickets (tendulkar, rahane and duminy) he opened the game up for his side and even though mumbai eventually made 149-4, they would have made many more had it not been for du preez’s excellent burst. he should have been man of the match, no doubt.

in a conventional analysis of a match, jakati would have scored higher. but the castrol index rewards a “quick start” performance—meaning performances in the first six overs where a team builds valuable momentum. and that is why, according to the castrol index, du preez’s performance, rightly, gets greater value.

The balance between caution and risk-taking is key

more interesting than the fake ipl blog, which is a lot of fun and a lot of fiction, is a peculiar trend that has emerged in this year’s ipl. it is just one of the many ways in which this ipl is different from the dashing first edition we saw last year.

there are many trends; lower totals, lower run-rates at specific moments but two stand out. if you look at the overs that are producing wickets, you come across four big ones. overs 19 and 20 are easily understood since that is when caution gives way to recklessness—in life as in the end overs, it can be fraught with danger. but the next two are interesting. the largest number of wickets thereafter go down in overs 16 and 11.

you could put over number 11 down to a break in momentum though that is not an argument i am willing to buy at this level of cricket. batsman have to come in and get going anyway. now, it is evident, that the curse of over number 11 has got to the batsmen and they are trying to play safe—way too much importance to one variable, i suspect.

i believe therefore that the fall out is being seen in the 16th over. far too many teams are playing safe between 11 and 15 and realising by the time they get there that the asking rate has slipped too far ahead. 16 then becomes the over when they try to correct things. i can think of no other reason for this anamoly and i suspect as the tournament enters the back 7 games for each side it will start getting erased as teams start evening out their run chase. at the moment, they still haven’t got the right balance between preserving wickets and going after the runs. if we get scores of 160+ consistently, teams will have to play faster earlier and the anamoly of the 16th over might vanish.

Is holding on to wickets while chasing a “gettable” total the right approach?

confronted with low totals, or at any rate totals that are not himalayan, teams that are chasing are trying to adopt a safety first and mayhem later approach. you saw that especially with the mumbai indians when they chased 168 against the deccan chargers and a mere 120 against the king’s xi punjab. or for that matter in a rather more successful chase, rajasthan royals against delhi daredevils.

yusuf pathan was the saviour for the royals again, as indeed he was in the super over game against the kolkata knight riders. in fact he is making a very ordinary batting line-up (certainly that is the way it looks at this stage up) look better than it is. the mumbai indians on the other hand seem a lot more pedigreed and yet they have now fallen short in two chases and maybe there is a story there.

when confronted by what they think is a “gettable” total, teams can make the mistake of leaving too much for the end. that means they need to keep wickets and in fact, keeping wickets becomes a greater need than getting runs on the board. that makes everybody tense, the batsmen themselves, the players in the dug-out and supporters back home. one way to restore freedom to the batting side is to nominate two players who will play the same way independant of the situation and leave it to the other five to play measured innings. if five batsmen can’t win you a game in t20 you have a problem anyway.

teams like the mumbai indians though might be better served by staying ahead of the required run rate when the time out arrives. it is an interesting analysis to make. are teams that are behind the asking rate at the halfway point losing more matches than they win?

meanwhile the bowlers continue to have fun as batsmen struggle to match the combination of good bounce and less pace. it is becoming a bowler’s tournament though i wonder sometimes if the batsmen are almost allowing it to happen!!

Are specialists giving the multi-skilled players a run for their money?

you will often hear commentators and players talking about momentum; not the usual mass times velocity (incidentally similar to the indicators in the castrol index) but the more literary interpretation. the mumbai indians experienced loss of momentum in their game against the deccan chargers when a winning position was squandered right after the break.

the good thing about t20 is that teams and captains have to think on their feet in situations that are constantly changing. that is not easy especially if two batsmen are very well set and backing themselves. with quick over rates mandatory, captains don’t have much time to present the unusual. the ‘strategy time out’ gives them that option and forces the batsman to regroup. it kills their momentum and it is extraordinary how often you get a breakthrough immediately after resumption.

you might argue that 84 from 10 overs is still 84 from 10 after the interval. but when you have momentum, you believe you can get it and the fielding side thinks it is tough. the break gives them time to look at it from a different perspective and often that is enough—just to change the approach, from thinking you can’t to thinking maybe you can.

but don’t let that take away from what the deccan chargers achieved. pragyan ojha’s was an excellent spell and he was the game-breaker. in terms of points, dwayne bravo probably achieved more (3 wickets, though his economy rate wasn’t as good, a brilliant run out and 21 runs), and that is why he was number two on the man of the match list (a debate on whether he should have been there or dwayne smith) but the game breaker was ojha.

i was personally delighted by that because even though the multi-skilled cricketer is far greater value for money, the specialist won the day. in fact three specialists had outstanding days; lasith malinga, fidel edwards and pragyan ojha. a thumbs-up for the captains who picked them!

The limitations are within the batsmen, not the pitch or bowlers

So how old is old? This was supposed to be a young man’s game but look at who is turning it on at the ipl? Warne, murali and kumble, hayden, gilchrist, dravid, ganguly and gibbs. And of course sachin and jayasuriya. What an exhibition….just to show that while you can have sehwag and gambhir, gilchrist and gibbs, you can never keep the legends down. Tendulkar’s “reverse paddle” (look how we struggle to give names to some of his shots!) was the one that most people were enamoured by but my favourite was the pull shot over mid-wicket. That is the tendulkar that so many of us were in awe of and to me it was just a statement. Will the ipl allow us to see that side of tendulkar again? Like rediscovering an old melody without it being touched by the remix agents!! 

Both the deccan chargers and the Mumbai Indians have learnt that they need to stay ahead of the mid-innings slump that appears around overs 10-16. Mumbai Indians lost out there against the deccan chargers and clearly that was the plan against the knight riders. It’s an interesting phenomenon, this slump, because i am not sure we saw it during ipl1. One explanation, and a good one, is that it is the less experienced players who might be coming in at that time and who have been unable to adjust to the conditions; or that with teams believing that 160 is enough, they suddenly press the safety button and see the asking rate go up.

The key to avoiding that is to get off to a great start and i suspect we will see more of that as we go along. That, and the new ploy that the Mumbai Indians unveiled, off popping in a pinch hitter in the middle overs. i won’t be surprised if we see more of that and the batsmen then realise that the limitations were within them, not the pitch or the bowlers.

The ipl now starts to move north to Pretoria and Johannesburg and i suspect we might start seeing slightly bigger scores there.

Rain-shortened games are helping teams with more bowling options

it was too much of a good thing, this ipl! and so the weather has struck playing havoc with the cricket and in doing so, is testing our index as well. as you probably know we incorporate two essential qualities of the t20 game in our index—the value of the flourish at the start and the ability to end with a bang. now if a team only bats for 5 overs, the power play merges seamlessly, and yet a touch irritatingly, into the end overs! but that is being addressed as are the various rain delays. and it didn’t help that the day after mumbai indians had their game washed out and indeed, kings xi had been done in again (though you might argue that they should have taken their catches), durban awoke to a bright, warm day!!

these short games are posing problems for teams and yet are rewarding those that have many bowling options. to give you an example, when kolkata were up against king’s xi, the wet outfield (and a ridiculously small boundary one may add!) meant that the spinners were getting neutralised. even murali kartik only got one over and chris gayle couldn’t get a grip on the ball (though he returned with a tight grip on the game!). enter sourav ganguly to bowl four excellent overs (incidentally my choice for man of the match was a toss up between ganguly and gayle with a preference for ganguly).

and so going ahead in this tournament, it is the best balanced teams, those that give themselves many options that will remain standing. six bowlers and another option from among the batsman is ideal and this is one hypothesis of ours that is coming good. the other, more obvious but ignored in the rush to highlight the foreign players, is that the teams with the indian players are doing well so far.

but these are early days. for the ipl and for the new age ratings!

ipl-2 is enhancing some reputations and injuring some

i have written in these pages about the difference between the ‘how’ and the ‘how much’ and came face to face with it last evening. the commentators pick the player of the match and it was my turn to co-ordinate the award. so off i went to jeremy coney and pommie mbangwa and the others with my list but with a question i couldn’t immediately answer.

we have to give points for the top three performances (3, 2 and 1) and at the end of the tournament the points are added up for the player of the tournament (certainly that is how i understand it!). in the delhi daredevils vs. chennai super kings game, irrespective of the result, it was clear that ab de villiers would be player of the match for his 105 from 54 balls. but what about number two? i thought in batting friendly conditions lakshmipathy balaji will 3-19 from 4 overs was outstanding. but then, what about pradeep sangwan who had 3-28 while the super kings were chasing? which was the more valuable performance?

going by numbers, and the fact that balaji bowled a fine last over, you would have no hesitation in arriving at the verdict. but sangwan’s three wickets contributed very substantially to the daredevils’ win. the ‘how’ favoured sangwan, the ‘how much’ favoured balaji. the majority went with sangwan but it was one of those that would arouse debate either way. maybe you should tell us what you think—dispassionately and without team loyalties since this is a forum where cricket comes first!

oh, and by the way, hayden was a unanimous third!

meanwhile the ipl is enhancing some reputations (abhishek nayar, ab de villiers….), creating some (kamran khan) and injuring some. (flintoff, pietersen…) and yes, highlighting some that had been strangely cloaked (rahul dravid, sourav ganguly!)

if the weather clears, more runs will be scored, bowling variations will come in and it will seem a bit like ipl 1. as i write, there is bright sunshine outside my room in durban. but if it starts getting cold and windy, expect more 140-150 scores which will bring out the role of the captain even more (see warne’s handling of kamran khan).

Interesting Start to IPL Season 2

must admit i was a bit intrigued by the choice of sachin tendulkar as man of the match. in his favour he got two things right—an assessment of what a good score is and the decision to go with sanath jayasuriya for an extra over that produced the wicket of the dangerous jacob oram. but the score he thought was right could not have been achieved without abhishek nayar who is as fine a striker of a ball as you will see in india. that was one of the game breakers in the mumbai indians v chennai super kings game. the other was the spell harbhajan bowled in the middle overs. he was outstanding and the wicket of flintoff was the killer blow for the super kings. that spell also meant that the job in the end overs was that much easier though you cannot take anything away from the three excellent end-overs from bravo, zaheer and malinga, whose return to international cricket marks one of the most staggering comebacks in recent times.

the castrol index would have, rightly, ranked malinga and abhishek above tendulkar but sometimes adjudicators tend to go for substance rather than quick game changing bursts. it is a subjective decision and part of the mystique of sport. maybe the difference between the ‘how’ and the ‘how much’ i talked about in the previous blog.  (arvind iyengar’s excellent analysis on this site illustrates this better)

chennai will make some changes. murali for thushara seems the logical one if it is coupled with balaji for ashwin. dhoni seems to like playing six bowlers though i believe a bowling all-rounder is really what he needs. joginder sharma is not that man.

finally, warne’s first over showed why england must be relieved he is not playing the ashes. with warne it doesn’t seem to matter much—the ‘how’ and the ‘how much’ always seem to tally—whether he is playing cricket or poker!! and by beginning with mascarenhas he played another excellent hand. any guys out there able to figure out how we quantify captaincy into the castrol index? we’d love to hear.

“How” meets “How Much” in Cricket

there is a world of difference between ‘how’ and ‘how much’. when i was at college i was told that the chemistry i so loved was ‘how’ and the engineering i didn’t very much was ‘how much’. one explains, the other measures. the two must always live together but often exist like estranged couples. lovers of the ‘how’, literature, history, think ‘how much’, mathematics, physics, is not lyrical enough; they look down on it. those that swear by ‘how much’ believe that the others don’t matter. it is the difference between the poet and the nerd. 

so where does cricket fit into all this? the traditional lovers of the game will find poetry in a cover drive, reserve their favourite expressions for the deft leg glance. the numbers guys, the statisticians (and there’s a maligned word) will say it doesn’t matter how prettily you play as long as you put the runs on the board and average enough. vaughan vs chanderpaul? mark vs steve?

over a period of time though, the ‘how much’ will triumph over the ‘how’ as it must. but there can be beauty in the ‘how much’ as well and it is these seemingly immiscible entities that the castrol index seeks to merge. it is an index that will capture the nuances of the game and yet not live in the worn out world of averages. it will be contemporary and relevant. 

the batting average for example was an excellent index for a test player over a career. but over fifty overs? over twenty? the strike rate is a good indicator as well but it can be misleading in test cricket where grinding out a day might be more crucial. the combination works well but you would still like to know, especially in a twenty overs game, how quickly you got moving; how explosive you were. a player’s value then needs to be a measure of how many runs he scores, how quickly he gets them and indeed, how he starts off. if you only have eight balls left, you might want to send in the guy who makes 15 in 8 rather than the guy who starts with 6 in his first 8 and then finishes with a strike rate of 160. if you have 30 balls left you might pick the second guy. but you must know. it is not enough to think you know. it is not a mere ‘how’ but a combination of ‘how’ and ‘how much’. so too with bowling. 

it is elements such as these that the castrol index seeks to incorporate into a player’s value. and thereafter into a team value. the specific elements will be on the site but all i will tell you now is that the castrol index is simply this; new age statistics for a new age game. as processes change, measuring tools must change. this is what we present here, the result of the work of some excellent minds. i hope you enjoy the assessment we seek to make; if you don’t do let us know. in course of time we hope this will become the standard by which all cricketers will be judged.

- Harsha

Editor’s Note: To understand the Castrol Index better, go straight to http://www.castrolcricket.com/what_ci.