IPL Players - Where are they from?

Position Changes in Points Table: IPL 2010

Punjab consistently stayed at the bottom and Mumbai pretty much at the top. Other teams fighting for the remaining spots.

Mongoose Cricket Bat

Haven't heard of this new kind of cricket bat until today. This cricket bat has a longer handle. Specifically "The Mongoose’s blade is 33% shorter and its handle 43% longer than a conventional bat"

The bat's website is here.

Here are a couple of pics of this bat.

IPL's Top 10 Players So far

Rediff compiled the following list:

Harbhajan cleared of racial abuse

Wow. I didn't expect that! Not sure how much BCCI used its clout, but if it did..hat's off to them.


From BBC:

Harbhajan Singh has been cleared at an appeal hearing of racially abusing Australia all-rounder Andrew Symonds
:
:
Harbhajan pleaded guilty and was fined half his match fee and is free to play.

"The racial abuse charges have been dropped," said Niranjan Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. "It is finished.

"The punishment is only for using obscene language."

Time to Kick Wasim Jaffer Out of the Team

I think its about time to kick Jaffer out of the team and bring someone else (anyone). His aggregate in the last 7 innings is the grand total of 73. That, for an opener is dismal to say the least. He has the worst aggregate of a batsman in both the teams combined. Please let him out of his misery and replace him with another person (a bowler, fielder, a keeper, whatever). I am sure he will be way better useful for the team.

Following is his performance in the last 4 tests:

25	08/12/2007	PAK	Chinnaswamy Stadium	1st	17
				2nd	18
26	26/12/2007	AUS	Melbourne Cricket Gr	1st	4
				2nd	15
27	02/01/2008	AUS	Sydney Cricket Grnd	1st	3
				2nd	0
28	16/01/2008	AUS	W.A.C.A. Ground	1st	16

India VS Pakistan in Twenty20

I haven't had such a blood rush watching a cricket match in a long time. (Yesterday, my heart pounded at 100mph, but that's for my careless driving). Anyways, What a game. I think its the first India vs Pakistan Twenty20 game. And it will be worth to buy a video if available. It was India's game to lose until the last 3 overs. Which was pakistan's to lose after a dismal score by India batting first.
Misbah-ul-Haq played an awesome innings. In my book he should get the MOM instead of Asif.

The bowl-out sounded funny, I didn't knew this existed until the commentators were talking about it. Talking about commentators, what a pathetic bunch. They were drooling like anything for Afridi to come to bat. He left after scoring 7 in 9. Nothing intelligent comes from their mouths. Anyways, I thought which bowler wouldn't be able to hit 3 wickets with out a batsman in front of them. Boy, how I was proven wrong. All 3 pakistani bowlers missed the wickets by a mile. The fast bowlers shortened their runup, which I think caused them to miss the wickets.

Anyways, a good win for India.. Yahoo!!

Largest margin for Victory in ODI's

From Cricinfo:

A display of creative and powerful batting, where four of the big six fired India to 413, a record total in World Cups and the bowlers then did their job, bundling Bermuda out for 156, winning the game by 257 runs, the largest margin in terms of runs in all ODI cricket.

Any which way but lose!

An old but wonderful article by Sandipan Deb regarding India's (or Indians) obsession with Cricket. I cannot say I totally agree to his premise that all this is because of our "hunger for recognition from the world leads us to trumpet our supposed superiority to everyone else at the drop of a hat" but all in all a fun read.

A quote from the article:

Only 36 per cent of our population has access to sanitary means of excreta disposal. There are lakhs of Indians who subsist on our streets without even the most basic rights to a human life or a dignified death. Thousands of our citizens live as refugees in their own country, having lost their homes and means of livelihood. Last month, in a poll conducted by The Hindustan Times on the attitudes of Indian youth, more than 50 per cent of the respondents said that given a chance, they would live in some other country.

But even when they do go away to some other country, they have the rediff live cricket scorecard open surreptitiously on their computer monitors throughout their working day. They stay up nights in the US to watch India play in England. They participate in detailed analyses of the Indian team's strengths and weaknesses in countless Internet chat rooms. And they turn out in daunting numbers at the stadium whenever India's playing in their adopted country.

(h/t: sightscreen)

Tendulkar fires India to series win

India wins series 3-1

"It had been nearly four years since Tendulkar struck a hundred in a winning cause," Says Dileep @ Cricinfo. Feels like a decade for me though.

Anyways, Congratulations for the Indian Cricket team for winning a series emphatically. Looks like we have a 95% chance of seeing India in the Finals of the worldcup again.

A stat from the game:
160 runs - The margin of victory for India, their highest in an ODI against West Indies.

India Won on SA soil!

India has won a test match on SA soil for the first time ever?

From rediff: India finally registered a Test victory on South African soil on Monday.

I was not following cricket these days. Just lost interest in it, dont know when. This past year I was just watching the scores after the matches were complete. I did not follow this test either. I know the series is going on and India lost the OD series bigtime. But, I felt they were going to do well in test, maybe 'cos I remember some other away tour (WI?) where we lost OD series and won the test series. Anyways, its always good to see our home country win. Doesnt it?

Also, I just did a little math to see who was mainly responsible for the win. So, i summed up the batting and bowling figures of our guys for both innings. Following is our batting line up sorted by runs scored and which is followed by bowling team by wickets taken.

Just by looking at raw data, we can conclude that Laxman and Ganguly!! were the best batsmen, and kumble and sreesanth were best bowlers in this test. Incidentally kumble and sreesanth were the worst performers with the bat. Zaheer took as many wickets as kumble and also scored 46 runs in the test.

So, I would give my 'men of the match' awards to : Sreesanth, Laxman and Zaheer.

	R	M	B	4s	6s
VVS Laxman	101	357	221	17	0
SC Ganguly	76	241	139	8	1
SR Tendulkar	58	156	111	10	0
Z Khan	46	139	103	3	2
Extras	45
VRV Singh	40	38	23	8	0
V Sehwag	37	85	55	6	0
R Dravid	33	167	92	5	0
MS Dhoni	23	58	45	3	0
W Jaffer	13	59	49	3	0
A Kumble	7	36	26	1	0
S Sreesanth	6	17	9	0	1

Bowling	O	M	R	W	Econ
S Sreesanth	35	11	99	8	3.18	(6nb, 2w)
A Kumble	22	5	56	5	1.85
Z Khan	32.5	8	111	5	3.33
VRV Singh	21.1	4	75	1	3.12	(8nb, 1w)
SC Ganguly	1	0	11	0	11	(2nb)