06.18.09
Ashish Nehra rises like the Phoenix…
Nehra appeals
A great IPL season has finally earned Ashish Nehra a much deserved return to India colors for the upcoming West Indies ODI tour. Ashish has been in hibernation from international cricket for quite sometime after struggling from chronic injuries to his ankles and back for the last 4 years. Now in an interview to Cricinfo Ashish sounds confident and seems to be aware now(about time!) that playing with small niggles can be extremely harmful for a fast bowler. While it remains to be seen how much confidence MSD has in Nehra the poor performance of Ishant Sharma in recent times might well create an opening in the West Indies. Nehra should also be aware that the role of the third pacer ( Ishant & Zaheer are automatic picks) in test matches is still up for contention too. When he burst onto the international scene in 2000-01 Ashish Nehra was the most impressive young fast bowling hope for India. Now almost a decade later Ashish will hopefully try to fulfil at least some of that initial promise by continuing with the same determination he has shown in reviving his stop-start career after a gap of 4 long years. As he said in the interview it has been injuries rather than form/performance that has been the bane of his career. Now with an improved mindset towards fitness Nehra might well script a truly remarkable resurgance…
06.11.09
Rohit Sharma continues to impress…
Rohit Sharma seems to have seized upon the oppurtunity to bat up the order in the ongoing T20 World cup with both hands. While he has yet to play the strong sides in the competition the form shown so far represents an important turning point in Rohit’s budding India career. With Sachin Tendulkar likely to hang up his boots post the World cup next year Rohit Sharma might well represent the Gen next’s answer to fill his gigantic boots.
Pujara drives
In fact with the ‘golden trio’ of Sachin, Dravid and Laxman all set to retire in the next 1-2 yrs the likes of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Cheteswar Pujara, Suresh Raina, Shikhar Dhavan and possibly even Dinesh Kartik will vie to get into the test side. A successful transition up the order in T20 and 50 over games should bolster Rohit’s stake for a Test middle order slot - maybe even make him the front runner for the coveted no. 4 slot st thid point. Yuvraj Singh too must not take his Test place for granted considering his rather woeful technique(or rather the lack of it) against the new ball particularly outside the subcontinent.
It will be interesting to see if selectors pick youth – represented by the above contenders – or opt for a stop gap arrangement in the form of Badrinath if Rahul Dravid hangs up his boots next yr(as expected). My vote would be Pujara for Dravid, Rohit Sharma for Sachin and a tossup between Raina, Kohli for Laxman’s spot. Maybe we can even see Yuvraj lose out his place in favour of either Kohli/Raina/ Dhawan. My guess is selectors will opt for Badrinath for Dravid and then ease Rohit into the side once Sachin/VVS retires. Or maybe they’ll surprise me by dropping Yuvraj(about time) and bringing in Rohit immediately. For once they need to distinguish between form shown in the longer/shorter format of the game. After almost a decade Yuvraj has not yet sorted out his technique against the new ball and failed to score any significant runs outside the subcontinent in test cricket. Even our selectors who equate T20 and 50 over success as criteria for Test selection must be running out of patience!
AB DeVilliers bowled by Tyagi
These days I’m also rooting for Sudeep Tyagi the tall young fast bowler from UP who seems to have recovered completely from the back injury suffered last year going by the impressive form shown in the IPL. Sudeep needs to build some muscle onto his wiry frame if he is to continue his progress without injury. The selectors for once have been smart by offering him a grade D contract at this early stage of his career. Sudeep does have a natural outswinger as his stock ball and a mean incutter for variety. As AB Deviliers found out during the IPL they can be a pretty lethal combination(see picture). Tyagi also seemed to get a fair bit of bounce due to his high arm action and managed to get Dravid in one of the matches due to steep bounce from a good length. The 3rd seamers slot for test matches abroad is still up for contention with Ashish Nehra too now in the fray after a terrific IPL season. I would preferably like to see a right arm quick bowler to take the spot.
Another player in the fray for a Test place is Pragyan Ojha who is the best left arm spinner we have had since Murali Kartick. Pragyan seems to spin the ball more and extracts more bounce. His success in the limited overs format has brought him in the limelight and now with Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra around there is a healthy mix of spinners vieing for spots in the Test side. Harbhajan Singh too now needs to keep up his recent good form and improve his performances abroad where he averages just 3 wickets per Test at an average of 37 !
09.19.06
All time low for Indian Hockey ??
India finally had their first win in their last match in the World Cup hockey tournament held in Germany. Their 1st win yesterday in 7 matches enabled a 11th place(2nd worst ever in history) and a place in the the 2007 Champions Challenge tournament in Boom, Belgium, the qualifying tournament for the 2008 Champions Trophy. Normally I manage to somehow sit through our team’s matches but the display in this tournament was so pathetic that it wasn’t possible. Of whatever action I saw we seemed to make the same mistakes all over again in each successive match. The decision to start the tournament with Adrian D’ Souza as the no. 1 goalie was a big initial blunder that the team never could quite recover from. Adrian, coming back to the team after injury, was too slow rushing out of the box while defending penalty conversions. A far cry from the audacious young goalie who had blocked Sohail Abbas so many times in earlier tournaments. By the time Bharat Chetri, who did a great job in the recent tournaments, came in to replace him we already were out of reckoning for the top 6 positions.
Penalty corner conversions on the other hand were as expected a big problem after Sandeep Singh’s injury. Has our team even heard of grooming a backup for such a key player as the penalty corner specialist ? Every other team has at least 2 players in the line up that can score from PC’s. I suppose the performance of the young forwards were reasonable if one considered their lack of experience. Seniors like Gagan Ajit Singh were invisible despite having the experience of playing in the Dutch league. The defence was in total disarray for most of the matches and even Viren Risquinha had to play as a deep defender in the last match to stop the avalanche of goals conceeded.
The familiar post mortems in the press will appear soon and then things will continue in the same vein. The same Federation Chief KPS Gill who has held the post for past 2 1/2 decades will continue to rule his fiefdom in his autocratic, bizarre way. Today in an interview KPS Gill says that he had offerred to quit after Asia Cup 2003 but hockey lovers had forced him to continue. Now apparantly he’s determined to continue till the job is done. Yeah, right. An 11th position now in the WC after 25 yrs of doing the job. With no olympics medals or any podium finish at any major event all this while. Even god probably doesn’t know when this demented man wil say enough is enough.
As before I’m sure now the coach will be sacked and maybe some prominient senior players too. Well at least hopefully Gagan Ajit Singh should get a permenant axe this time. He sucked bigtime in all the matches failing to even trap passes in the D, leave alone score any goals that matter. A mere shadow of the brilliant forward that tormented the Dutch and German defences in the 2004 Champion’s Trophy. He’s been going steadily downhill ever since the team won itself a full time sponsor and he secured a contract to play in the dutch leagues. Gagan’s a good example that simply providing some financial incentives for players is not enough. What we need is some sort of long term investment in infrastructure, a change in the way our leagues are run and new initiatives to make the game popular. We also need to modernize our whole setup – maybe form new modern academies, seek guidance of foreign coaches, trainers and try evolve a system where juniors are given exposure to the latest modern hockey techniques. Of course most importantly we need a new Federation Chief -one that doesn’t interfere in the selection of players. The likelyhood of any such serious initiatives being taken in the near future is remote so we’ll just plod on downhill I guess 
And even though I enjoy seeking out obscure moments of glory in sports, things are now looking particularly bleak for Hockey. Heck, even the World Hockey Federation is now taking pity and wants to revive the game of hockey in our country. And we still shamelessly call hockey our national sport! We aren’t a great sporting nation by any means but it’s still an insult to all those sports where we actually do well like Shooting, Chess, Kabaddi, Badminton or even Cricket.
09.14.06
Sachin’s back with a bang !!
Playing against West Indies in the ongoing DLF cup in Malayasia, Sachin Tendulkar today made a spectacular comeback from injury smashing 13 fours and 5 sixes enroute to making 141 of just 148 balls. On a difficult uneven wicket Sachin played one of his most memorable and acomplished innings, hitting through the offside with gay abandon like he hasn’t in years. For me the highlight of Sachin’s innings were the 3 sixes he hit over cover on the offside… probably among the most difficult shots in the game. And he did it all against the quick bowlers ! I guess Sachin had a point to prove against his detractors and was probably stung by the sharp criticism in the media by Sanjay Manjrekar. As I wrote before that article was probaly meant to wake Sachin up and it sure appears to have worked looking at today’s display. But Sachin has to stay motivated and play in this aggressive vein to reatain his deserved position at the top of the cricket ratings. I fear that by feeling satisfied at proving a point he might well slip into a defensive role again. Well have to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best but for now God seems to be back batting at top of the order in the one dayers & I’m in complete bliss 
09.05.06
Thanks for all the magic Andre…
For Andre Agassi, the mind and heart were willing but the body gave up at this year’s US Open, ending an amazing career spanning two decades. Interestingly he lost in 4 sets to B. Becker(Benjamin not Boris) yet another young player who says Agassi was his role model while growing up. This year has been tough for Andre physically and maybe in hindsight it would have been better for him to retire last year at the US Open when he had a great run to the finals before losing to Federer in straight sets. In this match it was sad to see Andre 3-4 meters behind the baseline playing a defensive game on a surface where he’s dominated in the past attacking the ball on the rise, right on the baseline. I guess his back pains were not allowing him to move quick enough for such a type of game. But Andre at 36 still had the steely will of old to push Becker to four sets while hobbling around the baseline. At the end of the match an emotional Andre was in tears after thanking the crowd for supporting him all these years.
Looking back on the last 2 decades, though I really enjoyed his matches with Pete Sampras, Andre was never among the players I really rooted for. Maybe coz so much of his game was based on pure natural ability that I could never relate to him much on a tennis court. Just a commentry on my (lack of!)abilities not his game as such. But I do still remember as a very young kid trying(not so sucessfully) to open up on the forehand to hit the ball on the rise like him. His sucess also made people aware of the importance of having a good return of service. With Andre Agassi I also associate witnessing some of the most heroic moments in sport as seen in his second coming post semi-retirement in the late 1990’s. The victory at Roland Garros in 1999 and subsequently his rise back to the top 10 in rankings must rank as among the most incredible comebacks in tennis. Only Jeniffer Capriati’s emotional comeback post a troubled teenage period compares(favourably?) to that. In any case with 8 grand slams and more importantly a career slam(win in all 4) his place among the all-time greats is assured.
