Mohali test

who on earth got his brainwave of having a test match at mohali in December? Of all the paces in India - Mohali was chosen. It ought to be common knowledge that fog and bad light will disrupt the match.

Rewriting the script

There are rarely such matches that provide so many thrills as the recently concluded Chennai test between India and England. While England dominated the test for most of the time, it took three brilliant innings of different styles to really snatch victory from the English team. While Sehwag’s belligerent innings was the difference between the two teams, it was Sachin Tendulkar’s measured approach to the target that won us the match – not to forget Yuvraj Singh’s performance.

For long I have been extremely critical of Sachin’s ability to win matches on his own – and used to rant about a long list of matches where he could have won us those but either gave away his wicket at a crucial juncture or got out. However, this year alone, he has played two amazing knocks – one in the CB series final against Australia, and this one now against England in the Chennai Test. Both innings had determination written all over them – that he will not give up before taking the team home. The Chennai innings was special, since about 10 years ago, on the same ground, Sachin had failed to win a match he single handedly set up for India. That was probably his best inning till date – fighting a back problems and a terrific Pakistan bowling attack. The only blot on that innings was that he got out with India needing some 15 odd runs, and we lost 3 wickets and the match after that. It was heartbreaking!

So it was only apt that he chose the same venue to rewrite the script, and take India home in this record chase. Let us hope we see a lot more of these innings from him now, as the pressure on him gets considerably lesser.

And I think we need to leave Dravid alone. For 2 months – let us not ask for his head. The guy will be back with a bang. He alone has saved and won more matches for us than a lot of the others – he has been the mainstay of this team for ages – he deserves to be left alone by critics and media for some time.

What happened to the review system?

Ok.. So, after a long hiatus, I return to write something here. Whoa, this has been some period – 2 great India Australia Test Match series, the IPL and changes in the Indian Cricket Team; the emergence of Ajantha Mendis in world cricket – and the retirement of a few greats. More on these in some later posts!

The review system was introduced during this period – and for some reason – continues to be in trial, in spite of unequivocal good that it brought to the game. Now for starters - the main critique of the review system is that I consumes too much time – and that we could live with a few mistakes from umpires as human errors. I even heard some absurd comment from Sanjay Manjrekar in a recent series – he claimed this took up almost 20-30% of the time of a test match. I still wonder how. Each innings can technically have 6 unsuccessful reviews – 3 by each team. I am not adding up the successful reviews – where the umpire’s incorrect decision is changed – since that is the purpose of the system, and that is the necessity for a fair game. After all, every one of us would be ok with a correct decision being made. So coming back to the issue - even if a review takes 3 minutes (if it takes more than we need more competent 3^rd umpires) it works out to 18 minutes in an innings, and about 72 minutes in the game. Out of the 1800 minutes that the game has, and assuming all 4 innings are completed and all reviews are utilized, we still lose only 72 minutes – that is 4% of the game time. So I do not know how Mr Manjrekar came up with this statistic. He also went on to say that he is willing to accept the umpire’s decision as a human decision and carry on. Hello!! I am sure a commentator would be willing to do that – but what about the players. I have said it earlier – people turn up to watch Sachin bat and Bret Lee bowl – and not for Rudy Koertzen to umpire. So I as a spectator am not willing to accept the incompetence of an umpire make a mockery of a cricket match. Sometimes I wonder who makes these guys a commentator.

And we have not even accounted for the positives it brings to the game. Players appeal lesser – or let me put it this way – unnecessary appealing is cut. I do not want to calculate the time of Harbhajan’s appeals every time the ball hits the batsman’s pads – but I am sure this will be comparable to the earlier stats we have discussed. Players have started walking – since they will anyway be given out in the review system – if they are out.

The only argument that stands negatives of the review system is that we may not have technology to be 100% sure of decisions. Fair enough – if we are not 100% sure – then we accept the field umpires decision. But when we know he is wrong – blatantly at that – why should we shy away from using a good system. We do not need the third umpire to definitely come out with a decision every time. He can aid the on-field umpire with a few replays. What could possibly be wrong with that? I sincerely hope the systems returns – as it is again being tried in the New Zealand – West Indies series.