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England beat India. World turns upside down
By Will 1 month ago, 10 Comments »
What’s happening? That isn’t rhetoric. Please: what’s going on?
England lose to the Dutch, thrash Netherlands, are put back in their box by South Africa and now throw everything at India, spanking them convincingly. These are not the results anybody expected; that India, the champions, are going home is difficult enough to comprehend. That it was England who did it, a team so laughably inconsistent, who play one-day cricket as though so little depends on it, is perplexing in the extreme. It’s wonderful, too, and not because I happen to be English; wonderful that this stupid format produces such ridiculousness. It encourages outlandish behaviour and cricket but the crucial essences of the sport still apply. A year ago, I don’t think you’d have accepted a captain suggesting to your team “let’s bounce them out”, even if that team is particularly inept at playing short-pitch bowling. If anything, Twenty20 encourages orthodoxy as much as unorthodoxy.
It’s all gone brilliantly bonkers. This time tomorrow, England might be in the semi-finals. Stop laughing at the back.
10 Comments »India v England, 2nd Test, Mohali
By Will last year, mid-December, 4 Comments »
Have just moved house so there’s been no time for anything. And nor is there any now but, if you like, keep an eye on the match and offer your thoughts below.
4 Comments »Well played India
By Will last year, mid-December, 25 Comments »
Three cheers to India for winning a superb Test. That it took place at all was a surprise. That Sachin Tendulkar hit the winning runs, bringing up his hundred in the process, was a script not even his mother could have written. It was a bizarrely pristine and classic manner in which to end a Test whose preparations were blighted not by rain, or poor form, or injuries, but by terror.
There will be some sickly and romantic notions in the coming days that this win has shoved it up the terrorists. That India have won and the terrorists have lost. And it’s true that without the Mumbai terrorist strikes, we wouldn’t be feeling like we are at the moment. England’s supporters can be proud of a team who, for three-and-a-half days, dominated a Test on the subcontinent. India’s are ecstatic for two brilliant performances which propelled an unlikely win. Even removing the context of Mumbai, India’s win today was hugely significant.
Impressive for its boldness, but what struck me (I’ve only seen highlights so don’t shout me down) is how un-Indian their approach was. India have occasionally produced bullet wins out of nowhere before tripping up. Yet this win had a composure and belief about it. Granted, Virender Sehwag’s Gilchristian attack on the fourth day provided much of the belief (and vital runs), and who else would you rather have anchor a fifth-day chase than Tendulkar? But those two huge figures aside, India rose to the occasion when it mattered and believed they could win more than England.
One word of warning: don’t let’s compare India to Australia. It’ll happen - let’s face it, India is going to be drunk on this for days on end - but it would be premature to suggest they are the new No.1, however much their fans demand it be true. They’re definitely on the right track though.
So too, I think, are England. India is the hardest place to tour and they dominated much of the Test when nobody expected them to. That they lost it in the last day-and-a-half nevertheless suggests Kevin Pietersen will be as sleepless in Mohali as he has reportedly been in Chennai.
Indian fans, by all means praise your team to the hilt … but non-Indian fans, do also wade in. Anyone from South Africa, West Indies, Pakistan or wherever else, post your thoughts below.
25 Comments »What a brilliant game
By Alex Try last year, mid-December, 2 Comments »
Watching Sachin Tendulkar score a hundred in front of 40,000 adoring fans takes away some of the pain of losing. There is time enough in the future to dwell on missed opportunities and Monty’s lackluster bowling effort. I was just a pleasure to watch a brilliant game.
The Chennai crowd was as much a part of the experience as anything that happened on the field. When India are batting, the most conservative old man is transformed into a fifteen-year-old. He shouts and cheers and dances for every run they score. When Tendulkar walks into bat the crowds flock. Even when he’s fielding, when he touches the ball a roar erupts like a wicket has fallen.
The highlight came last evening while Sehwag was hitting fours and sixes at will. After every boundary the two women sat behind me, both clad head to toe in black chadors and hijabs, starting jumping up and down on their seats and blowing horns in my ear. It was fantastic. The atmosphere at a cricket match in India is unique to anything I have ever experienced. Even as England are getting thrashed you can’t help looking around you and grinning like a mad-man.
Strauss’s twin hundreds, Swann’s double wicket opening over, Flintoff’s confrontation with Yuvraj, Sehwag’s blitz and a Tendulkar century to win the game! Its such a cliché, but cricket really is the winner. Onwards to Mohali, and we will see if England can pick up the pieces.
Alex Try is in India blogging England’s tour for The Corridor
2 Comments »Day five, the Test’s still alive
By Will last year, mid-December, 8 Comments »
India need 256; England, just nine wickets. The greatest game of all is still alive and well, and there is a small but delicious irony in the delicate state this match finds itself in. That it is taking place so soon after the Mumbai terrorist attacks is honourable and pleasing. But that Chennai should be producing such a corking match, in India, at the end of a year which has seen the Twenty20 machine snowball almost out of control…it’s a reminder to everyone, in particular the often one-eyed BCCI, of our responsibility to cricket’s richest asset. Not Twenty20; not television or advertising revenue; not even Sachin or Brett or MS or KP, and certainly not Mr Stanford. But Tests. The oldest and still the most rewarding format of the game, and possibly the best of any sport there is.
It’s like a really good bottle of port to Twenty20’s vodka and Red Bull: rich, occasionally musty, with a multitude of flavours.
8 Comments »Bristling moustaches abound, but cricket wins
By Alex Try last year, mid-December, 1 Comment »
Above anything which took place during today’s play, it is just a relief that cricket is back on again. The significance of this first Test for Indian cricket, with IPLs and Champions Leagues coming up, goes without saying. This might be the most important two-Test series ever played.
Security was tight but not oppressive. Lots of cops with bristling moustaches and ample girths glared at fans outside the stadium before play began. This moustache-to-belly ratio seemed to be an indicator of officer seniority but, despite their intimidating persona, almost everyone was welcoming.
Inside the stadium cameras, mobile phones and sun-cream were banned but many people managed to sneak them in anyway. A big screen which asks spectators to text messages onto it had a constant turnover, so the guards frisking can not have been that effective.
On the subject of ‘effective’ – England’s total was indebted to Andrew Strauss, who compiled his 13th Test hundred with minimum fuss. He and Alastair Cook seemed to be going some way to proving that a warm-up was not needed after all. If only the rest of England’s batting could have lived up to their start.
Paul Collingwood’s performance stood out in particular. Seemingly playing with a ping-pong bat, it would surprise nobody in the ground today if replays were used by the U.S Army to interrogate inmates in Guantanamo Bay. Given Owais Shah was England’s only consistent batsman during the one-day series, and Collingwood hardly scored a run, the England XI is confusing at best.
However, wherever England’s ended up at the end of the day’s play, the real story is that this Test is being played at all.
Alex Try is in India blogging England’s tour for The Corridor. He is envious of bristling moustaches
1 Comment »India v England, 1st Test, Chennai - live chat
By Will last year, mid-December, 2 Comments »
Cricket. Actual cricket is happening with real-life English and Indian players. It’s all very novel and exciting, so I thought I’d keep this post open for the Test and let you miserable lot leave your comments. There’s a detracted feeling to this series, but if Kevin Pietersen’s XI can pull off a draw - or even a win - the praise will be long and lavish. Let’s hope there’s some good cricket in which to end the year and provide a fitting sporting contrast to the events of the past few weeks.
2 Comments »MCC puts stamp on England v India
By Will last year, at the start of December, No Comments; be the first!
A new stamp from Bletchley Park to celebrate 75 years of England v India in Test cricket:
No Comments »Marylebone Cricket Club will be celebrating the 75th anniversary of England
v India in Test cricket on January 5th 2009 with a very special stamp and
commemorative cover. The M.C.C. as it is more commonly known, is the world’s
oldest cricket club and “Keeper of the Laws”. Its base at Lord’s Cricket
Ground, St John’s Wood, London being revered worldwide as “The home of
cricket”. The cover is being issued in association with the Cricket
Association of Bengal. Its base is Eden Gardens, Kolkata, India’s oldest
cricket club and the venue for the greatest number of Test matches played in
India. The first was in January 1934 against an England XI led by Douglas
Jardine. Jardine and Indian Captain CK Nayadu will be featured on the stamp
to be cancelled with an MCC postmark on 5th January. The day the match
started. The cover design features the scorecard and match day images from
1934. Inside will be a replica of the scorecard for the four-day match. Each
cover will be individually numbered in a presentation pack as a limited
edition of just 1000. Issue price will be £10 plus post and packing.The cover can only be ordered through Chapman and Mitchell Covers at
Bletchley Park Post Office, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB, Tel:
01908 272690/631797. Or from the MCC section of the website at
www.bletchleycovers.com.
India’s Pakistan tour in doubt
By Will last year, at the end of November, 6 Comments »
…and here we reach the most dangerous crossroads of all. The one terrorist India managed to capture happened to be of Pakistani origin, and there is increasing evidence that Pakistan were involved in the terrorist strikes. It seems inconceivable that India’s tour won’t be cancelled. Pakistan have warned the world that they’ll stop fighting the Afghanistan insurgents and turn their attention to India instead. It’s all getting a bit messy.
Steve Waugh’s thoughts on the future of the game:
6 Comments »The danger to cricket is that the game needs India and any long-term interruption will have major ramifications. At present we have Pakistan cricket crippled by the threat
of terrorism, Sri Lanka regularly blighted by a civil war and Zimbabwe mismanaged by corrupt administrators and government.
The game is on the verge of a crisis and clear, concise thinking will be required from the various cricketing bodies to make sure that the correct decisions are made.
Time is a great healer but, much like 9/11, life on the subcontinent will never be the same. The need for security will be paramount and this will affect all facets of life.
My gut feeling is that cricket will see an interruption in the short term but business will resume as normal shortly afterwards.
Sick as a pig; fêted like a king
By Alex Try last year, at the end of November, No Comments; be the first!
Leaning, puking out of the iron barred window of an Indian train is not unusual. Being greeted like a celebrity outside a cricket stadium is.
Recovering from a 20-hour train journey from Chennai to Cuttack (spent suffering the effects of food poisoning) I set out to buy my ticket for the 5th ODI. The reception afforded me by the hundreds of people waiting to buy tickets at the Barabati stadium was surreal, therapeutic and extremely fun.
While the match in Bangalore was beginning- with Virender Sehwag taking the attack to England’s bowlers as he has done so often this series- hundreds of fans waited patiently in searing heat to buy tickets. Their boredom was lifted by the sight of my girlfriend and I: jeers and cheers rang out from whoever we passed. But this was nothing to what followed.
Our arrival outside the stadium brought a hoard of television cameras with presenters thrusting microphones at us and requesting interviews. Either they thought I was someone important, or as I suspect, English cricket fans in rural east India are a rarity at best. Searching questions were asked: what did I think of England’s performance so far? (Crap) and who was my favourite England player? (Michael Vaughan: even though he wasn’t playing).
Travelling with a woman in India is well advised; my girlfriend used the ladies’ queue and bought us two tickets within 20 minutes, rather than the hours I would have had to wait otherwise. We then posed with our tickets, whilst more cameras and crew surrounded us as well as a crowd of 50 or so onlookers taking pictures on their mobile phones.
These further interviews was more searching than previous ones:
Interviewer: “How are you exactly feeling at this moment?”
Me: “Very good- I am very pleased to be here in Cuttack, and I am looking forward to the match on Wednesday.”
Interviewer: “And who is your favourite Indian player?”
Me: “Sachin”
Enormous cheers rang out behind me.
This is the upside of the BCCI’s stadium rotation policy. This will probably be the only opportunity fans in Cuttack will have to watch their hero’s in the flesh all year. If the reception given to me is anything to go by, they are determined to make the most of it.
Barring another bout of Gandhi’s Revenge, Alex Try will be blogging England’s tour of India for The Corridor
No Comments »I can’t be bothered
By Will last year, at the end of November, 5 Comments »
You can always tell when there’s a one-day series involving England. I stop bothering with anything. I lose the will to live, and certainly lack any inspiration for this wee blog. Even if they win, which they seldom do, the matches come with such mind-numbing regularity that no sense can be made of the madness. Likewise when they lose, writing about them is like trying to explain to your cat the meaning of life, in perfect knowledge that all he can here is “mahh, bleh gnurr fnarr. MOUSE.” Nothing makes any sense.
Least of all, ladies and gentlefolk, Ian Bell. Another mouse. “Just what is the point of Ian Bell?” an incensed text message buzzed yesterday afternoon when he blocked, prodded and bored his way to nowhere. It’s a curious, unanswerable conundrum: just what purpose does he serve, other than to amuse us with his rolled-up sleeves and attempt to feign machoness?
I’m being unfair of course. But one-day cricket turns my mind into a garble of flavourless jelly, and I don’t even want to eat it.
Still. India look flipping awesome at the moment, so all is definitely lost.
5 Comments »India ride their wave
By Will last year, mid-November, 7 Comments »
I received a flurry (well, two) emails from someone in India accusing me of racism. This is a weekly event for me, not one I particularly cherish or relish in anticipation, but for once I thought I’d respond. I’ve not posted anything about India’s win over England because I didn’t watch it. If that makes me racist, bigoted or in any way xenophonic, I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise on behalf of the millions of other Britons who couldn’t be arsed to wake themselves up at 3am to watch a predictable drubbing.
My prediction: India will win the first three, then England will storm back to win a couple, the eventual score being 4-3 to India.
7 Comments »MS Dhoni on your crisps
By Alex Try last year, mid-November, 11 Comments »
One of the first things you notice as a foreigner in India is how readily complete strangers are willing to strike up probing conversations with you. When I explain I’m following England’s cricket tour they often laugh before explaining that their country is “cricket crazy” - as if they are somehow detached from it all. This impartiality usually passes within minutes and they fall to musing about the skiddy medium pace they bowled as a teenager, or the intricacies of Bhagwat Chandrasekhar’s action. Unwittingly they prove their own point.
On television there are several channels devoted to cricket: ICL, IPL repeats, highlights of old Indian ODI’s - on one I found a repeat of the Sussex-Lancashire C&G trophy final from a couple of years ago. Advert breaks bring you Sachin Tendulkar promoting the Royal Bank of Scotland and Yuvraj Singh advertising Pepsi. If you fancy a snack, Mahendra Singh Dhoni appears on the front of your packet of crisps.
The money flowing through the Indian game makes much more sense when you are here. The advertisements and the endorsements are the physical representations of the billion dollar television deals which are made by companies desperate to show live International matches. For a cricket follower it is a strange experience – I’m both ecstatic at the amount of cricket I can consume, and uneasy at how entwined with money and markets it has become.
As for England and their practice matches – few people have been talking about them. Pietersen and his colleagues have been footnotes in the English-language papers as Sourav Ganguly and Ricky Ponting have dominated the front, back and opinion pages. India’s victory over Australia was felt viscerally by many I’ve spoken to: “We hate the Aussies”, a man from Mumbai told me, “we even danced in the streets when England won the Ashes”.
This focus away from the upcoming one-day matches might give England an advantage, especially with Tendulkar rested and Ishant Sharma injured for the beginning of the series. This being said, modern cricketers should be accustomed to the seamless transition between different tours and contrasting forms of the game. England will have to start well against a country riding on the crest of a wave.
Alex Try is in India following England’s tour. Connection willing, he’ll be blogging for The Corridor
11 Comments »Dhoni is ‘Obama in white clothes’
By Will last year, mid-November, 20 Comments »
I enjoy Peter Roebuck’s writing, but this is taking things a little far, don’t you think? Talking about MS Dhoni, he says:
He came to cricket as might a passenger at a train station, reached captaincy, runs, fame and riches not as some ruined child or as a street urchin destined to cover himself in bracelets but as a grounded and gritty young man for whom wealth was a consequence and not an aim. He wanted to rise, but on his own terms; he was not hungry enough to sell himself short. He is Obama in white clothes.
Granted, India have beaten Australia 2-0 - a superb, seismic win given Australia’s dominance for so long, though India has been an incredibly difficult place for tourists to win for yonks. And, yes, Dhoni is a seriously impressive, composed, grounded character with a Gilchristian urge to entertain. But to say he is Obama in white clothes overstates Dhoni’s influence and underplays Obama’s feat.
Discuss.
20 Comments »The Mohali Test
By Will last year, mid-October, 4 Comments »
It’s shaping up into a corking Test match over in Mohali. With two days to go, India lead by 301 with all second-innings wickets intact; they cantered to 100 for 0 in just 23 overs by stumps today. And, true to form, Shane Watson has said Australia “can chase down anything”, in a sub-conscious reference to his wild days on a pig farm, perhaps.
“I think we can win it,” he said. “If we’re set 430 or something in four or five sessions, I’ve got no doubt, if we bat well, we can chase down anything. The wicket is still playing well. There’s a bit of turn and the ball will go reverse. If we bat extremely well, I really believe we can chase down anything.”
It’s a good deck, for sure, but I’m far less confident than Watson. Fifth-day pitches in India are a spinners’ dream, and Amit Mishra already has five in the bag. Watch with interest.
With Australia’s predicament in mind, I was drawn to Chris Ryan’s piece on the Almighty-less side Ricky Ponting skippers:
It is too soon to guess how far Australia’s cricketers might fall. It is not easy to pinpoint the exact moment they peaked. But it seems reasonable to suppose they fielded no better team than the one they put on the park in 1997. That team had aces in most bowling departments, nigh-on infallible catchers, and just the right pinches of batting polish and grit. Underpinning all that was a keeper in Ian Healy who could pluck dragonflies with his tongue, and a fair and clever leader in Mark Taylor. Of the triumphant XI who guzzled champagne on the players’ balcony in Nottingham, only Ricky Ponting survives. Who else among the current lot might jag a spot on Tubby’s team? Mike Hussey would, coming in for graceful Greg Blewett, and Brett Lee would tip out trusty Paul Reiffel. No others.
It’s an interesting time, certainly. But if the seesaw is beginning to tilt away from Australia, it doesn’t take long for it to tip back quite dramatically. If, for example, they chase down 450 to beat India, once again Australia will be considered the all-powerful leviathon they once were. Albeit one whose cracks are widening as the years roll on.
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