Tendulkar Climbs the Hundredth Everest, Century of Centuries

16th March,2012 : Shakib-Al-Hasan bowling to the greatest. Whole Mirpur on their feet. Shakib pitches it up around the middle stump. Team India’s #10 comfortably plays it towards the square leg region. Changes ends with Suresh Raina batting at the other end. Stadium shouts. So as the commentary box. And the batsman who had just taken the one of the most significant singles of his career, takes his helmet off, kisses the the tricolor, looks at his bat, then looks at the heavens and finally raises his  bat for the 100th time in his glorious International Career of 23 years. The sight to see which every cricket fan would pay, the sight from which every lesson for the ways of a gentle celebration can be learnt, the sight which has been trademarked as one of the most wonderful pictures ever from a cricket stadium. And the man of the moment still as calm as ever, this time a little more emotion could have been seen, but no signs of excitement. That sort of a person is “the Sachin Tendulkar”.

Dazzling Kohli keeps India’s hopes alive

Sometimes having your back against the walls pulls out the best from you. India came into the match with their goal being very clear. They needed a win and win that too a bonus point. India have been chasing and chasing soon after they have arrived to Australia. And thereon they have been chasing their own shadows of the times of their glory but could not catch up with it. India won the toss today. Yet they decided to have yet another chase. Yes, sometimes chasing turns out to be advantageous as you have a clear target in front of you, also at times when the D/L method comes into play and moreover when you are not only playing for a victory but a victory with a bonus point. Dhoni would not have wanted to chase more than a 260 or at max 270. But the sight we had from Hobart after India completed their 50 overs was something that had made many of the Indian supporters to leave their seats or turn their televisions off. Much to the courtesy Dilshan’s delightful innings and also a polished knock by their skipper himself had allowed the Lankans to set up a Himalayan score, 320 it is; which meant that to keep the hopes alive for this tournament India needed to go at a score of just more than 8 runs per over right from the outset.

Youngistan Chases Down At The Adelaide Oval, Dramatic Victory For India

Undoubtedly Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s brigade has got some special talents who can pull off the things with their incredible game. The main problem has been their inconsistency. You never know when they come out with the goods in critical situations but also incredible to see how they can make the things difficult in their own hands when everything looks to be in favor of them. Today’s match at Adelaide is another example to this. Australia really looked good at one stage of their innings, they were thinking for a big score as the stage was set too. But the Indian bowlers equally backed by the fielders just came back so strongly to restrict them to 270 eventually.

Dhoni could have been pleased with the end effort that his boys had put, but still the previous statistics were suggesting something else.India had not beaten the Aussies at the Adelaide Oval before in a limited over match. Not only that, in order to chase down the score the Aussies had set,India would need to go over many of the highest successful run chases at the same ground.

Tendulkar Stuck on 99

Let us go back to the day of  ICC World Cup semifinals 2011 between India and Pakistan. Sachin Tendulkar playing well and batting on something like 28 or 29. Suddenly he was beaten by the turn of Syed Ajmal. Ball hits his pads and umpire Simon Taufel raises his finger to the loud shout of the Pakistanis. Sehwag had wasted a review taking one for his dismissal which didn’t pay of. Tendulkar thinks for a while and asks for the review. And dramatically what looked to be a plumb leg before in a naked eye turned out to be the one drifting down the leg side. Decision reversed as it should have been. Very next ball the little master comes down the track and once again beaten by spin. Akmal behind the stumps swift enough to do the rest at once. Pakistanis started to celebrate again. But the third umpire found something different, Sachin was just back into his crease. The stadium came alive once again. Since then he was leaving dangerously again and again. All know what happened after that. He was put down 4 times by the fielders before he was eventually held out by the Captain himself at cover on 82. From the prospective of the match it was a huge breakthrough but still probably that was the only time didn’t feel as sad as use to every time Tendulkar is dismissed. And guess what the reason was? It was because he was standing in front of what could have been his 100^th international century. I personally felt that such a special century can’t happen in such a way. It has to be one of his greatest of centuries so that we can say again as we have said so many times, “Wow! What a time to get a very special hundred!” But No.. Till that day he is still standing in front of this particular landmark.

India Continues to be Thrashed, Border-Gavaskar Trophy is Australia’s Again

When it comes to anything outside the sub-continent, India have been carrying a reputation of not doing well over the years. But from the time Dhoni had taken over from Anil Kumble until the days of the English Summer of 2011 things had been going fine for the men in blues in relatively all forms of the game. They had lifted the world cup, also had been holding the #1 place in tests for a long time, but the whole scenario changed all together at one tour. And now it seems like the team with extreme potential and capability is now ready to give up the battle every time they walk in outside the sub-continent. Billions of fans are scared about the fact that this team may just go on to set some new records of their failure since at the moment India are looking like a big stone rolling down the hill which does not slow down at all, but accelerates even more. After putting in some fight in the boxing day test, back to back innings defeats in the SCG and at Perth and as a whole which is the 7th test defeat on a trot overseas has risen up many questions as they should be.

Harbhajan’s Heroic Leads MI To Lift CLT20

Story remains the same for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Once again in spite of qualifying for the finals of a tournament, having crossed a lot of barriers they fall short of going the required distance. On the other hand the team who had come out of nowhere have stunned the favorites of the night. After being the most valuable franchise since the first edition of the Indian Premier League they have not been able to win any tournament, neither IPL nor the CLT20. Have disappointed the supporters in the first two editions of IPL where the didn’t even qualify for  the semifinals. After dominating the third IPL season it was CSK who came big on the night of finals. In the following CLT20 they were kicked out from the group stages. In the last IPL they had a dramatic start, 8 wins of first 10 matches, then suddenly a drop form. They eventually made it to the semis before it was a Gayle blast there to thrash them out of the competition. So where there were expectations, they disappointed, but here they came with a lot of injuries and almost looking to be one of the weakest teams in the championship, they have come with fire. The extraordinary self belief has led them through to be the new champions of the Champions League.

RCB vs MI, Battle for Championship, Match Preview

Champions League T20 is going to produce a new champions and that too a team that has not been ever able to win any trophy so far. Both of them are from the IPL, thus India is going to retain the CLT20 once again although the defending champions had an early exit. So amazing it is that so many Indian players who keep knocking the door to wear the blue shirt, so many go on to play the world T20 world cup in their dream form, but things somehow don’t come of for them in the big stage. It has been always hard for the Indians to find make a mark in the T20 world cup except the first one that they won.

However, this is should not be the topic to discuss right now since the grand finale of the CLT20 is going to get underway within 20 hours of time. One has to say that it has been a little unexpected to see the teams in the finals. One of them came as clear underdogs into the tournament, had so many key players injured, lost their captain himself for injury, key men in all the departments were missing, even the reserve bench was not properly constructed, initially had to play 5 overseas players for lack of players available. On the other hand the other team had a poor start to their CLT20 campaign as they were defeated twice in a row in their two opening games and came back from nowhere. Suddenly they started believing that they can win everything, they chased down 200 plus scores in back to back games and now they have their top order on the top of their game.

RCB stun Redbacks with a last ball maximum,one of the most memorable T20s ever

The clash was nicely set up. Somerset had joined the New South Wales Blues and the Mumbai Indians for the semis of CLT20 2011 just a little earlier, but the whole Bengaluru was waiting to see their home team seal a place for the top four. Redbacks came hard after a big defeat against the warriors and looking to upset the home team. RCB on the other hand suffered back to back defeats in their first 2 matches and were looking almost gone from there before Gayle storm hit the 22 yards against Somerset and from the net run rate prospective they went over the warriors. So nobody could say that who is going to qualify with Somerset, neither could predict the group topper which of course has a great deal of significance for the clashes of the fantastic four.

India’s Nightmare Continues at Old Trafford T20

It was almost certain after two back to back defeats in tests and with the kind of attitude Indians showed after that it was only a matter of time that England would snip in a comprehensive series victory. One could realize easily that the so called defending champions got away from the game and looked like as if they are not willing to play the tests and wanted to have a change. Well, after that massive whitewash the colors have changed from white to blue, but the men in blue are yet to taste their first win against England in the tour.

India vs England, Oval Test Day 2, Another English Dominance

Things just not tend to change at all; the momentum, luck everything seems to be  with the home team. Sometimes you need luck to go in your favour to get on with the game again, just not to be the case this time for Team India. India lost a very important toss, Oval always promises to be a very good wicket for batting. It was always certain with the batting depth and form in the England line up and lack of variety in the Indian bowling that England will once again put up a very big total and that is what exactly happened today. To have more than 450 runs in the board with only 3 men back in the hunt, is something that any team will like to be in.

Although it was a very good start from the Indian bowlers, they came in with the right attitude, and with the kind of body language they had shown in the first couple of hours of the day, it looked like a different Indian team all together.