People at Work & Play

A feast ahead for the Indian cricket fan. The long awaited DFL Indian Premier League is all set to get off to a rousing start in my hometown of Bengaluru.

Bangalore’s Royal Challengers takes on Kolkatta’s Knight Riders in the inaugural match on April 18. The match will be preceded by a lot of fanfare including the Washington Redskins providing the cheerleading.

The tournament sees 8 teams play 56 matches to be followed by two semi-finals and the grand finale at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium on June 1. See the fixtures here.

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Today must go down as the day of the IPL auction at Mumbai. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was by far the biggest catch. Chennai Super Kings paying $ 1.5 million for him. Here are some of the others.

Andrew Symonds is the highest paid overseas cricketer @ $ 1.35 million. The squads so far make interesting reading.

Ponting must be sore that he could get only $ 400,000 while Brett Lee gets $ 900,000. Mathew Hayden gets even less at $ 375,000.

Things will hot up as the days go by. As always, people see things in different perspectives. Micheal Clarke’s staying away from the IPL has been headlined that he put family and Australia duties ahead of the IPL ( the other Aussies don’t?). The Australian tour of Pakistan clashes with the IPL dates ( which may explain why some in Australia are reluctant to tour Pakistan citing security threats).

The timing of this auction comes at an interesting stage in the ongoing Commonwealth Bank ODIs between Australia, India and Sri Lanka. Yuvraj, captain of Mohali has Bret Lee, Sangakkara and Jayawardane under him ! Murali is to play under Dhoni for Chennai.!

All in all, much to watch out for before the IPL tournament gets off with Bangalore playing Kolkatta in the first match at Bangalore on April 18. The schedule is here.

Fame, they say, is fickle. One moment you are the hero of a billion people. A few weeks later, people are wondering what has happened to you.

I am talking of Yuvraj Singh and his pathetic performance in Australia. I knew he had not done well but didn’t realize how bad “bad “was  until I saw this graphic in today’s Times of India.

The hero of the Twenty20 who hit 6 sixers in a over and scored that 169 in a Test versus Pakistan to push for a place in the Test side so strongly has scored precisely 39 runs in this tour so far at an average of 4.33 !

His scores: 6 not out vs Victoria, 0 & 5 in the 1st Test, 12 & 0 in the 2nd Test, 2 & 3 vs ACT, 2 in first ODI, 3 in second ODI and 6 in third ODI. In Tests, 17 runs @ 4.25 with a strike rate of 35.4. In ODIs, 11 runs @ 3.66 with a strike rate of 39.2.
This lean trot is definitely an aberration as he has a fine record and great potential. He has been made the Vice Captain of the ODI team as he is a key player.

His poor form has been compounded by his knee injury. There are many reasons talked about for his loss of form. Our speculating helps in no way. He knows the answer himself.
For the sake of the team, let’s hope he gets back his form-fast!

Some time back I had written to admire Ishant Sharma’s fast bowling in the Perth Test tht India won.

Seeing young Ishant Sharma and S. Sreeshanth bowl their opening spell in yesterday’s ODI against Australia was a thrilling experience for all of us. Fans of my generation have for years seen Indian batsmen made to jump by fast men from all over the world. It was nice to see the Indian pace men make the Aussies hop around.

Ravi Shastri summed it up by saying that seldom have we seen an Indian opening pair bowl so fast and so well. Sharma took the crucial wickets of Hayden, Ponting and Symonds in his spell of 4 for 38 in 9.1 overs.

Ponting, considered one of the best batsmen in the world now, had to concede that the 19 year old was a “dangerous bowler”.

Sharma consistently bowled at speeds of over 140 km. p.h. His fastest was clocked at 149.9 km.p.h. What was admirable was that he did not lose his cool even after Hayden took 18 runs of one over.

India beat Australia by 5 wickets thanks to Dhoni and young Rohit Sharma guiding them to a win after some anxious moments.

This was India’s first one-day win against Australia at Melbourne after 22 years.

Young talent should be groomed. As I have said before, we have a winner here.

The India-Australia Test series is over. All of us have some special memories of the series. Mine- like I am sure it would be for many fans the world over- would be the spell young Ishant Sharma bowled to the Aussie captain Ricky Ponting at Perth.

Statistics can be misleading. He got only 6 wickets in the 3 Tests that he played in Australia recently. There can be no doubt that he was the bowler who seemed most likely to get a wicket at any time.

This spell of hostile fast bowling brings cheer to Indian fans. Mark Nicholas writes in the Telegraph .

“It was the relentlessness that both caught the eye and raised the brow. The sheer clarity of what was taking place will not be forgotten. If Sharma does not go on and on from here, there will be questions asked. The man is a born assassin. The scorecard will inform us that I Sharma took one second-innings wicket in India’s famous 2008 win over Australia at the WACA ground in Fortress Perth. But figures do not tell us everything. An aggressive approach, a braced front leg, a high arm and a strong and well-positioned wrist all combined with mighty heart and mind to breach the opposing captain.”

Adam Gilchrist called Sharma a “lethal” bowler. Very high praise indeed from the great Aussie wicket keeper who has seen many great fast men in his playing career.

Let’s hope too much praise so early in his career does not affect the 19 year old. He has got talent which should be nurtured. In the last Test at Adelaide he reached speeds of 147 km.p .h.

I see in him a clear winner.

Sachin Tendulkar achieved a milestone that had eluded him till now. A century at Adelaide - home to the legendary Sir Donald Bradman. In the first day of the final Test at Adelaide, Sachin today held the Indian innings together with a spirited 124 not out.

This was his 39th Test century. He leads the list of century makers in Test cricket. He is now way ahead of Brian Lara with 34 and Ricky Ponting with 33 Test hundreds.

With 11, 740 runs, Sachin is only 213 runs behind Brian Lara for the most runs in Test cricket.

The reason why the late Sir Donald Bradman is considered the best batsman ever lies in the fact that he scored 6996 Test runs in 80 innings with an average which will never be beaten of 99.94!!

There is a big difference between what is portrayed on screen and what happens in real life. “Chak De, India” became a very popular movie showing the brilliant performance of the Indian womens hockey team led by their coach, played by Hindi movie super star, Shah Rukh Khan.

TV channels yesterday showed how different in reality the world of Indian womens hockey is. The living conditions provided to the players was pathetic. All 14 of them were made to share one large room. The players who recently returned from a tour of Australia were made to pay for their own kit!

On the other hand, CNN- IBN quotes Shah Rukh today as saying that he would like to be associated with other sports besides cricket when he won the bid for the Kolkatta team for BCCI-IPL Twenty 20 extravaganza. His bid: something like $ 75 million.

The list of franchise owners are (all amounts in US$): Vijay Mallya’s UB group (Bangalore, 111.6 million), India Cements (Chennai, 91 million), GMR group (Delhi 84 million), Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, 107 million), a consortium led by Emerging Media (Jaipur, 67 million), Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Entertainment (Kolkata, 75.09 million), Preity Zinta, Ness Wadia, Karan Paul and Dabur’s Mohit Burman (Mohali, 76 million) and Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (Mumbai, 111.9 million).

Even if a small fraction of money was spent on games other than cricket, we would do better as a sporting nation.

After the Perth Test triumph, sports enthusiasts were treated to a great match of tennis by 21 year old Sania Mirza. She gave a tough fight to the more experienced and vastly superior Venus Williams in the third round of the 2008 Australian Open.

She is the highest ranked female tennis player ever from India, with a career high ranking of 27 in singles and 18 in doubles. She was ranked 31st in the singles category and 18th in the doubles category in the WTA rankings of January 7, 2008,

In a match where the scores don’t quite reflect the stiff opposition put up by Sania, she lost 6-7, 4-6 to the 8th seeded Venus Williams , who is the reigning Wimbledon champion. At one stage, Sania was leading 5-3 in the first set.

Sania lost out because her serves were very poor compared to the 195 km. p.h booming aces delivered by Venus Williams.

Though she lost the match, Sania won the admiration of the viewing public for a spirited performance.

The Indian selectors have taken what I believe is a bold and welcome step. They are looking to the future for the traingular One Day series featuring India, Australia and Sri Lanka in Australia starting in February.

Of the ” seniors” only Sachin Tendulkar remains. The team has no Dravid, no Ganguly and not surprisingly for one-dayers, no Laxman.

The team: MS Dhoni (Captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh (Vice Captain), Harbhajan Singh, Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Irfan Pathan, S Sreesanth, RP Singh, Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthik, Piyush Chawla and Praveen Kumar.

It’s good to see the accent on youth. We miss Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman but must get used to not having them around forever.

The timing of the team selection is debatable. They have one more Test to go at Adelaide next week. It will be interesting to see what Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman do in what could well be their last match in Australia.

Let’s hope they leave in glory.

Congratulations to Anil Kumble and his men for the fantastic victory over the Aussies in the Perth Test.

What made the victory more remarkable was the hype about the fast pitch at Perth, the Aussie pace battery of 4 fast men etc. As Sunil Gavaskar said in his post match summary today, this was one of the best victories by India ever, especially considering we got whipped at Melbourne and should have won if not drawn at Sydney.

Every one contributed. Rahul Dravid’s 93 in the first innings, Laxman and Irfan Pathan with the bat in the second innings. Excellent bowling by Irfan, RP Singh and young Ishant Sharma in both the innings.

Kumble spoke of the challenges the team faced and how they triumphed.