< 1 minute readMS Dhoni said that New Zealand beat India by 200 runs in a one-day game because the pitch was a bit spongy. We presume he meant it was like the sponge above, rather than being like those jelly creatures that race along the sea floor at speeds of up to
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Attributes required for a Test batsman
< 1 minute readTest batsmen need to have a number of attributes. Depending on the conditions and the opposition, there will be different requirements. Some are always necessary: A good eye A half-decent technique Good shot selection Concentration In matches like Sri Lanka v India at Colombo, other attributes are also required: Stamina
Continue readingThe Indian bowling defence
< 1 minute readWell it isn’t a bowling attack, is it? India have got a medium-pacer called Abhimanyu Mithun opening the bowling against Sri Lanka. We hadn’t even heard of him until this morning. Muralitharan said this week that Harbhajan Singh was the only person who could challenge his Test wickets record. At
Continue readingKingfisher IPL advert
< 1 minute readBritish readers will never have seen this. We saw it rather a lot when we were in Bangalore earlier in the year. It’s quite something. Watch it three times and see whether the tune’s stuck in your head.
Continue readingZimbabwe beating India again – how do we feel about that?
< 1 minute readWe know you don’t like it when we don’t have an opinion on something. It’s not that we’re fence-sitting, it’s that in reality we don’t have all that many opinions. We wander through life indecisive and directionless and we’ve done that since before we went to school. Opinions occasionally find
Continue readingIndia don’t have good bowlers
< 1 minute readNot enough of them anyway. You have to use at least five bowlers in Twenty20. India have been using Harbhajan Singh (great); Zaheer Khan (really good, but occasionally vulnerable in Twenty20); and Ashish Nehra (solid but unspectacular). To make up their remaining overs, they use Yusuf Pathan, who is clearly
Continue readingSuresh Raina makes a good career move
< 1 minute readSuresh Raina hit the first Twenty20 international hundred for India. He’ll do well out of that, you’d think. We like Suresh Raina. We like the fact that he plays across the line into the off side. That seems to us to be the most effective way of making yourself look
Continue readingMumbai Indians v Chennai Super Kings, IPL final match report
< 1 minute readAlex writes: I watched the pre-match sunglasses-fest/pose-athon while tucking into Kashmiri lamb shank rogan josh. Unfortunately, my reluctantly embraced ‘no beer’ policy meant I enjoyed the main event in my room, accompanied by a bottle of Bisleri bottled water. What I like to call “the IPL ad endurance challenge” really
Continue readingIndian media coverage of the IPL and the fans’ view
< 1 minute readIndian newspapers and 24 hour news channels are awash with stories about Lalit Modi and the income tax investigations into all aspects of the IPL. The bombs at Chinnaswamy Stadium get a few mentions as well. We get the impression that most people here don’t particularly care about this; that
Continue readingIPL third place play-off match report
< 1 minute readAlex writes: Is there any sequence of words in the English language more exciting than ‘third place play-off’? I’m currently working on the horrifying theory that my internal issues might be caused by beer. This is not a theory I’m keen to see proven.
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