Match-fixing allegation: reaction from Pakistan

As soon as the news of Pakistani players being investigated for match-fixing (affectionately called spot-fixing these days) hit the press, it evoked wide-spread protests across Pakistan. Effigies of BCCI president and Lalit Modi were burnt and demands for severing all ties with India were expressed. The parliamentarians demanded an unconditional apology from India. Pakistan's sports minister released a press statement: "We blame India, BCCI, IPL and the Modi brothers for this controversy (when pointed out that Narendra Modi and Lalit Modi are not related; he just laughed and said "well, you never know"). All this has happened because India, under RAW's instructions, refused to sign any of our players for the last IPL season. If our players had participated in the IPL, they would have never felt the need to go after this petty cash. And even if they wanted to, I'm sure the IPL stint would have left them either too injured to play or too useless to make them attractive to the bookies. So India should first apologize to us and then send all the IPL owners to our country to sign our players. This time we expect our players to be signed for the maximum amount possible and, in addition, the 10% commission that our President takes from all transactions should also be borne by IPL".

A disgusted Mohammad Yousuf immediately announced his retirement from international cricket “I’m highly disappointed by the treatment given to me by everybody. I’m Pakistan’s best batsman for last ten years and have devoted my entire life to my country, or at least parts of it that I couldn’t sell to ICL. And yet, these bookies have completely ignored me and giving more importance to the new comers like Amir and Asif. I’m also completely capable of underperforming by taking money from them; such as getting out for ducks and running out my partners. PCB also has been extremely unfair to me. They have selected a bunch of useless batsmen who get out on their own by edging the ball to the slips; that doesn’t give me any opportunity to run them out. If PCB had selected at least one other international quality batsman, say someone like Younis, then both of us could have taken money from the bookies to run each other out. I’ve consulted my elders and decided that this time I’m definitely, most certainly and without an iota of doubt, going to retire from international cricket”. When asked if there is any chance of him reconsidering his decision, he added “well, if the bookies ask me nicely…”. On a related note, Afridi is considering making a come back to test cricket saying that "till now, I had underestimated test cricket's true potential"

Inzamam ul Haq criticized the current captain Salman Butt for not forfeiting the match immediately "Refusing to play and forfeiting the match is the best way to deal with such allegations. That's how you get all the sympathy and shift the blame. Now, I'm afraid, it's too late to stop an unbiased investigation into the matter. Salman just showed his immaturity by not acting promptly. What else can you expect  from someone who is named 'butt'? ".

Pakistan’s coach Waqar Younis looked mildly surprised when asked for his reaction. In a mix of Punjabi, Middlesex and Ethiopian accent he said “I don’t know what this fuss is all about. Since I’ve become the coach of Pakistan team, our primary goal has been to build team unity. And if this incident doesn’t convince you that we are the most united team in the world, then I don’t know what will. See, for the entire summer our batsmen were taking the flack from the media and fans for their poor performance and bowlers were basking in the glory. So now to take the pressure off the batsmen, our bowlers have decided to get involved in match fixing, so that the media attention shifts to them. If the heat on them becomes too much I’m planning to start a fight with my coaching staff in the full view of the public during a practice session or we may even ask Asif to start taking drugs again. It’s all a matter of playing for each other.”

An angry Ramiz Raja wrote a strongly worded article on cricinfo (which was run through an adjective-remover program before getting published) “Match fixing is not the heinous crime it is being made out to be. How do you expect that the Pakistani players, who have grown up watching players like Akram and Salim Malik, resist the temptation of getting involved with the bookies? Calling it an offence is highly regrettable. It’s high time match fixing is legalized.”

Shohaib Akhtar, seeing the words Pakistan and “spot-fixing” together decided to sue PCB; but when pointed out that “spot-fixing” doesn’t refer to his treatment for the genital warts, he calmed down.

Why Harbhajan is out of Mumbai Indians in IPL4

Assuming there will be a IPL-4, Harbhajan should start looking for a new employer.  I mean, the stupidity of this guy never fails to amaze me. Lets do a quick recap

He was dropped immediately after his debut series for "questionable on field behavior". (I always wondered what "questionable behavior" can someone have on field. The only probable explanation now seems to have been refuted with the announcement that he is marrying a girl)

Then he was thrown out of the national cricket academy on disciplinary ground. (Well, now come to think of it, may be my first guess was right. We'll watch how that wedding goes)

Then he had an altercation with police who didn't allow a male photographer friend to his hotel (Hmm.. ok I'll stop trying to force fit these into my conclusion)

Then he was reported for illegal action.. and thankfully this time they were talking about his bowling action (finally.. a cricket related controversy)

He publicly criticized the coach for dropping Dada.

He walked on the ramp.. that's not a problem at all. But look at his stupidity.. If you have hair like that, will you ever remove your turban? Hell, I'll even convert to Sikhism to hide such hair.. Gosh.. 

If you are still here, I promise.. no more such pictures of Bhajji without his turban..

He called Symonds a monkey.. which was not so bad, if you come to think of it. I've been called worse names than that.. sometimes even by my own family.. and I've called people by worse names.. but whenever I call someone such names, I ensure few things 1) They should be no more than 8 years old 2) should be smaller in size 3)should be with their parents.. This is my survival tactics.. If I have to call someone who is twice my size and has a history of drinking problems, I stick to "Sir".. look at this picture and just imagine how close we came to having Amit Mishra as our leading spinner in Tests.

With all that, just when you though Bhajji was a complete idiot, he gave us hope.. He slapped Sreesanth.. and one began to think "hey, this guy is not so bad after all.. I always knew he had some hidden qualities".. Bhajji became our hero.. Even his full tosses looked like deadly doosras and his yorkers looked like well flighted off breaks.. all was well with our world..

And that's when this happened... I can't even imagine how stupid one can be to make this mistake..  how can he break the most basic rule.. every child, growing up, has learned this at his mother's knees.. every religious book teaches you this.. this is the first lesson you learn when you enter school.. that is.. you never never mess with your boss's wife

The worse part is Nita Ambani seems to be enjoying this. Don't be surprised if Bhajji is calling Subhash Chandra for an ICL contract.

After IPL is nationalized

There is a humorous trend going on in twitter - #AfterIPLisNationalized

I joined the band wagon and tweeted like crazy. Here are ten of my selected tweets on this subject (You can view all my tweets here)

1. Pakistan will ask their players to infiltrate the border to play in the league 
2. % of IPL revenues will be used for building new cricket stadiums in Afghanistan
3. Pakistan will ask donation from US to set up PPL. Much to US's anger they will allow Taliban to field one team.
4. Fielding positions will be defined in hindi. Teesra Aadmi (third man), Acchi Tang (fine leg), Khisko (slip) etc 
5. Arundhati Roy will start a "pitch bachao" andolan.. No heavy rollers will be allowed on the pitch
6. Jharkhand team will have Dhoni, Saurabh Tiwari and 9 Dhoni look alike Maoists.. carefully selected by Shibu Soren
7. For matches between B'lore and Chennai, SC will allot the number of drinks each team can have during drinks break
8. Mandira Bedi will play for KXI once the women's bill passes in the parliment
9. Mumbai Indians will be called Mumbai Manus.. team will have only Marathis. Atul Bedade will be the batting coach
10. There will be a new team.. UP's Bhayas.. On field it'll have 9 fielders and 2 Mayawati's statues.. 

Is Warne throwing in the towel ?

I saw these tweets by Shane Warne yesterday night..
"Apologies to all royals fans, very shattering to play like that tonight in such a big game ! Out of ipl ... Such a shame, our young players"
"Sorry meant to be our young inexpeirienxed players have learnt a lot, we are all hurting , sad feeling to be knocked out, goodnight all"

One can understand how dejected and disappointed Warne must be feeling after being knocked out of the tournament.. But there is one small problem.. they are still not knocked out.. at least not mathematically. At the time of writing this article, here are the team standings
Team          Points         Matches Left
--------        --------        ----------------
Mumbai        18                    2
RCB              14                   1
CSK              12                   2
DD                12                   2
RR                 12                  1
Deccan          12                   2
KKR              10                   2
KXI               8                     2


So given that there are 7 more matches to go, only team that has been theoretically knocked out are Punjab. Even KKR, who are two points below RR in the table have a chance.


RR has two problems, they have just 1 match left and their net run rate is pretty poor compared to other teams in contention. It goes without saying that the next match is a must win for them, which will take them to 14th position. RR should also hope that Mumbai and Punjab win their remaining matches, which would make the job difficult for other teams. Although RR can still win by a big margin and improve their net run rate, there is even one possibility that net run rate won't come into picture. Here is how - 

Teams		Winner
CSK	DD	DD
KXI	Deccan	KXI
RCB	Mumbai	Mumbai
KKR	RR	RR
KXI	CSK	KXI
DD	Deccan	DD
KKR	Mumbai	Mumbai

And the points table at the end of it would look something like -

Team	Points
Mumbai	22
DD	16
RCB	14
RR	14
CSK	12
Deccan	12
KXI	12
KKR	10

So RR is definitely not out of it by any means. Admittedly, their job is difficult and not completely in their hands. But one wonders why Warne is throwing in the towel with one more match to go. 

On a related note, did anyone notice Warne signaling for a strategic time out against Mumbai from the dug out? One small problem - it was sixth over of RR innings and that time-out belonged to bowling team (Mumbai). One wonders if captaincy is taking its toll on Warney now.

If I were Rohit Sharma..

Once upon a time there was an Indian cricketer called Devang Gandhi. Don't worry if that name doesn't strike a chord in your brain, because it means you are normal and, in any case, brains don't have chords. However, if you are one of the 9 people who still remember him and you are not his family, then I'll strongly recommend donating your brain for research (I'm contemplating on doing the same).

Devang Gandhi made his test debut for India in 1999; scored 75 in his second innings, and was the top scorer for the team in his next innings, with a score of 88.
This is when his life took a really interesting and unexpected turn ..... Ian Chappell made a prediction about him. Chappell predicted that India had finally solved their opening problems (remember that those days Sidhu was considered the best Indian opener since Gavaskar; and Sehwag was a name yet unheard of). Chappell, on the account of those two innings from Devang Gandhi, was convinced that he had the makings of a successful opening batsman and could go on to play for India for a long long time. Gandhi scored 6, 4, 0 in his next three innings and looked so out of sorts against Australia that he was dropped from the team. He never played for India again. Last I heard of him, he was also dropped from his domestic team (Bengal), announced his retirement from first class cricket and was busy giving tips to youngsters on how to become a successful test opener.

A similar inflection point came in JP Duminy's career in 2009. Chappell, wrote a long piece, on how Duminy is a great in making. Read that article and count the number of times he compares Duminy to Tendulkar and Ponting. Well, Duminy, till then had a decent test career; 10 innings 389 runs and average close to 50. In the 10 innings of post-Chappell-prediction-era he has scored 129 runs and his career average has dropped below 30 (check this out). His vulnerability against spin is now well documented and his stock has fallen so much that he was ignored for the first half of the IPL this year (admittedly, initially few matches were due to injury), despite top scoring for his team in last year's edition. There are question marks about his continued selection in the SA team now and one wonders if his career is going in the same direction as Devang Gandhi's (On a serious note, I hope not. He is a fantastic player to watch and I hope he rediscovers his form).

This is the reason why I would be really worried, if I were Rohit Sharma. Chappell has been calling Sharma a great player in making since that last one day tournament India played in Australia.  Chappell, during that series, mentioned on air that Rohit Sharma was a strong contender for carrying India's middle order in test cricket and take over the mantle from Tendulkar. One wonders if this is what is preventing Sharma for getting selected in the test team. But Sharma was still scraping by, since Chappell hadn't put that prediction down in writing. All of that changed this week, when Chappell wrote this piece.

He says:
"And here was Rohit, a young Indian batsman of abundant skill, displaying the complementary nerve that is required to succeed at the highest level. The question is not whether Rohit has the skill to make it as a batsman in all forms of the game but whether the selectors will ignore his talents for so long that his best years will be past when he's finally chosen."

So, what "best years' Chappell is talking about? Sharma has player 42 ODIs for India with an average of 25; an average that's closer to Agarkar's than Tendulkar's; and a strike rate of 72; more Dravidian than Dhoni-esque. The question we need to ask is why he is still part of India's ODI team and why he is picked for India's T20 world-cup squad, over Virat Kohli (but, then we are forgetting that it is Srikanth who selects the team these days). In any case, Rohit Sharma shouldn't worry too much about his position in the current team. What he should be really concerned about is, now what happens to his career, now that Chappell had made the prediction and, this time, in writing. Out of all the things that can damage a batsman's career, Chappell's prediction is the worst; way ahead of a Shohaib Akhtar's beamer, Darrel Harper's finger or even the cheerleaders.

Meet the future captain of Pakistan cricket team...

You heard it here first. Note down the date, time and place, because today I'm going to make a bold prediction,  a prediction about who will be the captain of Pakistan cricket team in two years (which means predicting the 17th captain after the current one, not an easy task by any means).

And the player is Nasir Jamshed, a left handed batsmen who player 12 ODIs for Pakistan in the past, scored 349 runs at an average of 35 and strike rate of 101. Not earth shattering stuff, you are saying? And some of you would probably have noticed from his cricinfo page that he is already 20 years old, almost 11 years older than the current captain Shahid Afridi, who himself has been playing cricket for 14 years now. So neither stats nor age is in favor of our guy. Then why do I think he is a candidate? Hear me out and it'll all make sense.

Over the years, selectors of national teams have used different criteria to select the squad and the captain. Do you go with the naturally gifted players or do you go with the ones in their peak form? How do you balance between raw talent and work ethics? Do you look for a consistent player or the ones who can change the games on their own? These are probably some of the questions national selectors contemplate (unless, of course, they are Srikanth)

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised when the newly appointed chief selector of Pakistan, Mohsin Khan, showed great clarity of thought and articulated the criteria of selection. “My criteria of selecting players are discipline, fitness and performance and I will not compromise on any of it.", said Mohsin Khan. Then, he promptly went ahead and appointed Shahid Afridi as the captain of the national team. Makes sense, doesn't it?. If discipline is one of your key criteria for selecting the team, then who else is more suitable to lead the team than Afridi. The guy has recently been banned by ICC for tampering with the ball and have been fined by his board. He has threatened to quit his domestic team when he was overlooked for captaincy. He also has an extremely rich history of excellent disciplined behavior; be it mid-pitch collisions, tampering with the pitch (video), threatening spectators with the bat, just to name a few examples. One can understand what Mohsin Khan meant when he said that he will not compromise on discipline. He clearly means business.

So now, once we know that how serious the chief selector is, can we look at the domestic circuit to see who else fits the bill. Of course, one need to be cognizant of the fact that the talent displayed in domestic circles doesn't always gets translated to international arena. But all we need to look for is the early signs, signs that show a next Tendulkar in the making or in this case the next Afridi.

That's why, I almost jumped out, shouting Eureka, when I read this article in Dawn (for those who are wondering - no, I was not in my bath tub at that time and I was completely dressed). Nasir Jamshed has been fined for cheating in the school exam. Wow! the signs of another Afridi in making is unmistakable. Not only did he cheat, but he was also caught "red handed". If this doesn't convince you that he has all the right stuff to be Pakistan's captain, I don't know what will. I'll be watching this guy's career with considerable interest.

And by the way, I believe Ramiz Raja, after hearing about this incident, is planning to write an artcle called "Give Nasir a break" and "legalize" cheating in exams (a sequel to his earlier article about ball tampering). His logic would be something along the lines of - the entire exam system is unfairly biased towards hardworking and intelligent students. So to offer a even playing field to guys like Nasir, we should allow people to cheat in exams. We are in for interesting times.

Imports...

Just imported posts from some of my older blogs.. Hence the big time gaps between the posts..