Cricket

In my first "About me" post, I left out a lot of things.Im a typical Indian. One of the things is that I like cricket a lot(I suck at the game though). I like watching the game esp if its a high scoring one. I dont have any favorite team unlike others. But i do hate the australian cricket team for their arrogance. Let me start my ranting with the australian team.

I accept the fact that the present australian team is a truly a champion team. But Ive never seen them behave like champions. Not once. There are lots of situations I can mention to back up my claim. the recent one being the hammering they got from the New Zealand team. Yes, The australian team missed their main players like Ponting, Gilchrist, Symonds etc. But they had other good players which on paper I felt had the potential to beat the Black Caps. NZ played beautifully, chased down mamoth totals and comprehensively beat the australians. When you are truly outplayed by a better side, the least you can do is to give ur opponents some credit. But I wasnt surprised when Gilchrist said " We didnt want the tour in the first place". Dude. they played poorly and behaved even worse. Another Incident. The presentation during the ICC championship trophy in India recently. Ponting had the audacity to wag his finger at the BCCI chief and a Minister, Sharad Pawar, of India. Even though Im not a big fan of Pawar, I believe that should not be the way in which champions should behave. Another big problem, Sledging. Australians are the best in the world at this. Im not saying there should be no sledging in cricket. But if u sledge, u must be prepared to hear back from your oppnents. McGrath found that out when Sarwan replied to his sledging with an equally bad sentance.

Ok. Enough of my ramblings about australia. Lets focus on a different issue. Chucking. And the center of the issue is Muttiah Muralitharan. I truly believe he CHUCKS and not bowls. Rules are for everyone. Just because this chap had a deformity when he was born, he cannot be an exception to the rule. Not only was he an exception to the rule, the sri lankan cricket board actually lobbied and had the rule modified to suit these chuckers. Thats is pure bullshit. I mean, if hypothetically, jus hypothetically, a guy had been fed with steroids since he was born and had gotten addicted to it, and he decides to play cricket, would they modify the doping rule and allow this guy to play? Would they? Isnt it the same case?

Staying with doping.. The pakistanis are at it. Again. Ball Tampering, doping, tampering with their birth certificates etc etc. Latest is the doping scandal involving Akhtar and Asif. Even worse is the way in which their bans were overturned. My interpretation on the whole episode is this. The reason they were tested by the pakistani authorities was only because if by any chance ICC had tested them during the tournament, there was no way they could escape the punishment. I feel the whole episode was staged to bail out the drug addicts.

Finally, lets focus on the state of indian cricket. The day when I heard that ganguly was dropped from the team was one of those happiest days. Finally the BCCI showed that they had the balls to drop a "Senior" member from the team. It was a little surprising that he had been in the team for that long a time without performing. And even more surprising was the reason that was given for retaining him was his past record. Yea. U can ride on ur records for a while. But u cant do that for eternity. U need to perform to be in the team. If people think they can stay in the team only becos of their previous records, Gavaskar and kapil dev should still be playing!! And I believe these people should be dropped once in a while so that they realise the importance of performing. Look at Ganguly now. He's back to his form.

Thats about it. Looking forward to the world cup!!