Why Does India try to Sledge?

A week ago my call was 0-4 for India, and at 0-2 the whitewash is on!

Credit where it is due, India have competed quite well at times and in fact inexplicably threw away the Adelaide test which they should have at least drawn. How was that for a brain explosion, it was almost West Indies like. Nonetheless I have been impressed by Murali Vijay and Kohli, and expected worse.

Along came Brisbane, a place where Australia never loses and once again they didn't disappoint. But some hilarity stuck out, in particular India and their new found love for sledging.

Sledging is a cricket exclusive term, or as Steve Waugh termed it... "Mental Disintegration". The Aussies of old used it beautifully to defeat the opposition with mind games and end contests before they even started. Just ask any England team pre-2005 or Daryll Cullinan.

But it is important to realize the most important ingredient the Aussies had, the batting and bowling riches to make it work. The wonderful oxymoron Glenn McGrath is the best example, hurling expletives in the opposition's faces and yet delivering the same dour ball at the same generous pace patiently waiting for the batsman to crack.

Which brings us to India who it seems have adopted the same tactic, hey it worked for them why won't it work for us? This problem is, they are hopeless at it.

So what happened in Brisbane?

• Ishant Sharma, after being utterly thumped all day throws a few f-bombs when removing Steve Smith.  Note that Smith was yet to be dismissed in the series so far and was on 133. Note also that this is one of the most useless bowlers in the game today and it wasn't even a good delivery.
• Rohit Sharma and Superstar Virat greet Mitchell Johnson to the batting crease with some foul mouthing off, followed by some "bouncers" and "fast bowling" of the Indian variety. He proceeds to belt them for 13 fours and a six and then shows them how it's done with the ball including both Kohli (1 run) and Rohit (0 runs).

"Economy rate less than 5, in your face!"

Ladies and gentlemen, this is *not* how it's done.

Add to that whinging more about umpiring (but DRS won't solve anything of course!), Kohli not having enough time to pad up, the practice wickets not being up to standard and apparently the food was no good either. Moan moan moan. 

The real mystery is why India decided to adopt the brilliant idea of annoying the Australians into hammering them. 

In the 90s - Indian teams would show up, get disintegrated, go home and await the return series for revenge. It was horrible, but at least we lost with dignity.

In the 00s - Sourav Ganguly taught the boys to stand up for themselves and push back when pushed. But these guys didn't go around picking fights, the likes of Dravid, Tendulkar, Kumble and Laxman continued to play with dignity and class. It wasn't sledging, it was simply refusing to be bullied and we saw some of the best and most competitive India-Australia cricket. 

In the 10s - We have Gambhir shoulder charging Shane Watson, whose shoulders are bigger than Gambhir himself. We have Raina and Dhawan flopping around on the field mocking an injured batsman. We have two-bit bowlers like Varun Aaron giving send offs to David Warner. Sir Jadeja, Kohli and the Sharmas are always willing to throw in their unwanted two cents, while Dhoni tells us it provides entertainment for the crowd. 

The Indian cricket team that I grew up with was all about humility and grace, they had adopted a more English approach of cricket being a gentleman's game. Now they have taken on the Australian model of turning cricket into psychological warfare, only without any actual weapons. It is all noise and hot air at the moment.

So this is the message to Team India... sledging while winning makes you Australia, sledging while losing makes you idiots.

Rohit Sharma has Destroyed Cricket

Cricket has gone mad.

What kind of a world do we live in when a batsman can score 264 runs in an ODI innings, to break his own record of 209 no less?  A world where 264 surpasses the entire second innings score. A mismatch of such epic proportions should only be experienced if India played Fiji.

There is a difference between Jayasuriya sticking it to opposition 1996 world cup in an audacious counter attack, and this snooze-fest of boundaries against club level bowling.

And we aren't talking Tendulkar, Gilchrist or Gayle type pyrotechnics,  Rohit Sharma is a pretty average player.  To regard him has potentially one of the all time greats based on a silly innings like this is nonsense.

How Did This Happen?

It was inevitable that the IPL effect would eventually seep into ODI cricket. That brand of cricket promotes small boundaries, dead batting tracks and atrocious bowling and fielding (thank you Sri Lanka for playing your part).  This isn't ODI cricket, it is Fifty50 cricket.

It is important to note the distinction:

• ODI cricket is a cricket match designed to be a contest between bat and ball
• Fifty50 is a baseball slogathon exclusive to Indian wickets

One could argue that Sri Lanka had the same opportunity on the same pitch to make those kind of runs. But whose home turf is this? Who gets the maximum exposure to these grounds? IPL matches, the Champions League T20, the Ranji Trophy, Irani Cup, Duleep Trophy... this is India's back yard and they know how to use it.

Is Home Advantage Wrong?

Of course not, in fact I am all for home advantage *providing* it continues to be a fair cricketing contest.  There is nothing fair about it when the bowler is taken out of the equation, it becomes Shane Warne Cricket on Playstation.  Batting pitches this bad (or 'good' batting tracks) is equivalent to cheat codes.

I remember when Ganguly's tour party came down to New Zealand in 2002/03, and the reverse happened with wickets tumbling everywhere and Andre Adams was as lethal as Brett Lee. There was such a storm kicked up that the following tour was tailor made for batting again, and the batsman had a field day with India cleaning up the series.

How is a wicket taking paradise any less biased than 400+ conditions?

Some home advantage makes sense, lunacy does not.

The Stats Speak

There are now 4 double centuries in ODI cricket, all of them by Indians, all of them in India.

Rohit Sharma has an ODI batting average of 38.  Decent yes, but nowhere near deserving of the two biggest individual scores in the game.

The real telling numbers come in the home-away-neutral averages treble of 68-27-35, plus lots of games in Australia with an average of 26.

The latest India-Australia series smashed all sorts of batting records.  This included James Faulkner, hardly a batsman, taking away Australia's fastest century record from the incomparable Matthew Hayden.

Something is wrong with this picture.


What is the Damage?

The batting records will rumble, the top ODI innings list has become a bit farcical and so too will the top ODI batting totals as well.  Any bowling attack that concedes 400+ in 50 overs should be shot at dawn.

Don't get me wrong, stating that Rohit Sharma has Destroyed Cricket is *not* an attack on Rohit, he has been simply played with the cards dealt to him.  Who wouldn't love to score double hundreds?

The point is that he is currently a symbol of everything that is going wrong with the ODI game, no player should be getting doubles let alone him.  Glenn Maxwell another prime example, a slog merchant swinging as if blindfolded.

What Happens Now...

Hopefully the game will still live on in sanity with plenty of matches outside of India, and that includes the upcoming World Cup.

If Rohit Sharma hits anything close to a double century during that tournament, I will eat my cricket bat for breakfast.

When Kiwi's Soared Above India

My initial prediction of 4-1 to New Zealand was met mostly with polite ridicule. Against the world number one ranked team? The World Cup and Champions Trophy holders no less? Blasphemous.

Courtesy of Sir Jadeja I narrowly missed out, 4-0 however at least landed in the right ball park!

But why would anybody have backed New Zealand?

The Hesson-McCullum partnership is really onto something, despite it starting off with the Taylorgate scandal. Since then Taylor is back and poking his tongue out more than ever and that's not all, New Zealand have constructed a team based on consistent selections, depth in all positions, and a splash of genuine pace along with the usual outstanding fielding and sportsmanship.

© Getty

In the bad old days they only had fielding and sportsmanship, but now this team is a threat in all three formats. With the World Cup around the corner and that too at home, everybody should be on their guard against this dark horse of cricket that might just steal the show.

So what's wrong with the Indians?

India was not terrible unlike the 2002 tour. They were not terrible at all, rather they were the textbook definition of average.

Two guys showed up:

• Superstar Virat continuing his seemingly never-ending purple patch, arrogantly dismissing cricket balls from his presence while independent of his world GPS co-ordinates.
• Captain Cool ensured his average was as cool as ever despite required run rates blowing up faster than the population of Bangalore.

The rest mostly indulged in a performance of collective nothingness:

• Rohit Sharma! Fresh from an ODI double century! Dealing in binary scoring shots with the occasional slog for 6.  Average 29.00, strike rate 71.78
• Shikadhawan! Man of the Champions Trophy! Seems to have left his mojo somewhere in England. Average 20.25, strike rate 66.94
• Project Raina! Ready to cement the #4 position! Oh wait they gave up on that bright idea last tour... Average 28.00
• Ajinkya Rahane! .... who? Average 10.20, strike rate 58.62

Add to the recipe some expensive, listless bowling and you have one very bland cake topped with some amazing Kohli flavoured icing. It says a lot when one Kiwi on debut took more wickets in one match than every Indian bowler (bar one) in the entire series.

Where are Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan? India would not have won the World Cup without them. Dinesh Karthik? Cheteshwar Pujara? Superior players forced to make way for Delhi and Chennai Super Kings buddies.

This is not the best Indian team. This is a collection of flat deck supermen. They can hammer down 400 at will provided everything is tailor made for them, but can be pretty clueless otherwise.  

What Will Happen Now?

When the dust settles, this series will be talked about as little as possible in India and a nice friendly home series will be set up to make up for lost batting averages.

There are two test matches coming up, and New Zealand are proving they are no slouches there either in recent times. India are still stronger on paper.

Will India redeem themselves or go home without a single victory?

5 Reasons to Remember Tendulkar

And so it has finally happened, Sachin Tendulkar is actually going to retire.

It was nice of the BCCI to rig a nice friendly home series against the cuddly West Indies instead of having to enjoy his farewell cake against the demonic Dale Steyn, a series of ducks does not make an ideal farewell.

But in truth, this man does deserve to go out in any way he wishes.  In terms of the great things he has achieved you can number crunch all day and talk about the smashed batting records, but there is much more to Sachin Tendulkar and these are the things he should really be remembered for:

1. Surviving This Long
Maybe he should have retired already, but nonetheless to still be playing is truly something to behold. The man is 40 years old and debuted at 16, a 24 year old career which began in 1989 before most current players even worked out how to hold a bat.

Tendulkar 1994 © msn.com

Indian U-19 Team 1994

The young often promise a lot and fizzle out (Irfan Pathan) while others get fat and fizzle out (Sehwag), cricketing is a physically and mentally demanding sport. For Tendulkar to keep delivering for this long is a feat that only FedEx can match.

2. Being The One Man Team
Once upon a time India didn't have a team, they had a bunch of guys who turned up to play every now and then and casually fell apart any other day except when playing Pakistan. There was nobody around to help around and they were led by the corruption king Azharuddin. It was Sachin or nothing.

He soldiered on despite having no support from team mates and administration alike and having the weight of a billion fans expecting miracles every game. No cricketer in history has had that much weight on their shoulders, and he survived.

3. Being the First to 200
We live in a crazy world where 434 has been gunned down and Chris Gayle nearly hit a double century in a T20 slog.  But we mustn't forget that the first man to 200 in an ODI was in fact Sachin, yes I know I wouldn't talk about records but I think its significant that it was an old-school cricketer that broke the barrier before anyone else.

And this was despite Dhoni's best efforts to steal all the strike and leave him stranded! Yes that really happened, the Indian crowds booed while he kept rotating the strike back to himself.  Since then though Sehwag has also done it and many others will. Dhawan and Kohli are making 350 look easy and an average joe like Rohit Sharma is the latest to join the 200 club.  Even Dhoni is beginning to question all the extra help the modern day batsman gets, and by george he's got a point.

4. Winning the World Cup
Many will recall my good friend Dhoni being the 'star' of the 2011 World Cup victory, when in reality apart from that World Cup final knock (where he was outscored anyway) he did basically nothing but manage bowling changes and handle the press.

After a whopping six attempts at it, Tendulkar finally got there. In most World Cups he was immense (lets just forget about 2007) and in 2011 he made centuries against England and South Africa and crucial fifties in the quarter and semi finals. These two matches were much closer than many might care to remember, only he and Yuvraj had a clue against Australia and only him alone in that bizarre slop of a match against Pakistan.

5. Being A True Sportsman
The closest thing Tendulkar ever got to showing dissent was at the famous Bucknor flop in Brisbane 2003, and even then it was a brief look of astonishment before tucking his bat under the wing and walking off quietly.

That was him, no fuss, no back chat, the only thing that ever talked was that swishing blade of his. Its fair to say that he is the most respected opponent bowlers ever faced, even the potty mouthed Glenn McGrath generally had nothing to say to him directly.



Sachin Tendulkar is the last member of the class of the 2000s that rose India from shame to glory, they were the gentlemen Indian cricketers of the yesteryear and they will be missed. It is a shame that a group of talented but arrogant brats are replacing them.

Tendulkar the cricketer will always be remembered, but Tendulkar the sportsman should be remembered even more fondly.