Cricket Musings

I haven’t followed cricket properly for the last 6 odd months. So this blog post has the danger of sounding naïve and uneducated. Last 2 years have seen a huge number of high profile retirements in the international arena. My heart just broke with the retirements of Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis. Somehow I really can’t help feeling that the exit of these 2 and all the others who I have grown up watching has firmly placed an expiry date to my cricket watching days (unless I get to work in the ICC or ESPN Cricinfo. How kickass would that be??? :D). I guess this gloomy prediction is also due to my complete aversion to IPL which just seems to be getting bigger every year despite all the murky and sleazy shit that take place in this tournament. Even the T-20 world cup or any T-20 match for that matter seems so shallow. Wow, think I have really become a boring dingbat of a grandmother at the age of 24!

I am going to pen down my thoughts on a couple of cricketers for the time being.

Graeme Smith -  I never really liked the guy I admit. It mostly had to do with the fact that he replaced, as captain of South Africa, my favourite cricketer Shaun Pollock who had been sacked in an awful manner after South Africa crashed out of the 2003 World Cup in a tragic and really bizarre manner. He was just 22 when he took over as captain and I found him a big loud mouth, really brash and arrogant which was in complete contrast to the gentleman that Polly was. Fast forward 11 years later….Graeme Smith retired from international cricket last month…..still as the captain of South Africa. And to be honest, I find this in itself a remarkable achievement. Any bloke who survives as the captain for 11 years in a cut throat international sport environment, taking his team to great heights (despite not winning any world cup as usual) without being an extraordinary player himself – is truly worthy of praise. He was a natural leader. He had this fire in his belly, was supremely confident, had this real urge to outwit his competitors, wouldn’t take bull shit from anyone, was pretty ruthless, infused a lot of passion and a never give up attitude in his team and fiercely protective of his team members and his country. Under him there was definitely a spark in the SA team for sure. That incredible 438 match versus Australia where SA beat all odds to win the greatest match in ODI history for me for truly representative of what the SA cricket team became under his leadership. (He himself scored a quick fire 90 in that match). I read an article in cricinfo which said it South Africa would find it more difficult to replace Graeme Smith than Jacques Kallis as it is way more difficult to replace a fantastic leader than a fantastic cricketer. Keeping my personal liking aside, I agree with the statement 100%

Farewell Biff! You truly were extraordinary and you will be missed.

An observation that struck me after writing this: In the gentleman’s game, it is ironic that the ‘gentlemen’ don’t seem to make good captains. Think Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Shaun Pollock (who were all sacked) as opposed to Nasser Hussain, Sourav Ganguly, Michael Clarke, Graeme Smith etc.

Alastair Cook – Oh boy! This might take a while. So my only blog post last year was ridiculing what a flimsy team Australia had become. I had even posted it as a comment on Cricinfo which got published as a “Featured comment” much to my pleasure. When my dad read it, he warned me that if I looked at the past, Australia is a team that has a legacy of never remaining rubbish for too long and I would really feel foolish in the near future for having posted that comment. Turns out the man was right……as usual L.

The 2013 Ashes drubbing in Australia was a nightmarish disaster to put it in the mildest sense for a person who was supporting England and considers Alastair Cook as one’s favourite current cricketer. From Cook’s point of view as captain, Murphy’s law played out in the most perfect manner possible. There wasn’t even one English player (including the captain himself) – bowler, batsman, allrounder who was in some semblance of form. Trott went home suffering from depression. Graeme Swann announced a shock retirement bang in the middle of the series. Thankfully I didn’t get to watch any of this on TV but from what I read and heard, English players had never looked so clueless, unprepared and hopeless.

I gotta say I feel desperately bad for Cooky. I do get what it is like to hit such an alarming professional low. I guess that in his case, the stakes are so much higher. Now he faces biting criticism about his style of captaincy (all past achievements of winning 3-0 in England Ashes, winning a test series in India and leading his team to Champions Trophy finals almost winning it don’t count for squat apparently) and about the way he handled the Pietersen issue. To be brutally honest, I was quite shocked maybe more disappointed about the way he seems to have handled Pietersen or at least the way it has been reported. After all it does seem abysmally foolish to let go of your by far best player who is clearly a world class genius in terms of talent. I have always thought of Alastair Cook as a man of integrity and don’t even now think that he’s the kind of person who would not own up to responsibility and escape punishment by putting the blame squarely on someone else. KP’s really one maverick. Even his most ardent fans would agree that other than his match winning knocks, one thing that he’s really been consistent in is creating quite a nuisance in the England set up. Independent of my personal liking towards AC, I personally felt that KP’s messaging of derogatory texts about his then England captain, Andrew Strauss to the opposition should have spelt the end of his career. But they stuck with him and it’s really unfair to say that England hasn’t given him a chance. The fact that he has played 100+ tests is a testimony to this fact. You know from personal experience, I think there reaches this unbearable breaking point where it is not possible to take any more bullshit from a person and you lash back in the most vicious manner which might actually be quite harsh. Probably that is what happened in this entire saga. Who really is to know?

Coming back to Ali Cook, the most important reason why I really like back is his ability to bounce back from horrid failures. I remember in June 2010 series in England versus Pakistan, he was in such bad form that he was in the verge of getting sacked. By his admission that series was the closest he had ever got to crying. Then came the December 2010 Ashes in Australia where he scored an extraordinary 766 runs in 5 matches. After not even being considered in the England ODI side for the World Cup in India 2011, he was appointed as ODI captain amidst severe criticism of being “a plodder with the bat and a donkey in the field” by former English captain, Mike Atherton. As a result of tremendous hard work (by training with his county Essex during off season) and determination, his average and strike rate shot up dramatically. The dude is really a fighter. The blunt fact is that is skills are not are expansive and incredible as some of his contemporaries, but the point that his stats is comparable with theirs if not better despite his limits and hitting all these lows that he has. This speaks volumes of his mental strength and the toughness of character (qualities which are unfortunately very very underrated) and the fact that he is one person who has really earned his success. So will he bounce back from the catastrophe which happened in Australia? It was obvious he was shaken out of his wits. He was actually contemplating resigning from ODI captaincy (England got mauled even there 4-1) which is something that I would never ever expect him to do. It seemed that he had enough. I really hope that a rejuvenating break and his yet to be born first kid infuses his life with positivity again.  Somehow I know he will get out of this rut. He always has bounced back……and the day he does, I won’t hesitate to write a blog post which says “Man, I told you so!!”