Sloth Sehwag and it is time to ban football in cricket

Sehwag today scored a hundred in 87 balls. For most others, that'd be a rate of scoring which would be hard to surpass. But the problem with Sehwag is that he already has a test hundred where he took only 78 balls - against West Indies in 2006. In fact, he has another 100 made in 87 balls - against Sri Lanka in 2008. So by all yardsticks, this is a crawl from Sehwag.

So far, he has 19 test hundreds. Of those, 5 were scored at a strike rate of 100 or more and 9 were at a strike rate of 80 or more. His "slowest" 100 came off 164 balls (against England in 2002).

For comparison, Adam Gilchrist had 17 test hundreds. Of those, 6 were at a strike rate of 100 or more and 11 were at a strike rate of 80 or more. His slowest 100 came off 160 balls, in the test that Australia nearly screwed up against Bangladesh in 2006.

That's the indication of how merciless Sehwag and Gilchrist have been (and in Sehwag's case, will continue to be) to bowlers.

Around 10 days ago, a few minutes before the start of the first test between South Africa and India at Nagpur, Rohit Sharma was the latest casualty of international cricket teams playing football as part of their warm-up routines.

Now, I don't lay any sort of claim to being a fitness drill expert, but it seems logical that a game like football which is 'physical' in nature is a wrong choice for a warm-up routine, especially just before start of play. You could argue that since the 'games' are played amongst team members, the likelihood of someone doing something stupid is too small. Yet, why take the chance?

In the last couple of years, there have been at least 4 other instances where a warm-up football game resulted in a player (potentially) being out of action.

• James Anderson in March 2008.
• Joe Denly in September 2009.
• Tillakaratne Dilshan in November 2009.
• Muttiah Muralitharan in December 2009.

Perhaps it's time to change the rules to allow the playing XI to be changed if a player suffers a serious injury after the team sheet has been submitted.

That's what happened when Brad Haddin was replaced by Graham Manou at Edgbaston last year. Who would determine if the injury is serious? Perhaps the decision needs to be jointly taken by the physio/doctor from the opposition and the ICC match referee.

One way to prevent abuse if the laws are changed is to give the match referee the power to prevent the replacement player from batting, bowling or fielding in case it is subsequently determined that the injury was not severe or was faked.

Why do we need this law change? Injuries are much more commonplace now and can happen at any time during a game. It makes no sense to penalize a team for an unfortunate accident, especially if they find themselves a bowler short.

There have been so many occasions when a bowler has broken down during a game, resulting in the fielding captain being forced to use part-timers or over-use his main bowlers. In Shane Bond's case, that approximately equals the number of innings he has bowled in.

Shane Watson could nick himself badly while shaving, trip over his shoelaces or collide with the pitch roller. Simon Jones twisted his knee at Brisbane in 2002.

It's not just about the bowlers. A batsman could injure himself and the batting captain then has to make do with one less batsman.

Substitutions are par for the course in a lot of other sports. So why shouldn't cricket follow suit? After all, the idea of using substitutes in ODIs has already been trialled and sadly filed for posterity.

Labels: football, icc, india, injury, laws, mcc, playing conditions, rules, sehwag, south africa, statistic

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:32 pm | Sledge/Read 3 sledge(s)
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IPL - Injury Prone League?

The news that Matthew Hayden will return home from Australia's on-going tour of the West Indies has Jon Pierik (Herald Sun) up in arms, since Hayden apparently aggravated his achilles tendon injury while playing in the Indian Premier League.

However, Hayden is not the only player to miss out on international assignments because of an injury sustained or aggravated while playing in the IPL.

Zaheer Khan's ankle injury, which ruled him out of the tour to Australia after just one test as well as the home series against South Africa, apparently resurfaced while playing in the IPL.

Sachin Tendulkar didn't heed the recommendation by John Gloster that he take rest. He played the first test against South Africa and ended up missing the rest of the series as well as nearly half of his side's games in the IPL. Perhaps he was still unfit when he returned, since he didn't exactly fare too well, as is fairly obvious from the numbers: 188 runs from 7 innings at a strike rate of 106.

Now, he will be missing two ODI series because of the injury.

All this makes me wonder if talk about international cricket being more important than the IPL is hogwash. If that indeed were the case, players wouldn't be risking aggravating injuries when they had international commitments immediately after the IPL ended.

Labels: australia, hayden, india, indian premier league, injury, ipl 2008, tendulkar, twenty20, zaheer khan

Thus spake Jagadish @ 5:08 pm | Sledge/Read 4 sledge(s)
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David Fulton retd hurt b Bowling Machine

I just came across this pretty scary video of David Fulton, who played for Kent, getting injured while facing a bowling machine in the nets.

Whoever was operating the machine didn't obviously wait for David to confirm that they could have the machine 'bowl'.

Watch the video at the PCA website. The BBC has some quotes from David.

Trivia: Viv Richards' final first-class innings ended when he was caught by David Fulton off Carl Hooper for 83.

Labels: england, fulton, injury, richards, video

Thus spake Jagadish @ 7:21 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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If it's a tour of Australia, there must be a selection controversy

Almost exactly four years ago, just before the Indian team left for a tour of Australia, Abhijit Kale was banned by the BCCI for attempting to bribe selectors for a place in the national team (or was it an India A side?).

This time around, with another tour of Australia coming up, another issue related to the selection committee has cropped up, this time it has to with the way Dilip Vengsarkar has been allegedly treated by BCCI administrators.

Vengsarkar has been in the news for the past month or so since quite a few BCCI officials have taken umbrage at him writing columns, and earning a living from them. This apparently violates the board's policy. The board then went one step further, putting out a list of do's and don't's, all of which were essentially to press home the fact that the BCCI executives and administrators were the bosses and not the selectors.

One of the directives, relating to being involved with player agents, is noteworthy, in that it seeks to eliminate any potential conflict of interest. Yet, it is also interesting to note that CricketNext reports that Niranjan Shah tried to get his son selected for an India A tour.

Jaydev Shah scored 255 runs from 11 first-class innings, 40 from 4 list-A innings and 86 from 4 domestic Twenty20 innings last season. The season before that was equally pathetic. He isn't a bowler either. So there's no evidence to suggest that he deserved an India A spot.

Clearly there's a conflict of interest here. The BCCI should ensure that none of its office bearers' sons/daughters/close relatives are playing for any of the first-class teams in India.

Getting back to Vengsarkar, he then promptly shot off an email to Sharad Pawar, which obviously got leaked again, just like emails tend to when it comes to BCCI matters.

The matter, at this point in time, seems to have been swept under the carpet. But I'm fairly sure Vengsarkar is just biding his time. BCCI officials have been very prompt in asking him to quit if he doesn't like the guidelines. It really is high time they got off the high horse and realized that they exist because of the game. The first thing that needs to change is the name of the board - just call it the Indian Cricket Board. Remove the Control!

But that's a bit too much to expect from a bunch of people who don't care if the Indian team plays Australia in a test match after one warm-up game. As if this wasn't shocking enough, there are indications that Cricket Australia agreed to a BCCI request to shorten a warm-up game to two days.

The game is against the Australian Capital Territory XI and there are two ways to look at it. There's not much cricketing benefit from playing an extra day against a side which plays various state 2nd XIs and so the team might as well proceed quickly to Perth, where they haven't played a test match for 15 years. The other way to look at it is that any sort of valuable match practice possible has been lost, and the packed itinerary is to blame. The series against Pakistan ends on December 12 and the first tour game in Australia is on December 20.

To make matters worse, at this point in time, it isn't even immediately apparent which quick bowlers will be touring Australia. If Zaheer, Munaf, RP Singh or Sreesanth aren't going to be fit, why bother turning up with Ishant, Irfan and Ranadeb Bose?!

Labels: australia, bcci, conflict of interest, ind v aus 2008, india, injury, scheduling, selection, selectors, sharad pawar, vengsarkar

Thus spake Jagadish @ 1:10 am | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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More joy expected today!

Mahesh wrote to us confirming that Ashley Giles will be announcing his retirement today. The Times had a one paragraph note on this.

The widely anticipated announcement of the enforced retirement of Ashley Giles, 34, the Warwickshire and England spin bowler, is expected to be made tomorrow. The 2005 Ashes hero, who has been plagued by a persistent hip injury, will admit defeat in his battle for fitness after surgery in Colorado failed to improve the problem.

Stop wondering if he's going to make it to the all-time book cricket XI. The answer is an emphatic NO!

Update: Here's the ECB Media Release.

Labels: book cricket, england, giles, injury, retire

Thus spake Jagadish @ 5:33 pm | Sledge/Read 1 sledge(s)
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Joy for cricket fans?

His last significant act in test cricket was dropping Ponting on 35 at Adelaide. Before that, he missed out on the tour of India due to a hip injury.

He's one of our all-time favourites here, along with Nehra, Langer, Hayden, etc. I most certainly won't post about him being 34 and retired.

But while I do feel sad that someone's career will be cut short because of injury, my joy knows no bounds when that 'someone' is Ashley Giles!

Labels: england, giles, injury, retire

Thus spake Jagadish @ 11:57 pm | Sledge/Read 0 sledge(s)
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