Indian team's performance in SA is not surprising

Indian team's South African tour is almost half complete. I am not surprised by team's performance at all, I am not sure why whole of nation is surprised this time including our parliamentarians. If at all ever Indian team was real underdogs it was this time with the absence of Yuvaraj , Ganguly and Laxman (initially, well anyway it did not matter when he played) and rawness of our bowling attack. I am not sure how we expect this team to win against SA in their backyard with Dinesh Karthick coming in at number 5 considering the fact he was not even good enough to play for India some time back in the role of wicketkeeper batsman, Ravi Shashtri summed it up well when he said "India need to surprise me to beat SA".

Some people are of the opinion that the surprise and disappointment is due to the fact that team not competing well. I think it is does not matter the manner in which you lose unless you really get close and there are chances for both the teams to win. All these bad performances have definitely made Ganguly's bid for getting back really hard to ignore, if that happens our top order will read the same as it was couple of years back, this after all the talk of experimentations and blooding youngsters.

Among all the ruins there were some bright spots with the strong return of Zaheer with good bowing performances and some batting displays from Dhoni and Dravid.

Test matches will present even tougher challenge with more livelier pitches and no restriction on short stuff, I feel India are better test batting team on these kind of pitches because there will be not be any pressure to score runs at a faster rate, if we look at the dismissals of our batsmen in one day matches, most of the them were out edging the off stump line to either wicket keeper or slips and in test matches there is no need for it.

Test series prediction

There will as usual 2-0 loss with some bright batting performances from Tendulkar and Dravid at some stage with no bearing on results.

Hope there will be some fight in test matches at least for the sake of ESPN TV team, who have to consistently act sad in between all the good life there are having in South Africa…

Indian one day team for SA tour

These days team selections are mostly non events as most of the big names pick themselves and the only anxious people will be fringe players (anyway they carry drinks only;)) , with super fast access to information the anxiety to know the team is also lost. (We used to wait till 8.40 PM Hindi news in childhood days to know the team).

As for the selection, I cannot figure out how Dinesh Karthik is a better batsman than Laxman, the reason given for his exclusion is that he is not enough fit , on the same yardstick I am not sure how Kumble makes it to the team.

Wasim Jaffer should consider himself lucky to be picked ahead of Gambhir and Uthappa considering the fact that he was only picked for challenger series because Sachin was not expected to be fit for earlier matches.

Champions Trophy update

Champions trophy has come to an end, but the story remains same, every other team is fighting to reach the finals and then loose to Australia comprehensilevly;).

Somehow Aussies seem to play at one level higher when they are in finals, although their normal level of performances is enough to defeat most of the teams, they look even invincible after the recent successes of Shane Watson in allrounder capability.

My best performers

Batting
Chris Gayle and Fleming, Gayle's back foot straight drives were a treat to watch.

Bowlers
Jerome Taylor.

Emerging player
Shane Watson, he has been a great addition to Aussies and I am jealous they will be more stronger with his inclusion is Ashes.

Champions trophy

1. Champions trophy is happening in India, I absolutely don't see any buzz regarding this, is it mainly to do with over hype of every triangular series as a big event (they are conducted like weekly episodes in all sundry places), let me know what do you feel about this.

This year's Champions trophy format is very good and the format allows for more competitive matches. Dew and flat wickets will make bowlers' job even more less enjoyable than it is already, entitling I was expecting a 500 score in the tournament but with the lesser number of matches for Bangladesh and Zimbabwe the likelihood of this seems less.

Hope the better team wins.

Podcats I listen to reguraly.

1. http://leo.am/podcasts/sn - Regular security related podcast
2. http://leo.am/podcasts/twit - weekly technical discussion
3. http://www.hanselminutes.com/hanselminutes_MP3Direct.xml - Very good podcast on current Microsoft techinologies.
4. http://edcorner.stanford.edu/podcasting.shtml - Good podcast on thought leaders.

Hi All,
I am Krishna Kumar from Bangalore. I have varied interests in sports and Music and software engineering, may be in the same order;).....