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Monday, June 14, 2010

Why football world cup more is more interesting and highly valued than ICC cricket world cup


  1. FIFA has not changed tournament format like ICC for a long time now. The traditional nature makes the tournament more respected.
  2. they don’t tinker the tournament to make sure that they have more matches between better teams (super 6 concept).
  3. They don’t change the match timings to suit certain audience segment (early day matches in recent T20 world cup for Indian audience)
  4. There are more competitive matches in group stage in football unlike in cricket.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

This Week In Cricket - 30/5 - 6/6


Zimbabwe Tri series

India's consecutive defeats against Zimbabwe clearly shows the lack of bench strength; compare this against Australian A team and we will know which team will be consistently successful in international cricket. Lack of options in pace bowling department is alarming and needs to be addressed immediately; whether BCCI has time and interest in this amidst IPL fiasco is another matter altogether. The way Zimbabweans chased in the second game shows that after a long interval their cricket is moving in the right direction. Srilanka seems to have found another good wicketkeeper batsmen in Chandimal.

SA-WI series

Like winning, loosing is also a habit (bad one) and WI seems to have the knack of loosing even the games when they were in decent positions. Hashim Amla has been a revelation in this series and definitely will be a great asset to SA in the upcoming world cup in sub continent. AB donning wicket keeping gloves seems to be a hasty move as he is equally valuable as fielder too; he is a case of 'really' being blessed with cricketing talent.

England - Bangladesh test series

England's warm up for the Ashes is going according to plan except for their bowling when the Sun is out; Finn has been a good addition to their lineup and has the potential to play Harmison's role. I have always been a big Andy Flower fan and so far he has displayed same calculated and practical approach he used to show in his batting. He has made some bold decisions in the last few months like getting Keiswetter and Lumb into T20 team and Morgan into test team; most of them have come off well. I have also noticed that England coaches seem to have far more power and say in selection matters compared to other countries and this allows them to plan and work towards according to a plan; can you imagine Gary Kirsten getting that kind of backing from BCCI.