Blog Posts by Skandan Sampath

It can be said that the team that enjoyed itself the most won the competition. But without taking much away from the West Indies, it can also be said that they won the 2012 World T20 final, not so much by annihilating Sri Lanka, but because of the mistakes made by Mahela Jayawardene and his boys. The bigger question is whether the West Indies will go back to being world beaters, memories of which have been beautifully brought back, thanks to the ‘Fire in Babylon’.  Or will the men-in-maroon maroon themselves on the island of this recent success?

Is it wrong to find fault with a team for winning a competition? Yes and No. Whether luck played a role in their victory is not exactly conjecture. The super over doesn’t help you choose the better team in a match, but since the T20 format is endorsed by Madame Lady Luck herself, it can be fair to say that the luck of the draw favoured the Windies. For the simple reason, that they earned it.  They lost to Australia and Sri Lanka in the group Read More »from Should the West Indies hold their horses?

Scorecard | Gallery | Results so far

The two Umars in the Pakistani side were at both ends, for the final six balls of the first 2012 World T20 semi-final. One of them removed their helmets to play Nuwan Kulasekara.  A move both brave and pointless, for he missed. When he put it back on, Umar Akmal needed to get 21 runs off the last two. He managed four, and there ended his tournament. But he wasn’t the only one to blame, for the Men-in-Green losing their third consecutive World Cup semi-final across two coloured formats.

When the chase began, Malinga and Kulasekara were bowling slower deliveries, and this managed to keep Mohammad Hafeez and Imran Nazir quiet for a while. It was clear that the demons inside the batsmen were bigger than the demons on the pitch, and when Imran Nazir played onto his stumps, his nerves were to blame, more than the bounce that Ajantha Mendis manage to extract from the track. Nasir Jamshed however was unlucky.

The left-handed Virat Kohli, if we are Read More »from Pakistan's batting helps Sri Lanka enter final

Scorecard | Gallery

Tillakaratne Dilshan plucked the ball from the air at the long off fence, as an island watched with its heart in its mouth. Martin Guptill could only close his eyes and walk, for Lasith Malinga had forced him to blink. One ball later, Sri Lanka had defeated New Zealand by 6 runs. But that isn’t the story of this match.

40 overs and 348 runs weren’t enough to decide a winner, for the the Super 8s started with a Super Over, with Sri Lanka winning the eliminator. But nobody knew that it would end this way, definitely not Jayawardene and Dilshan, who came out to chase the 175-run target that the Black Caps had given them. 

Time does freeze when Jayawardene steps out to drive, and it doesn’t stand still like his head, when he flicks it to midwicket.  Opening partner Dilshan played his heart out as well, pulling and driving like nobody was watching, as the Lankans brought up 62 runs with just five overs being bowled. The Black Caps were clearly finding it hard to put Read More »from Super Over Sri Lanka, Game Over New Zealand

Shane Watson took 3/26 and scored 51 for Australia Scorecard | Gallery | Full Coverage

So (9) Australia were ranked just a spot above (10) Ireland in the T20 rankings, and this had a lot of people talking, smirking at a superficial assessment, that didn’t recognise ability or class. When they came out to play their first match of the World T20 against Ireland, they probably knew that they would win by 7 wickets in the end. What were you saying about their ranking?

On the field, David Warner couldn’t ignore what Niall O’Brien was telling him, it certainly wasn’t banter, as umpires Dharmasena and Dar soon read out the code to the Irish skipper, in an effort to bring the mercury down. The two Ws-Warner and Watson, then decided to let the bat do the talking, raining blows on Boyd Rankin and Trent Johnston, with the bowling more pedestrian, than lethal.

Porterfield read the signs, and brought in his changes, first Alex Cusack and then George Dockrell, with no immediate result, as David Warner brought up his 1000^th run in T20

Read More »from Australia vent their ire on Ireland

It was a rare instance, to watch the Indian men’s and women’s cricket teams practice at the same time, at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore. The press would make it a point to monitor every single ball that the batsmen faced in the nets, jotting down the names of local practice bowlers who managed to beat an Indian jersey, watching and waiting for the big names to get up from the plastic chairs, so that pen could meet paper. Nobody would notice some ladies sporting the same official crest, as they slipped past the media onto the field for some fitness and fielding drills in their corner. There is really no need to investigate if their bytes were taken or even published.  Since we are discussing the leeward side of cricket, how many of us are aware that the Women’s T20 World Cup begins on the September 26th in Sri Lanka?

The issue here has more to do with public perception than anything else, with a common impression being that the cricket being played by the opposite

Read More »from Has the gentleman’s game forgotten the ladies?

Much like the arrow that lodged itself in Achilles’ heel, every Indian wants to know which Trojan has infected Sachin Tendulkar’s batting program. So much so, that if cricket fans had the choice, they would love to file an RTI application to find out why the 39-year old is getting bowled so often. But the question is why? Didn’t the team just win a series 2-0? Why are we fretting over a batsman’s dismissal, than celebrating the team’s success?

The ‘three jeers’ question is prompted by Tendulkar’s inability in the last fortnight to protect the three stumps that he is known to guard fiercely.  For a batsman, watching his bails fly is worse than getting hit on the box. It is possibly the worst way to get out to a bowler, for it inflicts a loss of pride that can take even the best some time to recover.  Ask a goalkeeper how it feels to watch the ball go past him into the net, but he at least gets the luxury of staying on, on the field.

Trent  Boult, Doug Bracewell and Tim Southee are the Read More »from This god is human

Even if India’s opponents handcuffed Vangipurappu Venkata Sai Laxman, the man would still come out, tap the bat on the pitch, and take his stance. The bowler would soon complete his delivery stride, as the Hyderabadi would have moved on to hammering the crease, bat flapping between the knees, elbow jutting out, before the minimal back lift, synchronized with footwork belonging to a stiff danseur… Pause. Imagine this silhouette for a second, for when the ball lands on the pitch, VVS would have used his carpals, to drive the ball for four, before shaking hands with the fielding captain, garlanding him with the broken handcuffs, as a token of his appreciation for the clumsy experiment.

Too much?

If one has to measure VVS Laxman’s greatness, it would be prudent not too compare him with anybody. Difficult, given that most of his success has come with a partner too playing an equal part, like two comets coming together to light up the sky. Let’s try to make him the chief guest. We want to

Read More »from VVS Laxman: The wrist in the tale