Beauty of test cricket

Yesterday, I was watching the final test between England and Australia. The uncertainty - whether England will be able to bowl Australia out on day 4 or whether Australia will fight it out - was quite gripping. In the end, England did manage to win but Australia did fight it out, but it was quite gripping.

Hussey played really well, so did Katich & Haddin, but they made one mistake and that was the end of their innings. This is the beauty of test cricket - you make 1 mistake and you are out. As a bowler, you really have to bowl well (unless its your lucky day) otherwise you will get smacked all around the park.

I still remember in 2004, Rahul Dravid smashed a boundary of the bowling of Stuart McGill to win the Adelaide test match. How can we forget that? and India winning the Perth test after losing the Sydney test due to the most horrible umpiring in modern day cricket. How can we forget that? I belong to the school that believes in "test cricket is the real cricket"...

These days, T20 has resulted in an overdose of cricket, to the extent of causing indigestion. Test cricket has a soothing influence. 50-50 is the unfortunate victim of T20 overdose :-)

Finished reading "The Da Vinci Code"

For quite some time, I wanted to read this book. When I saw the movie, I could not understand one bit. I seemed more like a hollywood suspense thriller rather than anything else. Finally, I could lay my hands on it, and amidst a busy schedule, I managed to finish it over a period of 2 weeks. Quite interesting.

Next one will be "India After Gandhi - by Ramchandra Guha". The Jaswant Singh - Jinnah controversy has revived my dormant interest in history.

DDCA Vs Sehwag Saga

Last night, the news channels continued with their coverage of DDCA Vs Sehwag et all controversy. That is when I came across one of the DDCA selectors. The news channel was ranting about how the son of an influential office bearer of DDCA is being selected despite his poor performance and at the cost of other more talented players. Then they showed a piece of a TV interview with one of the selectors on why that particular player was being favored.

(A piece of unsolicited advise to news channels: This is not news, this is common knowledge.)

As far as I am concerned, this selector seemed very sensible. His argument was that the player in question is in the team of 15, but has never been given the opportunity to be in the playing 11. Since he has never played in the 11, how can we gauge his performance?

In pure hindi - "abhi tak to woh player paani pila raha tha. to jab woh bahar hi hai, to use aur bahar kaise kar sakte hain?".

Makes sense :-). Dude ! You have got to be a national selector. I am positive Salil Ankola (a competent bowler in my humble opinion, who very seldom got to play cricket) must be cursing his playing days when selectors did not have the common sense that you have shown.