Chennai Super Kinks Vijay Gaan

Chennai Super Kinks ki Bara Bajau. 

Kya whistle podi hai

Sreekanth aaj khush hai

Srini aaj khush hai

Dhoni bahut udaas hai

Khush he zamana aaj

26 tareekh hai jee 

Chennai jiti he CLT20

Srikanth ka din he ji

Anni India ja raha hai

Dabri Chennai aa raha hai

Karthik Endhiran Endhiran gaa raha hai

Khush he zamana aaj Chennai diwas hai

Khush he zamana aaj Srini khush hai….

Chennai Super Kinks ki barah ka dher….

Champions League jeete hai aaj

Tamil Nadu league agla nishana hai

Endhiran Endhiran Endhiran!!!!!!

Curious case of Vijay, Dabri and Raina

Here are Raina speak:

I wanted to make sure we rotated the strike, and that we hit the loose ball for four,” said Raina, who scored a commanding 87. “When you bat at number three it gives you time to build an innings. When you bat at number seven for India, it’s very difficult to score a 50 or a century

Great he scored a match winning super stroked 87 for his home team. Great his one innings got Chennai a win good enough to go semis for now.

But he just spoke garbage. 

He bats at 7 for India ? Since when ? The no 7 spot belongs to great allrounder Ravinder Saheb JadduKha who has made the spot his own.  

At 7 its not necessary to score a 50 or 100 always. Quick cameos depending on situation (240 odd in 45 overs) or stabilising 50s or 100s are need (100 for 5 in 20 overs) are prescribed. 

I do not remember an occasion in last 3 years (since 2008 when he made a comeback post Chappell era) Raina Saheb has batted at 7 for India.  And except useless JadduKha many no 7 players have hit big runs for India — Dravid at times, Kaif, Uthappa and Pathan have been successful for India at that position. 

Coming in 43rd or 44th over many players have hit quick fire 50s to change the complexion of the game altogether while chasing or setting a target.

Raina is just giving an excuse to prove his failure with bat for India. Here is the reason:

Raina plays for CSK in IPL (and hence for CLT20) and gets money from India Cements owner Nambiarayan Srini. No wonder he is topmost Indian run getter in IPL 3 editions thus far. 

A look at his ODI stats in the 3 years say the picture : 

He has played 58 innings and made 1832 runs at 40 runs per game with 3 hundreds and 12 fiftees.  Great record. Last time he played at 7 for India was in 2008.  In 2009-2010 period he has mostly batted at 5 or 6 for India. Increase the spot by 1 in matches when Tendulkar does not play. 

Deflated figures without consistency.  Good in one tourney, average in other. 

And contrast those figures with the IPL. Awesome records in all 3 seasons.  600, 400 and 500 runs.  Amazing strike rates, innovations, big hits, short balls negotiated and what not. 

When playing for India constantly getting out to short balls, ugly hits over square leg leading to dismissals. Why ? 

Is he fixing the games or chosing the games to play well ? Play well in more money games like IPL or CLT20? Be an average batsman in games for India ? What if BCCI matches ODI match fee as money he gets for IPL game? Will then he play consistently ?

Ditto for Dabri and Vijay. ZVijay today made 68 at amazing strike rate of 130.  He had great IPL. But contrast that to India matches.  

ODIs : 4 games 71 runs and 17.75. Against Zimbabwe, the weakest of ODI playing teams (forget associate teams) he was scratchy and made 10 off 40 balls. 

Tests : 6 games for 259 runs. Highest of 87 vs SL last year.  Just 2 50s. Why ? Is he content with 30s and 40s for India? Does his talent go hiding when playing for India and it comes out in open for CSK and Tamil Nadu?

This guys have to sort out their priorities right, else they would / should be kicked out of the national team for there is no dearth of deserving batsmen. Why is it that all evils today emanate from Tamil Nadu in Indian cricket? Selection issues? Quota selections? Rigged auctions?  No state has had more fringe players than Tamil Nadu in last few years, yet none of those Tamil Nadu players have been able to fix their spots.  Is TNCA and CSK so insecure that it has to fire a coach for not playing a bowler in A tour ? 

filtered

2008-2010

67

58

12

1832

116*

39.82

1897

96.57

3

12

3

148

51

Champions League update thus far

CLT20 is on in full flow and thats the Cricket Ka Asli Muqabla.  There are lot of new faces in the commentary boxes and thats a welcome sign. Saurav Ganguly is in the box and so are Shastri, Gavaskar — India’s finest. Good respite from the likes of Arun Lal, Shiva and company. On the flip side we also have Pommie Bangwa and Russell Arnold. The results so far are as expected.

1. Out of the 10 playing teams 3 are from India and 2 of them have won the first games emphatically when they were supposed to struggle and flaunder in this conditions. The critics forget that it was in South Africa, that India has had their best run in the ICC editions of the World Cup and World T20. A world cup final in 2003 and World T20 win in 2007. So how the teams would struggle is beyond comprehension. This point of view has been pastered on us by Sanjay Manjrekars of the world who refuse to see anything silver lining in the dooms.  Sachin Tendulkar the batsman continued his good form and that pretty much almost covered his unusual errings in the field as captain. Kumble and MSD led their respective teams to victories with ease and they should be good for the semis if they continue to play the same way they did in their first games.
2. Wayamba is as useless as Mahelangakara’s character rants. They failed miserably against Warriors and a lot of  that blame has to go on Mahila who fell for a duck. I guess the major reason they failed to win was that the character juice supply was in short and a lot of that did not arrive from Lankan godowns.  Only positive point of their team was old Kulatunga and young Pareira (there are so many Pareiras playing for Lanka, its difficult to track them all) with their positive batting. The praise ends here.
3. Australian teams have had mixed bag so far. South Australia RedBacks beat Lions (SA) by 19 runs on day 2 of the tourney and Victoria, the Aussie version of Tamil Nadu lost their opening game to Warriors who look  good to go the semis route at least.
4. Windies and Kiwis teams had horrible outings in conditions that should have suited them ideally.

As of now given the form RCB, CSK, Warriors and one of RedBacks/Lions look good to go the distance to the semis.

Kumble had figures of 1/10 in 4 overs against Guyana. Harbhajan could not take a wicket in the game against Lions.  When Kumble played Harbhajan often got wickets owing to the pressure built by Kumble from the other end. Since Kumble retired, Harbhajan has struggled in Tests and that has impacted further his ODI and T20 bowling.

Kallis is continuing his good run this year in CL as well and he came good with bat and ball in the game vs Guyana. Dravid had a 33 which was solid and flair of typical Dravid in his peak in ODIs. Unfortunately he grassed a few dollies which prompted few to call for his axing and a well tracked farewell. Uncalled for.

Sachin had a good outing in first game as batsman and his other big names failed. Dumniny, Pollard, Rayudu, Sathish were miserable. Except Malinga none came good in bowling. Sachin is too good a player to repeat his captaincy mistakes in the second game tomorow.

Indian players have had a good outing so far. Unexpectedly Junior Cheeka had a 42 which should fast track his place into national colors. That there are other deserving players than him to get the India cap is another story, he has that advantage of having DAD at high position backed by Nambiarulu Srinivasan, the CSK owner and powerful BCCI sachiv.

So if he finds a place in the ODI team as a replacement for great Sobers in making RavinderSing Jaddukha, it sould not be a surprise as Cheeka would have ensured a good entry behind the door.

Dabri had a good outing again and like his Chennai friend DK he would now come into contention for every team India plays and once in he would be back to usual scoring pattern of 10s, 20s and 30s.  Its good. It keeps our community (bloggers and twitterers) busy guessing who # 6 in Tests and # 7 in ODIs would be. Not to forget that the jokes would continue too.

PS : Thanks SoulBerry for mentioning that this blog is one of the good ones for IPL and CLT20. It means a lot when this blog has more distractors than admirers. Appreciate a lot.

CSK fixing

There have been news reports on CNN-IBN that 2009 auctions for IPL were fixed. Now foes, then friends N Srinivasan and Lalit Modi fixed Flintoff for CSK. The news reports also suggest that Srini actually tried convincing MI this season not to go for Keiron Pollard but unfortunately Ambanis did not heed to him when the tiebreak was broken (MI tied with CSK for Pollard).

It seems that Srinivasan is a true manipulator besides the screen and no wonder this reports lend some credibility to the earlier report of sacking of Pravin Amre as coach of India A. Now this two things are unrelated to each other, but this for sure indicates how strong CSK owner is.

More dirt comes out of the IPL closet and this also indicates how the corporate relationships are fragile. There have been some email leaks from IBN which indicate Srini saying “you are sweet” to Modi. What does that indicate.

Lalit Modi is tweeting videos exposing Srinivasan in this scenario but is not saying a tweet on his role in fixing Freddie for CSK. He was all powerful man in 2009 edition of IPL and if this fixing happened, it sure had (must have) Modi’s blessings.

Jadeja stays on, Yuvraj left to dance with Hard Kaur

So the Asia cup squad is selected and as expected the 3 out of 4 culprits have been dropped. Vijay, Karthik and Pathan are axed from the disastrous Zim tour plus Yuvraj Singh is omitted. Sachin would spend time with his kids, perhaps go and watch Wimbeldon rather than playing for India. Why did not he opt for rest during IPL ? Did he seek rest from the final when he had injured hand?

Poor decision from Tendulkar. Setting a wrong precedent. He is picking up tournaments where he wants to play for India. Not acceptable.

Meanwhile the selection of this team is baffling too. 

Dinda and Jadeja, 2 IPL rockstars are persisted with. R Ashvin is persisted. Poor Naman Ojha is dropped on account of just one game where he made just one run. 

Narendra Hirwani was dozing when the team was being selected. Or may be he was answering call from cashier of his sports shop in Aru Plaza, MG Road, Indore.  Pity he could not make a strong case for Ojha to be retained in the team. R Ashvin got one game, he made 38 and took 2/50. Good enough, he stayed on in the team. Poor Ojha with no backing was axed. Lets not forget that R Ashvin plays for CSK captained by MSD himself and Srikanth is brand ambassador of the team. So someone from the Tamil Nadu had to be in the team. 

Naman Ojha plays for lowly MP and even poorer Rajasthan Royals. Shane Warne does not have a say in the selection of Indian team, so poor Ojha was axed. 

Wait. Ravinder Jadeja was in. Despite his selfish poor showing in the Zim series and World T20, the idiot from Saurashtra stays on.  He is useless guy who in all probability would play at # 7 and would bowl more overs than Pragyan Ojha (if selected) or 2nd / 3rd seamer. 

He made a slow 50 in the lost cause against Zimbabwe last week and got 2 wkts. That got him selected for the Asia Cup. What he did in the next game ? Just 18 runs and no wkts. Place achieved, so high performance gets to hell in the next game which was a do or die game. Jadeja opted to go easy. He knows Srikanth has fetish to make him next Indian Gary Sobers, so he can play the way he wants and get away with anything.

Ashok Dinda. He is persisted. Bengal quota. Why ? What he did in Zim series ? Was Srikanth appeasing Did i ? Lol.

Even if we have 3 spinners in Ojha P, Bhajan and R Ashvin, Jadeja would bowl full 10 overs and bat at 7 with strike rate of 60s and 70s ensuring India gets as low as possible runs in the final 5-6 overs in first innings. Now if there are needs for part time spinners we have :

• Sehwag
• Raina
• Sharma
• Tiwary

Sharmaji has an IPL hattrick. Tiwary is new addition in the team, so bada and chota Dhoni would play together in the team. 

So when we have 3 spinners and 4 part time spinners what is the need for Jadeja in the team? He would probably axe out Rohit Sharma from the team and would ensure India loses even to Bangladesh.

Have expectations from this team @ ur own peril. I dont have any. As long as Srikanth is around, i feel India has very little or no chances to win the World Cup 2011. By the time World Cup arrives Srikanth would flood the Indian team with so called youth and fringe players good for nothing. In Hindi its being called “gadhe ko ghoda banana”. So Srikanth would have 10 asses like Jadeja and beat them hard to make a horse like Gary Sobers, which is a wishful thinking. 

Indian Pakistani jokers

Who is a big joker ?

Krishnamachari Srikanth from India

Or

Ijaz Butt from Pakistan

One of them selects unfit, unqualified players to the Indian squad as if his anna owns the Indian team (as in Hindi its said kya team uske baap ki hai)

The other puts ban and revokes it. Dumps a player, then picks him up, cleans his shit and calls him patriot.

Due to KS of India, the team is in retro mode since Feb 2010 when he decided to rest seniors and draft in MV to join Dines as he complained that he needed somebody whom he could rant how good Simbu is. So Srikanth asked Dines to have MV and sing how good Sri anna is.

A CSK’er is India’s stand in captain just weeks after he led CSK in 3 games , 1 won amd 2 lost.  The CSK’er does not even captain UP. He could have actually made Dines captain of this team, but then that would have been two much. 

So Srikanth qualifies good enough to be best joker. As good as Ijaz Butt

CSK are IPL Kinks.

So in the end Mumbai Indians could not win the IPL and the inconsistent CSK won the tournament thus making MSD first Indian captain to win the IPL.   Mumbai lost it more than Chennai won it.  Robin Singh messed up Mumbai’s batting order for reasons unknown. How can you imagine Harbhajan Singh at 4 in a final chase.  Pollard being holded till 8.  15 overs gone and yet no signs of Pollard being on the crease.  What was MI management thinking?

CSK Perspective:

·         They rode on Raina’s batting to be able to post 169 as target for Tendulkar’s MI. Raina was dropped twice but he capitulated on both lives to rankle MI.

·         Hayden was patchy in the entire tournament and his struggle tonite ensured that the team got to the slowest 50 in a IPL final.

·         Dhoni came at 5 after Dabri. Why ?  Dhoni any day is a better batsman than the Dabri guy and he ought to have more time in the final given fact that it was his last chance to warm up before he took field on May 1, 2010 against Af in world T20. 

·         Bollinger was difference between the two teams and the balls he bowled in first 2 overs were awesome. Good enough to put the pressure on MI which never experienced pressure in league stages.

·         Dhoni was superb in his captaincy skills. He paced the innings well and has used R Ashvin effectively in tandem with Bollinger.  As a result the run rate was always going to increase for MI.

·         Raina was awesome in his batting and fielding. Only if he could now play such innings for his country, he would go further distance than just playing well in IPL games.

·         The team played better and won a tournament they did not deserve to win it if you consider their lop sided campaign in the league stages. But every time they found inspiration in MSD and he was a big influence on the team which was half dead at 7 games stage with a record 2-5.

MI perspective:

·         Batting order was mess. Abhishek Nayar at  3 ? Really? He had not played many games to be worthy to walk at 3. He scratched around thus putting pressure on Tendulkar to accelerate and subsequently fall.

·         Tendulkar being injured and thus preventing him to be in his typical own self. 

·         Pollard being sent at 8 ? Why ? Was he paid to be benched ? What was Robin Singh thinking ?

·         Poor fielding. 2 catches grossed.  13 and 28 for Raina.  Poor keeping in final over from Malinga which was turning out to be an excellent one. No run had been scored of first 4 balls and off next 2 11 runs were scored including a no.

·         The Mumbai Indians team reflected consistently of the Indian team of 90s when only Tendulkar played and the rest did not. The others including Rayadu, Tiwari, Pollard, Dhawan, Nayar did not own up and expectedly lost.  Given this huge dependency the team did not deserve to win. But then have a thought for Tendulkar. He did everything right. He trusted the so called youngsters giving them bigger roles than they actually deserved and scoring runs at will. Playing in despite an injury sets an example of his work ethic. Unfortunately his other team members could not get inspired.

·         Poor bowling from 14-20^th over when they allowed CSK to go to 5/168 from 3/96.  Even Zaheer could not stem the flow of runs and he dropped a hi-flier which should have been caught.

·         Inexplicable batting from the youngsters.  There was no other guy than Tendulkar whom they could have used to learn the pacing of innings, but instead they chose to play ugly hoists  thus leading to loss.

The focus now shifts on the WT20 which starts in 4 days time and India plays its league games over the weekend against Af and SA.   The batting order for that game looks more like settled :

Gambhir, Vijay, Raina, Yuvraj, Dhoni, Sharma / Jadeja, Pathan, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Nehra, Praveen Kumar

More on the WT20 later. For now lets congratulate MSD for yet another win as a captain and with a hope that this would inspire him to give even bester shot to the upcoming World T20 and wrest the trophy back. I just assume deep within the mind MS would have thought this final to be a warmup.  

Aniruddh Srikanth would be next replacement / reinforcement

Srikanth’s croon Vijay was dismissed for 15 and the bearded cheapo also ensured his son got a chance to play the game so that whenever any India bound player gets injured Ani Srikanth would then play for India. 

Very soon you’d find Tamil Nadu players being drafted in Indian team as first choice players and not as replacements for injuries as they are done right now.

Dinesh Karthik would be the captain and Aniruddha Srikanth would be the vice captain then.  

Not so long ago the cheapo had said IPL is not just the criteria for India selection so when it came to replace Sehwag his regional preferences got over his statement and he ignored strong claims of Kohli and Uthappa for the Sehwag slot. Kohli has been the best bat for India in ODIs this year.

But Srikanth has got a myopic vision which does not see beyond the boundary of Tamil Nadu.

IPL claims one more injury

With Robin Singh clearly defying not to rest any Indian player bound to World T20, the IPL has claimed one more injury to Zaheer Khan, one of the main reasons for super success of MI this season.

Today’s game is in Chennai where people are supposed to cheer for CSK, but its also Tendulkar who is playing. So he would be cheered and MSD would be an onlooker, so would be Vijay and Dabrinath.

Sachin renders club and city affiliations null and void.

Chennai lives upto its belter reputation

Chepauk was famous for run gluts all this years or for bad weather during the Test matches…Last time the city known for best knowledgeable crowd in the country witnessed a close finish or a result was in 2004 when the Test against Australia was drawn as the last day was washed out.

Since then some brain freezes from BCCI ensured that tests were held at a time when south west monsoon was at its peak.

That was all put to rest today.

The 2008 Test against SA saw an Indian scored 319 — highest on Indian soil. And since then CHennai became famous for flat tracks than spinning beauty it held in yester years.

467 runs were scored today in a IPL game b/w RR and CSK. A local Chennai boy scored a hundred and that was first notable performance from Srikanth’s croons. Vijay now poses a tough challenge to the quota system from TN….Karthik — the automatic selection for any injury in Tests / ODIs. / T20s now would really need to buckle up and perform.

Pathan was promoted to # 3 to propel the chase and he lasted 2 balls. A boundary off first and out next.  Such is the consistency of this lad and when he gotta take wkts he gotta utter “F” word time and again.  For Royals Naman Ojha played a super innings of 94*, the lad now has scored more runs in this IPL than any other wkt keeper. Yet the irony is he wont be counted on the fringes of the wicketkeeper reserve for India cos he does not play for CSK where he could be on radar of Srikanth, neither he is having a name ending in “am” or something that would resemble a Tamil name so that Srikanth would push him in the side….And he plays from MP which is a plate league team, though it has its best known Test player — Hiru bhai Chennai wale as selector, but god knows if his case would be pushed forward. Not to forget he hails from my own home town.

It was Douggie Bollinger who made the difference between a RR win and CSK win. 2 for 15 off 4 12 hrs after he landed from NZ series is commendable effort. And he got MoM for his effort……Srikanth would be fuming that his croon did not get a MoM awardam…..

By the way Vijay played a good innings despite the fact he was pushed hard by Srikanth…..

CSK are in the fray now and with Sachin gone in the Mumbai game Deccan would be now on 8 points too…Tomorrow KKR would win against Woodanga’s team and go on 10.  Bangalore would edge out  Delhi to go on 12….