26th July to 31st August, 2007 : Featuring some of the usual suspects

Written by holdingwilley

Thursday, 02 August 2007

Here's taking a look at a week that featured some of the regular newsmakers but more significantly, also saw some unusual developments.

41 years, 40,000 runs and counting

Graeme Hick is a presidential candidate in the club of batsmen who have been the scourge of bowlers across domestic leagues but haven't really shown their run-gluttonous instincts at the International level.

But in a move that seems to suggest that he has decided to make the most of what he is good at, Hick has signed a one-year contract extension and agreed to continue playing for his county Worcestershire, at the age of 41.

Well, if the man is hungry enough to go out there and bat some more even after scoring 40,000 first class runs, who can complain?

The ICL update

This has been a somewhat turbulent week for the Indian Cricket League, the proposed breakaway cricket tournament, and with the sort of widespread implications it promises to have, it certainly isn't going to be its last.

It started with Ricky Ponting joining the rapidly growing anti-ICL group, pointing out the talent drain this and the Stanford20-20 is likely to cause when young cricketers give up a chance to develop their International career in the face of the opportunity to earn big bucks.

Almost immediately after, Stephen Fleming, quite unwittingly, went on to pretty much provide a live demonstration of what Ponting was referring to with speculations being raised that he was planning to retire from Test Cricket in order to play in the ICL.

When last heard, the New Zealand Cricket Board had squashed any such ideas and announced that as long he is contracted with them, he cannot participate in outside tournaments without their permission – somewhat ironically, this reasonably authoritative statement could be just the instigation needed for Fleming to actually quit cricket for NZC and join the ICL.

Meanwhile, reports came in that Justin Langer and Damien Martyn turned down offers from the ICL to play, and that Inzamam is the league’s latest target.

Changes at the Top

John Bracewell has been reselected as the New Zealand coach, but without the veto power on team selection matters that he previously held. Meanwhile, John Wright has also been signed on as their 'High Performance Coach’, although his exact role remains undefined.

The new West Indies Cricket Board President Julian Hunte seems to be the first amongst the game's authorities around the world to have accepted the potential paradigm changes in cricket’s future, as he quoted in his inaugural speech that one of his major targets is to establish an acceptable relationship with Sir Allen Stanford's 20/20 organization. The Board has also decided to cast a serious look at the players' performances in the Stanford 20/20 tournament. Right noises have marked the beginning of what many believe is a new era in West Indies cricket.

A share of pie

Another interesting development in World Cricket is the decision of Cricket South Africa (CSA) to make its cricketers shareholders in the country's cricket.

The administrators signed a three-year deal wherein the players would earn 15% of surplus profits earned out of the board's economic performance apart from the contractual pay.

It is a system with the right intentions – to give the players a share out of the revenue they have helped generate, help direct them to work more towards the overall development of the game in the country by aligning their interests with the games, and helping the board and the players to be at one with each other by putting them on the same boat. Not surprisingly, Australia has already had such a system in place quite some time back – since 2000, to be precise.

The Shoaib Akhtar sitcom: all new Episode

While his last set controversies struck a somber and not-so-laughable/jokable note, Akhtar ensured he didn't leave the usual followers of his general amusement show disappointed for too long.

This week, he started off by turning up for a Twenty20 game in shorts, being tonked around the park for 44 off his 4 overs, going back to the dressing room and smashing a window pane in disgust. The authorities rubbed their hands in glee, pumped up their chests and duly gave the errant fast bowler a talking to.

The Scorecard

A great part of India's cricketing history was spent going abroad and losing everything, save sporadic series wins once every few years. Ganguly and co. then took it to the next level where they would consistently win a game, take a lead, and then duly lose the series. India's 7 wicket win at Trent Bridge has lived up to at least one half of the tradition.

After the typical session of questioning and doubting following a collective failure, the 25,000 run worth Indian middle order finally came good. Sachin and Saurav were deprived of deserving tons, scoring 91 and 79 respectively. But more significantly one half of the solution to India's perennial opening problems seems to be silently sliding into place. Almost unnoticed, Dinesh Karthik has now scored five fifties in six tests as opener, with a solid 77 helping India on to 481 after the bowlers had knocked the English batsmen out for 198.

Good aggressive seam bowling from Zaheer Khan (9 wickets in the game) with able support from Kumble (6 wickets in the game) outweighed Vaughan's 124 in the second innings, as India knocked off the required 73 runs in the fourth innings without major problems.

Ironically, if India's past patterns are anything to go by, after India have taken the lead, the advantage now lies with England

Meanwhile, down in Africa, things went as expected with the India A side beating the Zimbabwe Select side by 9 wickets. While Zimbabwe's lack of fight and continuing sequence of disappointing performances in the face of any opponent of note was the primary point of note in the game, Piyush Chawla's match haul of 8 wickets, Tatenda Taibu's comeback with a heartening 123 in the first innings served as subplots of note.

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