Posts

Live Crictime Streaming

IPL saw a day which can aptly be termed as " Chokers Day ". First, Mumbai Indians collapsed from a winning position, thereby denting their semi-final chances to some extent, and in the second game, the Chennai Super Kings collapsed from a similar position chasing a modest total against a team that had lost 5 of its previous games. Mumbai Indians, on the other hand were equally big chokers. After the brilliance of Shaun Marsh and LA Pomersbach saw Punjab put a big total of 189 runs, Tendulkar and Jaysurya provided a perfect start to Mumbai Indians adding 36 runs in the first three overs. DR Smith later joined Tendulkar and continued from where Jaysurya had left and it looked as if the Mumbai were all set for their 7th record consecutive win in IPL. But a tight spell from Chawla changed the things as Mumbai indian's completely panicked and collapsed once Tendulkar was run out in the 17th over. As many as 6 run outs in the Mumbai Indian innings confirms the panic

Referal System for Players : A groundbreaking move

In a groundbreaking move, players will have the power to question an umpire’s decision — with official sanction — when India travel to Sri Lanka for their three-Test series in late July. Cricket boards of the two countries have agreed to try out the referral system, in which a batsman in the middle, or the fielding captain, has  the right to ask the standing umpires to confer with the television umpire if he feels a wrong decision has been made. 3 referals per innings would be allowed to start with. Upon referal, the third umpire and also the onfield umpire would be free to use all the available technology to asses the decision. In my opinion this is a very good move given the recent umpiring controversies. This will keep the umpires on their toes and would give a good and free environment for the players. If you think about some of the attrocious decisions handed out during the India's recent series to Australia and think about such a system in place, who knows wh

Stay Away Shahrukh, this is Cricket after all

IPL is not purely cricket in its traditional sense. Recent developments have proved it adequately. As we have masala movies in Bollywood, it seems to be masala cricket . IPL has business tycoons owning the teams, red skin cheerleaders, and Bollywood as its integral part. Every part has already injected some spice into IPL so far. For example: Cheerleaders are making news about racial allegations, Vijay Mallaya made headlines by revealing how he was not given importance during the selection of his own team and Shahrukh khan made headlines by declaring his team as the best one to be followed and worshipped by every cricket fan. He further did everything to remain in the news and before the camera. Of course he is the master of all this, after all he is a big Bollywood star. Camera by default follows him and he knows what it takes to grab the attention everywhere he goes.    IPL at its core is all about business and everyone involved is naturally concerned about money,

Will the IPL be able to generate regional loyalties?

The entire success of the IPL hinges on one mantra: generate regional loyalties for local teams. If the IPL is unable to do so, the interest in IPL will subsequently die down and it will go the ICL way. A cricket tournament that can be watched if there is nothing else to do. 1) Why do people in Europe go week in, week out to watch their football teams play. It is because they are strongly attached to their local clubs and identify themselves with their clubs identity. Historically, most of the european football clubs started out as a representatives of certain sections of the local society and hence the strong attchment to their ideals. The same cannot be said of IPL teams as they are just franchises owned by multi millionaires without any links to regional roots. 2) The players in IPL have been bidded for and play for different teams than their local ones. We can see Robin Uthappa playing for Mumbai, Ajit Agarkar for Kolkata and numerous other examples. Will such

Kumble the captain - From Bad to Worse!!

So, India managed to scrape a draw in the first test match against Australia. It was a very good result for India considering their past records and that fact that they lost 2 important wickets within first 9 overs. Tendulkar, Laxman and Ganguly played responsibly and ensured that India go into the next match with series level at 0-0. In the post match conference, Kumble clearly looked happy and pleased with his team's performance, especially on 4th and 5th days. However, some of his comments were worrisome and I wonder if that’s the right mindset to take on the Aussies. In my last column I commented about Kumble's bad performance on the field, but his comments yesterday were even worse. Kumble was asked if draw was an apt result and he replied that he was pretty satisfied with the way we played especially after loosing the toss. Does that mean that he is saying that just because he lost the toss, the possibility of victory was gone and the best result India could hop