Performance matters, not age: Sourav Ganguly

 Sourav Ganguly’s explosive batting style – which he rediscovered in the Nagpur ODI against Australia – would have made him a successful batsman in Twenty20 cricket, but the former Indian captain says he doesn’t miss the newest and fastest version of the game.”I don’t think I miss Twenty20 cricket. I don’t know what it would have been if this kind of cricket was introduced during my younger days. But now I don’t think I would have really missed it,” Ganguly told IANS in an interview.

Ganguly along with Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid – known as the ‘Big 3′ of Team India – made themselves unavailable for the Twenty20 World Cup. Their non-availability put wicketkeeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni on the hot seat of captaincy. Dhoni led a bunch of young players to victory at the inaugural world championship of the newest form of cricket in South Africa.

That win gave India some of its future stars, who rose to the occasion when it mattered the most. They beat Pakistan in a nerve biting finish at the final, and the squad is now tipped to be the future of Indian cricket.

“I think this team has all the ingredients to be the world champions. The new guys are really good and they all are talented and will do the country proud in the coming days,” said Ganguly, who won the best captain in 75 years of Indian Test cricket award.

Ganguly beat some of the biggest names of Indian cricket like Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, Sunil Gavsakar and the late C.K. Nayudu and late Vinoo Mankad for the prestigious award.

“It is a great honour to be adjudged as the best captain of 75 years of Indian Test cricket. My best success as a captain, I think, will always remain beating Pakistan in their home in 2004,” said Ganguly.

India defeated Pakistan for the first time on their soil to win a Test series in March 2004. The series was also memorable because Virender Sehwag became the first Indian to score a triple century with a solid knock of 309.  Ganguly had words of praise for Dhoni and said the 26-year-old should be given more time to click.

“I am sure he will take India to new cricketing heights. The only thing he lacks is experience and he should be given more time to gain it,” said Ganguly.  On his role in the Indian team as a senior player, Ganguly said: “The only thing I have to do is to keep on performing. I have to keep on scoring runs.

“Performance and not age should be the criteria for selection in the team,” he said.

‘I don’t need a ban’ – Sreesanth

Sreesanth will not reinvent himself to satisfy critics of his behaviour but has vowed to find the “exact limit between really bad and really good”. Ian Chappell suggested the Indian board should ban Sreesanth, who has had an eventful one-day series, and the Australians have also been upset by his actions, particularly in the fourth game at Chandigarh when he was 12th man.

“I feel I am OK,” Sreesanth said in the Advertiser. “I feel Ian should really look at the video of the last few games. I don’t need a ban. I can learn. I’m grown up enough to realise how to play cricket.

“It’s not a new Sreesanth. I am trying to find that exact limit between really bad and really good. See how far I can go.”

Sreesanth has been flicking through a book on temperament during the series and said the game was “almost 90% mind”. “How you manage yourself on the field is important and even if they are playing mind games on it or off it, cricket is very funny, it always wins,” he said in the Australian. “That’s what happened in the lead-up to the Twenty20, everybody was questioning our ability but we still won the World Cup.

“If we are looking now, obviously if we win the next game [in Mumbai on Wednesday] the series still belongs to Australia, so it’s a time they can say anything. It’s a time for us to keep quiet and hopefully, God willing, they defeated us at home and maybe we can defeat them at home.”

X-factor, yes! And A, B, C, D…

It is convenient to be a Monday morning quarterback, an American term for one who views things in hindsight. But in the business of chronicling events, it is also inevitable. 

Here’s an attempt, then, at identifying the reasons behind Australia’s thumping victory over India in the Future Cup, completed in the sixth match in Nagpur on Sunday. The purpose of the endeavour is to help India learn from their errors and return to winning ways.

So quick, get the nurse. Get the MRI machine. Let’s perform a scan on Indian cricket from the viewpoint of this series and see what it reveals.

1. Demented schedule

India beat Pakistan in the World T20 final on September 24. Five days later, they were playing Australia in the first match of the Future Cup. Weird or what! India had been on the road since the end of June and had also won the Test series against England. The players should have rested and rejoiced for a couple of weeks.

Yes, we know that the calendar is packed. This is how the cookie (and the cricketer) crumbles in the contemporary game. But it makes things too demanding for teams and indirectly breeds the malady of fan fickleness. It’s just about three weeks since the Twenty20 win, for example, and people have again started to ridicule the team. It is not a healthy way for things to be. The International Cricket Council (ICC) and the fixtures committees of boards need to be more considerate towards the players and the games.

2. The bowling of Zaheer & Sree

Australia’s lowest score in the tournament was 283 (except in Vadodara where they had to get only 149 to win). It proved that the Indian bowling attack was not doing its job. Zaheer Khan and Sreesanth, India’s opening bowlers in four of the six matches, gave away too many runs. Zaheer bowled only one sub-6 spell, a one for 55 in ten overs in Kochi. Sreesanth’s best effort was three for 55 in Bangalore. Even RP Singh, who bowled well in the UK and the World Twenty20, was ineffective in the three matches that he played against Australia.

On a happier note, Irfan Pathan, Murali Kartik, and to an extent Harbhajan Singh, did better.

3. Fielding

Chinnaswamy stadium, Bangalore. Zaheer Khan bowls the third over of the innings to Adam Gilchrist. Gilchrist slices hard. Yuvraj Singh, at point, leaps up like a giant sturgeon in Florida’s Suwannee River and takes an electrifying catch.

India’s fielding got off to a flying start in the series, but over time it flamed out. There were some alert throws, but otherwise it was not in the same league as Australia. Sunday’s dropped catches were the nadir. Improvement is critical here.

4. Missed opportunities

India had Australia sweating in the first two matches with early wickets. The world champions were 18/3 in Bangalore and 8/2 in Kochi. It is true that Australia are too strong a team to collapse with the loss of a few wickets. But even captain MS Dhoni admitted that India could have done a better job of pressing home the advantage.

5. Chase-o-phobia

India have not crossed a target successfully against Australia since they overtook 272 in the Coca-Cola Cup final in Sharjah on April 24, 1998. It was Sachin Tendulkar’s 25 th birthday. At the peak of his prowess, he came up with an out-of-this-world 134 to author an India win.

Since then, though, India have chased 18 times against Australia and failed to reach the target.

The old weakness was exposed in this series. In the five completed matches so far, India batted second thrice, losing on all occasions. There were performances of individual brilliance. Yuvraj Singh scored a gallant century in Hyderabad. Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, then Robin Uthappa, were spectacular in Nagpur. But the sustained team effort that is needed to chip down a big target was missing.

Ex-international players still at the top of their game

Mark Gillespie and Junior McBrine were the main award winners at the North West Cricket dinner.

The former Ireland internationals were named Radio Foyle Player of the Year and Club Player of the Year respectively after both enjoyed another marvellous season with bat and ball.

Gillespie scored 717 runs for Strabane at an average of over 47 and took 37 wickets at less than 16 while McBrine, who was top of the poll by his fellow players, was leading wicket taker in the North West, falling just one short of the half-century at an average of 14.2. The Donemana legend, now 44 years old, also scored 684 runs with five 50s.

At the other end of the age scale, Bready’s Chris Dougherty, who helped Ireland reach the Under 19 World Cup finals, received the Jack Semple Young Player of the Year award. He scored only 16 runs fewer than McBrine and also shared a record first wicket stand of 317 with David Rankin, also a nominee for the award, in the Senior Cup.

The Club Person of the Year went to Raymond Moan, the driving force behind the resurgence of Sion Mills who were on the verge of folding a few years ago. Not only has he kept the club alive with his off the field efforts but, after making one solitary international appearance for Ireland in 1970, he is still playing senior cricket.

Raymond is also the man behind Sperrin Springs, the sponsors of the Faughan Valley Twenty20 competitions in the North West.

The Fair Play Award went to Richard Dougherty, the Donemana wicket keeper and regular No 11 who scored his first century in senior cricket this season. It was in the top of the table clash with champions Brigade, however, that he proved sportsmanship was alive and well when he recalled a batsman, who was given run out, because Dougherty admitted he had broken the wicket without having control of the ball.

The other individual winners, who received their awards at the dinner were – Senior One batting: Mark Gillespie (Strabane), bowling: Bobby Rao (Eglinton); Senior Two batting (shared): Mark Roulston (Burndennett) and Alan McBeth (St Johnston); bowling: Stephen McCay (Burndennett); Intermediate One batting: Colin Spence (Bready II); bowling: Richard Devine (Fox Lodge II); Intermediate Two batting: Alex Steele (Crindle); bowling: David Hall (Bonds Glen II); Intermediate Three batting: Ryan O’Neill (Ballyspallen); bowling: Johnny Martin (Ballyspallen); Intermediate Four batting: Roy McBrine (Donemana IV); bowling: Adrian Heywood (Fox Lodge IV).

Dhoni’s innovative tactics lauded

MS Dhoni was first handed the reins for the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa and he came back holding the trophy.

Unfortunately for him, the Future Cup one-day series has brought dissimilar fortunes for Indian cricket captain.

His fearless approach had won him a lot of praise during the Twenty20 World Cup and during the current series, his innovative tactics and stomach for a fight are being similarly lauded.

“There is a fine line between being brave and stupid,” Dhoni had said when asked why India didn’t stay on to bat in the rained out Bangalore one-dayer. Unfortunately the Indian team didn’t play as smart as Dhoni spoke.

But the captaincy of the 23-year-old is still being rated quite highly whether it was for opening the bowling with Harbhajan when Australia had just 149 to chase in Baroda or for sticking his neck out and getting Rahul Dravid to bat at No 4 when India needed 318 to win in Nagpur.

Earlier in the series he had made it quite clear that he would not entertain any talk about the ‘big three’ not being the force that they once were.

“Frankly speaking you cannot replace the seniors. With the amount of talent they have, the way they have proved themselves, you don’t really have replacements for them,” he said.

In his first ODI series as a captain, Dhoni showed that he has the stomach for a fight with the Aussies when it comes to verbal sparring but he also knew when to step in and control his players. No wonder then that he earns the respect of his team.

“I really love the way Dhoni bhai talks. He is very simple. He says you give what you get. So if they give us respect we will give them respect. If they don’t give respect we don’t care a damn,” said Sreesanth.

Cricket: Glam hoping for Jones boost

Glamorgan cricket manager Matthew Maynard says he hopes Simon Jones will be around to represent the Welsh county in England colours when the Ashes come to Cardiff in 2009.

England are scheduled to play an Ashes Test at Sophia Gardens in just under two years time but Jones, who has been linked with Worcestershire and Hampshire, has yet to commit his future to the club.

Maynard, who played four Tests and 14 one-day internationals for England, admitted he hopes the 28-year-old seamer will still be in the Welsh capital for the visit of the Australians.

“We’d love to have a Glamorgan player involved in the Ashes in 2009,” Maynard told ecb.co.uk

“Most people would probably say our best chance of that is Simon Jones and that will only be if he signs his contract to stay. We very much hope that he will stay and we are doing everything in our powers to do that.

“At this stage it is entirely Simon’s decision and he has a big, big decision to make on his future.

“We expect to be able release something in the next 10 days to two weeks, something like that, and everything will be a bit clearer then.”

Jones’s pace and use of reverse-swing helped him capture 18 wickets in four Ashes Tests in 2005, before he was forced to sit out the final Test at the Brit Oval with an ankle problem.

A string of injuries have followed and he is yet to appear in Test or ODI cricket for England since the fourth match against Australia at Trent Bridge two years ago.

Jones has only featured in 14 games for Glamorgan since but Maynard, who was involved with England in a coaching capacity as England’s assistant coach from September 2004 until May 2007, thinks he can make a return to the international scene.

“He needs to get himself back to full fitness,” Maynard said.

“Everyone at Glamorgan can help him with this – we have (former England physio) Dean Conway with us now and he will help Simon get back to something like his best.

“I think the thing with Simon is that he has obviously had his injury problems and he is massively high profile.

“If he comes back to the regular player, like he was five years ago, who has never had any fitness issues then he can make it back and of course it would be blow for us to lose him.

“But in terms of getting a player involved in the Ashes unless it is Simon we shouldn’t look too far ahead – if someone comes up and performs well and gets an opportunity then that would be great.”