FCKING BLOG

Paul is quiet, on New Year’s Day.

Collingwood may sit out of the Newlands Test and Michael Carberry, a left handed batsman from Hampshire is being talked up as his replacement. Why not simply give Luke Wright a look in when he’s available and served time playing ODI’s?

Graeme Smith has said that “the right selections need to be made” for the third test and one can only assume that this means Ntini will be dropped and Friedel de Wet brought in for the third test against England to be played at Cape Town although the spinners are expected to be the main men here.

Paul Harris and Graeme Swann have both been crucial in the campaigns of their respective sides; Swann played a crucial role even with the bat in the first test and rightfully deserved the two ‘Man of the Match’ awards he won. Stuart Broad bowled brilliantly alongside as England ambushed South Africa in the second innings.

Strauss will be relieved that his two biggest worries in the batting department, Cook and Bell came good and scored centuries. Smith will find a hard time deciding the fate of Ashwell Prince who has been terribly out of sorts in the opening slot and bringing Herschelle Gibbs back into the squad would be a huge risk. Morne Morkel has bowled well alongside Dale Steyn while Ntini has been ineffective and needs to be dropped if Smith wishes to remain in contention for this series.

In the other new year’s test, Pakistan’s batting is as precarious as it can be and yet the selectors have not taken a call on whether Younis Khan should be flown in to join the squad. Mohammed Yousuf, Umar Akmal, Salman Butt and Misbah got runs but failed to build on their starts as Australia cruised to a 170 run win. Their inconsistency made Ponting’s declarations look good. Mohammed Aamer and Asif worked hard but were let down by their batsmen and were left playing catch up. Farhat is expected to retain his place for the second test while Gul and Kaneria will replace Rauf and Ajmal respectively if they are fit in time. Sami will get a game thanks to the injury to Aamer.

Shane Watson had a brilliant test overall with scores of 93, 120*, two catches and a wicket as he took home the man of the match award. Watson improves as a series goes on so this could be a blockbuster series for him. Nathan Hauritz and Mitchell Johnson bowled brilliantly and they were well aided by Doug Bollinger. Peter Siddle returning to form can only be better news for them. The only batsman Ponting will be worried about is Marcus North who has generally struggled since his match winning century in the fourth Ashes Test at Headingley, Leeds.

Graeme Smith’s saved himself some worrying by deciding that it would be a straight between Steyn and Friedel de Wet if the former recovers in time for the second test against England.

Ntini didn’t have a very memorable 100th test in contrast to the debutant Friedel de Wet who was impressive, triggering an English collapse late on the last day. England’s lower order men batted out for a draw under the supervision of Paul Collingwood evoking memories of the Cardiff Test and the Ashes that followed.

England have their worries in the forms of Alastair Cook and Ian Bell, the two couldn’t even get going in the first test. For all the romantic pull of an exciting draw I’m sure they want victories too and these two need to chip in for that to happen. I think their bowling is alright at the moment.

The problem the 100% South Africans face in their batting: Captain and Vice Captain. Graeme was grim and Ash wasn’t well at the Centurion, everyone else chipped in. These two guys need to get their game on, they were the ones along with McKenzie who built SA’s win in England, SA needs them.

The bigger, the badder, the more entertaining Boxing Day Test will be between Australia and Pakistan at the MCG. Pakistan stand a chance of winning this series, it’s not a big chance but it’s there and theirs if the batsmen come good.

The Pakistan middle order is still undecided with the competition being between Faisal Iqbal, Fawad Alam, Khurram Manzoor and Misbah Ul Haq for three or even two spots.

Salman Butt did himself a big favour by slamming a century in the practice match against Tasmania. Akmal with a J Ajmal picked up four wickets to remind Mo Yo that he’s a part of the squad and yes he does go beyond taking three wickets at a time.

The two Akmals, Butt, Farhat, Mo Yo, Gul and Asif are the certainties in the Pakistan squad for now. I don’t why the f*$% they brought in Sami, it could be a decision between him and Aamer I favor Aamer to make it ahead of Sami here. The spinners spot is still a toss between Kaneria and Ajmal. Ajmal is hot right now but it was Dan from Pakistan that outperformed Dan from New Zealand in New Zealand with the ball.

Australia is battling injuries. That’s stale news. Siddle and Hilfenhaus have been included in the squads but I’d prefer they rehabilitate a bit longer. Bollinger and McKay deserve a another chance as does Hauritz. Johnson was effective against WI even if he didn’t look anything like it and he was able to lead the younger inexperienced guys well.

Their batsmen were so-so against the West Indies and really need to step up against the Pakistan bowling attack. Ponting, if he is fit by then, along with Katich will be Australia’s hope in this series. Hussey, Haddin, Clarke, North and Phil Hughes, if he gets a game will face a quite lethal attack better get their batting sorted to avoid embarrassment going into 2010.

It’s a pity Shahid Afridi doesn’t play tests anymore, I would have loved to see his reaction to Watson’s celebrations.

3 tests and a ODI series can seriously drain a man.  But they’ve been scheduled such that everyone takes a break at the same time and thank god for that. While I have my chance, here’s a review/preview/now view?.

India vs Sri Lanka

Well well well, we had Sreesanth returning in style with a brilliant job at Kanpur. All the bowlers have been majorly violated by the batsmen thanks to the pitches but Sree and Herath managed to raise the hopes of their kind with their display.

This series took a big list of dependable, bankable, marquee names and put in tracks that guaranteed that the batting half of these names certainly don’t fail. Pitch = road jokes were cracked. The Kanpur pitch woke up on the second day, showed everyone the finger and brought back life into the series. Most batsmen on both sides are safe as of now, Sangakkara would be disappointed with himself though.

The teams were evenly matched in most departments and it was expected to be a contest between the pace attack of both the teams and with the Brabourne pitch is being talked up as a gift for the pacers, let’s just see how it’s gonna be.

England vs South Africa

SA’s ODI form over the past two years has been exceptional with the only blemish being the NatWest series loss in England. Right now England lead the series 2-1 with one match to go in wet Durban. Graeme Smith’s himself has been frustratingly inconsistent and the collective batting slump between him, de Villiers and Duminy has become even more problematic thanks to the absence of Kallis.

Their team selections have become erratic with no one, not even vice captain Johann Botha being spared from a drop while England made all the sensible selections even as their main players were injured.

New Zealand vs Pakistan

Pakistan’s home series away from home began with a hard fought test which the Kiwis won in the last session. The Akmal brothers carried the team in the first innings after the top order  misfired and were supported only briefly by the seniors in the second innings. Shane Bond’s injury and the doubt over Iain O’Brien’s recovery however tilt the scales heavily in favor of Pakistan. Darryl Tuffey has a good record against Pakistan but being forced to play Jeetan Patel or call up Ian Butler/Tim Southee is not a position they would want to be in.

Add to that the inconsistency in the top order and yet another rescue act by Vettori in the first innings, NZ have to play out of their skins to win the second test.

Pakistan’s pace attack was simply brilliant, Asif returned to test cricket with his skills intact while Aamer and Gul backed him up clinically. Kaneria being a wicket taking prospect might get a go ahead of Ajmal but that is not something Pakistan would worry about. For all the fragile batting, where to fit in Misbah is still a big question. Alam, Farhat, Manzoor were all equally average at Dunedin while Yousuf and Malik only chipped in in the second innings. S o do they get another chance or are does the conveyor belt move on?

Update: Tim Southee has been called up to replace Shane Bond. But Tuffey has a better chance of playing.  It will be O’Brien whom Southee will replace if he plays.

Australia vs West Indies

The return of the not so spectacular first line up of the West Indies has been memorable for the grit of their bowlers and of the young Adrian Barath and Travis Dowlin.  The injuries to Ramnaresh Sarwan and Jerome Taylor has affected them badly but Roach, Bravo, Rampaul and Benn kept running in. Gavin Tonge and  Darren Sammy are the options Gayle has to fill in for the injured Taylor. Now if only the seniors like Chanderpaul and Gayle put in as much of an effort.

Australia face a problem with Hilfenhaus being injured. McKay has been named as a replacement but Bollinger will probably get a chance ahead of him. The rest of the line up is settled, even Michael Hussey got a half century and Australia will try their best for another three day victory.

While India and Australia make a lot of noise about each other, while England & South Africa do the same albeit with more clichés thrown, Pakistan and New Zealand are playing a short, 3 ODI, 2 T20 series in the UAE.

Although seemingly these are two low profile teams, they are make an exciting combination when it comes to watching live cricket matches. The spectacular collapses New Zealand have conjured when playing Pakistan have  mostly come in tests but who can forget Mohammed Sami’s blitz in Lahore in December 2003. From 155/4 to 157 all out! Who fcking collapses like that?

Players you’ve gotta have in your fantasy cricket team for this series:

Batsmen: Umar Akmal, Mohammed Yousuf, Martin Guptill & Ross Taylor have all been consistent this year. Aaron Redmond & Khalid Latif are the two makeshift openers from both sides who round up this list as  economical buys. Both have already hit crucial fifties at the top to claim their place in their respective line ups.

All Rounders: Shahid Afridi & Daniel Vettori (technically a bowler) are among the best in the world and are also the best players in their team. Trump players. The third all rounder could be between Abdul Razzaq and Jacob Oram. There’s not much consistency from either but I’d edge in favour of Razzaq. James Franklin is an outside bet if he is fit and available.

Wicket-keeper: Kamran Akmal. Brendon McCullum has had a horrid 2009 and still seems on a low while the understated Kamran has plundered whatever attack he has faced since his comeback into the team.

Bowlers: Saeed Ajmal is the only spinner of note left among the two teams to pick and he is a good buy. Mohammed Aamer and Shane Bond have been the best on display in the pace department and there is always Umar Gul to depend on to clean up the tail. Kyle Mills could have a good day if the conditions support him.

There are dudes I haven’t mentioned who could turn up the heat in the desert. Pick them up in your team and sit back to see who’ll trigger a collapse this time .

Three of the four favorites for the Champions Trophy are out in the first round itself. South Africa found themselves clinically outplayed, Sri Lanka’s lack of experience outside of home showed while India, already limping with injuries, stumbled in a crucial match and ultimately crashed out of the tournament.

New Zealand kept going despite injuries to key players and England surprised the opposition by actually competing. Pakistan played a calculated game and seized their opportunities while Australia played like the last 8 months never happened.

We will let sleeping dogs lie and have their effigies burnt (in India)/ performances reviewed (in saner parts of the world) and concentrate on your team for the semis.

Australia: Ponting has played with venom and vengeance. Hussey has supported him well and while Watson hasn’t scored any runs at the top, he has chipped in with wickets. Mitchell Johnson bailed them out against West Indies.

England: Andrew Strauss has been spot on with the captaincy and Collingwood has finally put in some effort. Owais Shah & Eoin Morgan have contributed in bursts while the bowlers Onions, Anderson & Broad have been a revelation in discipline.

New Zealand: Guptill & McCullum have taken up responsibility at the top of the batting order and that has seen New Zealand get those good starts. Vettori  & Franklin have been vital with their all round contributions while Bond has reveled as opening bowler. Aaron Redmond’s inclusion in place of Jesse Ryder ought to strengthen their batting.

Pakistan: Mohammad Yousuf & Shoaib Malik have been solid in the middle while Umar Akmal & Misbah have been finishing the innings. The bowling is strong with the return of Asif to the existing line up  of Aamer, Naved & Gul. Afridi & Ajmal have been economical & dangerous.

Considering that Australia recently thrashed England 6-1 and that Pakistan take on their favorite bunny side NZ in the semis, it looks like it’s gonna be an Australia vs Pakistan final. If they learnt anything from their last match, the Australians will not let down even when on top because it doesn’t take too much for the Pakistanis to go on a roll.

The mother of all matches.

A match so tough that the man with balls of steel Yuvraj Singh put his hand under the heavy pitch roller so that his pinkie would be fractured & he could get out of playing the match because he couldn’t take the tension.

A match so intense that Sachin Tendulkar hasn’t slept for the past 2 months because he is busy visualizing his shots.

A match so important that Shahid Afridi lovingly nursed Younis Khan to recovery so that he could lead again lest Afridi lose all the recently earned love because of any potential screw ups.

A match so vital that the even the Delhi Daredevil Wildboyz weren’t up for the challenge. Sehwag dropped out months ago while Gambhir’s late & poorly thought out ‘injury’ might yet get him out of it.

A match which will change the face of the earth so drastically that a robot was sent from the future to give the message to the Indian selectors to select Rahul Dravid in the squad because he is the one who can handle the short ball.

A match so eagerly awaited that Shoaib Akhtar got himself genital viral warts & enemies in the PCB so that he could watch it in HD in the comforts of his house rather than from the unbelievably uncomfortable third man boundary.

A match so crucial that the whole Indian team and all their supporters will be hitting every bar in town, outside town and within a 100 mile radius of town to pick up girls and sleep with them to make sure that they perform at their best on the field.

It’s the match aliens have landed on earth for, chickens have crossed the road for, Bruce Willis has died hard for & Arnie has come back for .

It’s a match I’ve made my fantasy team for. What are you waiting for?

Group A of the Champions Trophy went from being the Group of Death to being the Group of Bullies Against a Hapless Kid in the time it takes the WICB to mess up talks with a players organization.

No, seriously.

Here’s a preview for the Champions Trophy.

In the canary yellow corner, Australia!!!:
Defending champions Australia look like they have had a good year but they’ve not. They have wins against NZ, WI, Pakistan & Bangladesh but the one good team they faced (South Africa) beat them both home and away.

Thankfully, in the lead up to this tournament they’ve put all that behind them and are on the verge of handing England a 7-0 drubbing in England. Which makes this tournament more open. Which is what it friggin needs to be.
TNT (well, hopefully) : Brett Lee, Cameron White, Mitchell Johnson.

In the cornered tigers corner, Pakistan!!!!!!!!
Very short on match practice but that didn’t stop from winning a World Cup a few months ago. The ODI series against Australia in Dubai & the one in Sri Lanka saw them go downby the same margin 3-2.

The bowling has been pretty good but it’s the batting collapses that have hurt them a lot. Afridi 2.0 might explode again so that’s something you can look forward to.
TNT: The Akmals Umar & Kamran, Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi & Mohammed Aamer.

Mentally and to a large part physically at home because they couldn’t agree upon a corner, West Indies (Board Presidents XI) !!!!
These guys are a second string side. No amount of ‘Official Team: Certified by WICB’ stickers are gonna change that. The first line up had not exactly set the world on fire in the past season.

All this line up did was carry on the tradition against the one team the original line up could have beat. Not much hope. Any upsets will be absolutely thrilling though.
TNT( More like damp gunpowder, really): Devon Smith, Dave Bernard & Travis Dowlin.

In an undisclosed corner, India!!!!!
Strongly tipped to win but the only thing holding them back is their history in multilateral tournament finals, the pace attacks inability to think, the brain freeze against the short ball, the all body freeze when fielding and the undisclosed injuries.

But they’ve won 5 of their last series played across SL, NZ, India & WI with all these handicaps. On current form, expect them to make it to the finals.
TNT: Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Ashish Nehra.

The Champions Trophy has been around. Now it has come around.

Younis: A wealthy Pakistani wants to purchase the Pak cricket team and show them around the world as a travelling circus. Sangakkara: But the players are tall, big built, with even bigger egos, “Space is a problem, how will they ever fit?”

A headline that’s making a lot of their past players go “What the f&*#%! “

Every sports team has it’s bogey team. They could be bogey teams across categories and everyone worthy of the FCKingdom knows that the next category in cricket lies in your imagination.

Younis: Don’t worry, they are collapsible

Like the team that always beats us at the world cup, the team that always beats us even if they’re doing shit against everyone else, the team that beats us when they visit, the team that always beats us when we visit and so on.

Pakistan and Sri Lanka share an even special, reciprocative relationship. Both are shit hosting each other, which of course means that both are invincible when touring each other. This has happened since the beginning of time and it’s the way things are.

But bold new Sri Lanka under their modded captain Sangakkara have disrupted the fabric of time and space by contesting Pakistan and defeating them across a series of Tests and 50 over ODIs at home!

Pakistan’s young guns kept the dead rubber bully flag high by winning the last two dead rubber ODIs. But the contest everyone’s looking at now is the T20 match.

Pakistan beat Sri Lanka in the final of the ICC World Twenty20 Championship just over a month ago to emerge World Champions. Sri Lanka have beaten them black and blue in almost every match they’ve met in since then, but Pakistan have recovered just in time for the format the are the world champs in.

Who will prevail and more importantly, what does your team look like?

Dilhara Fernando makes sure that no one is watching while a henchman dressed as a physiotherapist beats the shit outta Mahroof.

Pakistan’s selection policy of late is of being so arbitrary that the opposition is startled into losing the match.

Sri Lanka’s determination to outdo the Pakistani’s this time has trumped their tendency to copy the opposition’s strategy,  just go at it harder and hope to be on top at the end. They’ve gone for the performers.

Of course this meant that most of my FCKing Dirty Dozen has been in the pavilion,  thinking of other such jargon filled stuff to say when someone sticks a mic in their face.

But now that they’ve lost the series, time for me to pick up the dead rubber bullies in my team.

Kulasekara & Thushara marked this series as their own. They’ve been the best besides Murali. Two not very highly valuated players who’ve delivered much beyond what was expected of them.

Sri Lanka Cricket owes their first home series victory in Tests & ODI’s over Pakistan to these two.

Fernando & Maharoof must be crying in each others arms right now.

All the elements of spectacular batting collapses.

Using very high precision equipment imported from Republique de Ulhasnagar, I extracted highly unstable elements from compounds with extremely unpredictable properties.

I then blended them all in a blender to form a curious substance which upon exposure to any cricketing conditions it collapses like it were Sri Lanka playing Pakistan in international cricket.

I’ve decided to call this new black hole level sucking power endowed dark matter the New Zealand Cricket team.

The 6 ODI series between the Pakistan and Sri Lanka starts today and if their past record against each other is anything to go by, there’s not much time for pee breaks.

Anyway, while I wait for the Nobel Committee for Physics to fawn all over my magnificence and call me, the FCKing Dirty Dozen are ready for action.

I’ve left out a lot of crowd favourites, never been much of a populist. I’ve been forced to leave out some young turks I wanted to bet on and I’ve picked some who are gonna keep me praying, but such is fantasy cricket…no, life…..no, fantasy cricket.

Who’s in your crew?