Battles of the Beleagured Captains, Bollywood, Paki Powers, & Leading Stumpers

Battle of the Beleagured Captains

One of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, captains of the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Deccan Chargers respectively, will come out on top tomorrow.

Old friends and team mates, both of them have looked out of place in 20-20 cricket.

Apart from their last innings in the Indian Premier League, they have seemed all at sea at the crease failing to adjust their games to this form of cricket and on top, their captaincy has also been anything but inspiring.

They come head to head tomorrow.

Will they be able to produce a 20-20 innings? Which one will lift their team out of the losing rut they are in? Which one of them will redeem themself tomorrow?

Battle of the Bollywood

Kolkata Knight Riders won their first 2 matches of the Indian Premier League. Kings XI Punjab lost their first 2.

Then KKR lost their next 3 matches on the trot. And KXIP won their next 3.

Shahrukh Khan is obviously disappointed at the losses but I'm sure he's hurting a lot at the fact that Preity Zinta's team has gone ahead of his in the points table. No one likes losing you see, and moreso no man likes losing to a woman. Specially not a Bollywood one.

It gets better tomorrow as SRK's Kolkata Knight Riders take on Preity's Kings XI Punjab.

Will SRK have the last laugh as he always does? Or will Zinta continue smiling and hugging her players?

Battle of the Paki Powers

Misbah Ul Haq will finally get his chance for RCB tomorrow. Or so I hope. I think common sense will finally prevail in the RCB camp and Misbah will be given his first taste of the IPL since Ross Taylor has made his way to the land of the Queen.

Misbah will be up against a team mate though - the Chargers' Shahid Afridi.

Not only are the 2 the most powerful hitters Pakistan have, they both are Pakistan's most successful 20-20 players as well. Misbah is the 2nd highest run scorer in all 20-20 Internationals, while Afridi is the highest wicket taker; and both were instrumental in taking Pakistan to the final of the 20-20 World Cup last year.

It will be a great watch if Afridi is given the ball when Misbah is in full flow. Will Afridi be able to stop Misbah? Or will Afridi bear the brunt of Misbah's blade like Harbhajan and all other spinners have?

Battle of the Leading Stumpers

One tops the most dismissals list in test cricket and the other tops the ODI one. One is second on the test dismissals list and the other is second on the ODI one. One is arguably the best wicketkeeper to play cricket, while the other definitely the best keeper batsman ever.

Both have come against each other a number of times for South Africa and Australia, but tomorrow one takes the field for RCB and the other for the Deccan Chargers.

Its Mark Boucher up against Adam Gilchrist.

Watch out for Gilchrist and Gibbs going great guns against Steyn with Boucher behind the stumps and Kallis at 1st slip. Where else but the IPL.

All this and more at the IPL Double Header starting at 1030am GMT.

(Note to Uncle J: 4 thoughts in 1 post, only for you. I could have done 4)

Welcome to the Cricketer's Trading Floor - IPL Player Auction Summarised

77 out of the 79 cricketers that were up for sale were bought by the 8 IPL franchises on a cricket history defining day at the Hilton Towers in Mumbai for a whopping $42 million. Thats an average of over half a million dollars per cricketer!

Here are 7 points summarising what went down at today's Cricketer Auction.

1. Who didn't make it?

Mohammad Yousuf - pending court case due to ICL contract cancellation.

Ashwell Prince - no one was interested.

2. Who spent the most?

Bollywood King Shahrukh Khan (Kolkata) - $6,072,500 for 11 players.

India Cements (Chennai) - $5,925,000 for 11 players.

Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad) - $5,885,000 for 11 players.

Point of Interest: The top 2 franchise bidders - Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya who spent $111.9 million and $111.6 million for the mumbai and Bangalore franchises respectively spent less than $5 million each at the player's auction and were among the lowest 3 bidders today.

3. Who made it to the Millionaires Club?

Mahendra Singh Dhoni - $1.5 million by India Cements (Chennai)

Andrew Symonds - $1.35 million by Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad)

These were the only 2 players who were bid for over a million. The others in the club are the ICON players:

Sachin Tendulkar - $1,121,250 by Mukesh Ambani's Reliance (Mumbai)

Saurav Ganguly - $1,092,500 by Shahrukh Khan (Kolkata)

Yuvraj Singh - $1,063,750 by Preity Zinta (Mohali)

Rahul Dravid - $1,035,000 by Vijay Mallya' UB Group (Bangalore)

4. Who secured the highest bids?

Sanath Jayasuriya - $975,000 by Mukesh Ambani (Mumbai)

Ishant Sharma - $950,000 by Shahrukh Khan (Kolkata)

Irfan Pathan - $925,000 by Priety Zinta (Mohali)

Jacques Kallis - $900,000 by Vijay Mallya (Bangalore)

Brett Lee - $900,000 by Priety Zinta (Mohali)

Point of Interest: Bollywood celebs are BIG spenders.

5. Which were the most overvalued deals?

$950,000 for Ishant Sharma - surely a talented boy but does he seriously command such a price after having played a handful of ODIs and Tests and no T20Is?

$900,000 for Jacques Kallis - undoubtedly one of the best test batsmen in the world, a decent ODI bat, but even his national team dropped him for the T20 world cup that was played in his home country. Is such a price justified?

$675,000 for Mohammad Kaif - Ignored by the national selectors for all forms of the game, untested at the T20 level, why were bidders so interested in him?

6. Which were the most undervalued bids?

$375,000 for Matthew Hayden - are you kidding me? Australia's tour of Pakistan has been given as a probable reason but then team mate Lee who would also be touring fetched $900K!

$400,000 for Ricky Ponting - deserves more doesn't he? Strange that the bidders were not more interested.

$150,000 for Umar Gul - the leading wicket taker of the T20 world cup definitelt deserved more.

If you look at it from the bidders' perspective, they have hit the Jackpot with these undervalued deals.

7. What were the other unexpected bids?

Shane Warne and Glen McGrath went for as low as $450,000 and $350,000 respectively.

David Hussey, Cameron White, and Yusuf Pathan, who collectively have international experience of a handful matches fetched bids of $675,000; $500,000; and $475,000 respectively. Looks like the bidders keep an eye on domestic cricket in other countries and their own. Well done.

Shahid Afridi bagged the highest bid ($675,000) for a Pakistani player ahead of Shoaib Malik, Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif, Younis Khan, Umar Gul, and Kamran Akmal.

I'm Pakistani...

I was in Koh Samui in Thailand on the morning of the 2nd when I was walking around the island and stopped at an Irish Pub which was showing the India vs Australia match. I walked in to take a seat to get a good view of the action and noticed that the entire place was full of Aussies. Which wasn't surprising cause the Island was full of them. I ordered some English breakfast and watched the last session of an India vs Australia test at an Irish pub with a bunch of Aussies in Koh Samui. It doesn't get more multi cultural than that. Did I mention I'm Pakistani?

During the week of cricket that I missed the Proteas levelled the series against the Windies and the Aussies won an amazing test match that was marred with bad umpiring decisions and a ban. A lot has been covered on that so I won't go there.

Back home in Pakistan the final of the Quaid-e-Azam trophy, the domestic season's first class competition is being played between Habib Bank and Sui Northern Gas. Habib Bank, led by Shahid Afridi are trying to win the title after a span of 30 years, while Sui Northern led by Test reject Mohammad Hafeez, are trying to do so for the 1st time ever. Both teams boast of test players with Younis Khan, Hasan Raza, Danish Kaneria, and Abdur Rehman playing for Habib Bank and Misbah-ul-Haq for SNG besides the 2 captains. SNG is ahead at the moment with Misbah in familiar territory - top scoring and getting the side out of trouble. Here's the scorecard.

The Zimbabwe series, which was in doubt due to the political mess in Pakistan, is going ahead and will get underway in less than 2 weeks. Pakistan have announced a 2-day conditioning camp for 20 odd players comprising of all those who did well during this season's Quaid-e-Azam trophy. I would think that around 5-6 players from this camp will be a part of the national squad to face Zimbabwe.

Pakistan's management have publically stated that they will be trying out a number of new faces against Zimbabwe. Asif and Gul are still out due to injury, while Shoaib and Sami are not expected to play. Akmal is also expected to be 'rested', while Yousuf and Younis could find themselves being rotated during the 5 ODIs. I think it s a good time for the PCB to try some younger players, especially those who have done well on the domestic circuit. There have been many and I'll briefly discuss them in my next post.

Meanwhile, Geoff Lawson has returned to Pakistan after a trip back home. He has recommended that PCB hire a sports psychologist for the team. I wonder if the Paki players will benefit much from that. Lawson has also said that Shoaib Akhtar is Pakistan's best bowler when fit. Thats a big 'when'. And finally he ended by saying that the Australians can be beaten. Surely he doesn't think that the Pakis can give the Aussies a serious run when they come down in March. Or IF they come down considering the bombs flying around Pakistan.

That was a ramble about Paki cricket. Its good to be back.

A team in the making?

It all started when I got to thinking about the Pakistan teams recent performance. Sure its easy to pick on them right now but I think its an eye opener if one wants to delve deeper into the fundamental flaws that have become so apparent.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to attempt to scratch the surface of the quagmire that is the Pakistani team today. It must be said outright that Salman Butt does not merit a place in the team... my statement/opinion being based upon the fact that his skills as a batsmen match that of Bush as a president. I believe that playing a straight batted shot at will must be a prerequisite of getting into the team as a specialist batsman. Along with Butt the inept, this of course disqualifies Nazir, Misbah and a few others who thankfully did not make the team this time. Our friends Younis, Hameed, Akmal and Afridi have their own problems.

What we're getting at without making things too complicated is that there is not 'institution of cricket' in the country... raw talent never really gets polished unless a senior voluntarily mentors a junior player and none of the really young talent is ever schooled in textbook cricket. Gone are the days when Pakistan had the kind of raw talent that it could survive as a volatile team; the volatility coming from the stars trying to shine on their own steam, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing under their own exuberance. I must bid adieu for now but I'm sure we will have plenty to talk about during the upcoming India series