Don't tell me that it's 'Just a game' !!!!

The scene had to be seen to be believed. It was midnight, there wasn't any store open and yet there was a teeming, swaying, gathering mass of humanity. Men and women, old and young, inebriated and sober, on vehicles and on foot - all bound by one fact and one only: They had discovered the Indian in them.

Roads that had never seen this kind of movement at this hour were jam-packed. Vehicles were stuck, moving 10 metres in half an hour, but that was alright - no one was trying to get anywhere, everyone simply wanted to be a part of the festivities. At one point, I thought I should ask the group of people I was with to get back inside the car because I had spied a police car coming from the distance. Then I paused - there was a hand that was coming out of the police car as it neared a throng. That hand was raised in an unmistakable gesture of high-fiving the revelers. There wasn't going to be a crime committed today - not for the next few hours. Not when the country was in the throes of a collective happiness the like of which it had never seen. Tonight, the police were part of the delicious madness. I didn't get back in my car - I waited till I could bump hands with the man behind the wheel of the police vehicle.

There was a man in a corner waving a giant India flag. He didn't look like he had come with anyone else, and yet he was bear-hugging every body within arm-reach. He was draping the flag over someone else, and high-fiving every passer-by on vehicle. There was a man on a motor-cycle. He didn't have anyone riding with him. And yet, from a moving vehicle he found the energy and the insouciance to holler a 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' and exchange fist-bumps with whoever seemed to be passing him. There is a pedestrian, but he's not on the footpath. He's in the middle of the road. And he spontaneously starts a chant of 'Sachin...Sachin'. what feels like 50,000 voices immediately join in. They might have come alone, but there was nobody who was alone on this night.

Grown men are not supposed to dance like this. Since when did the streets of a city become a post-midnight celebratory meeting place? And India will not be allowed to forget this party. 1983 exists as televison recording. 2011 will half be remembered by the street videos. For every man who is dancing, there is one taking a video - on a cellphone, on a camera, on possibly other sophisticated devices whose names I don't know. Yes, India will not be allowed to forget this party - there are just too many recordings of it!
However, perhaps I should pull my friends - respectable, intelligent, mature men in ordinary lives - away from the throng where they are dancing without a care in the world, without a music beat to be heard and with only the accompaniment of a thousand screaming voices? I would, but I find that I'm part of the throng. My voice is contributing to the collective roar. Me too dancing in wild abandon.

The events of this night play back in memory. The first of many re-runs. The men who have won the Cup will be over the moon. And I'd wager that the men who might not have been a part of the winning squad, but who had just as much of a hand in bringing India to this summit on this day, will be just as happy. I raise a silent toast to Anil Kumble and Rahul Dravid. To Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman. To John Wright and Javagal Srinath. And of course to the entire Indian team of today. And to Sachin Tendulkar. You beautiful champion - who cares if you did not score runs. You had a date with destiny and you kept it.

The images continue to flash: There was emotion on the field from MS Dhoni. There were tears from many Indian players and millions of fans. I had walked out in the streets after the win. I was greeted, hugged, and fist-bumped by people I did not know. I dnt know when was the The last time I had greeted and hugged so many strangers !!
Eleven men have won a trophy in a sport that only 10 countries in the world play at any sort of competitive level. But Please don't tell me that it's 'just a game' !!
This is not just a game this is "The Religion" which can make this country united !!!

Hope can drive a man insane....but.... Dreams are made of these...

"Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane." This is what Red said to Andy Dufresne in the classic 'The Shawshank Redemption', 1994.

Today India started the day with a hope. Zaheer Khan was un-hittable by the Lankans, and the fielding made one suspect that coach Kirsten had injected some South African genes into the Indian team. What had been injected though was much simpler and much more visible: Desire.... The Indians were leaping, diving, running as if they had to train with Usain Bolt and the Sri Lankans found it going tough. Visions were raised of a bowling choke, leading to a sedate chase. Then Dilshan and Sangakkara built a stand, after which Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene got the scoreboard ticking over much more regularly. Sangakkara went, and Mahela - who had started the World Cup with a 100 off 80 balls against Canada, before losing his form, decided the final would be the perfect place to recapture it on the way to a 100 off 84 balls. Sri Lanka scored 63 runs off the final five overs of the innings, turning a average-competitive total into a very tough one. Hope... that had been steadily growing in Indian fans' hearts, must have done a quick about-turn and headed straight into insanity territory where people around me were taking vows of not eating rice for a months or quit drinking for years.. some faithfuls were planning to fast for next 11 Wes'days...

Sri Lanka had ended up with a very good total, it was true. No batsman hitting a century in a World Cup final had ended up on the losing side - this was also true. No side playing the final at home had won the World Cup, Yes. And no side had chased as many as 275 runs to win in a World Cup final. Yet hope had not completely disappeared. After all, no chasing side had a set of openers like Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar .. one of the most dangerous opening pair world cricket has ever seen....did they????

As it turned out, after just 6.1 overs India didn't have them either. Sehwag had gone off the second ball of the innings, trapped plumb in front by Lasith Malinga. He took with him a sizable chunk of hope and one needlessly wasted review. However, Tendulkar was still there, and it is an axiom of an Indian fan's life that as long as he is there at the crease, hope is never fully banished from the heart. For 13 glorious balls he made us believe. It was written - he would get to his 100th century while anchoring India's chase and bringing home the trophy that he most wanted and yet had never got, in front of an adoring home-crowd. God had rested on the 7th day,in twice the number of balls, the God of Indian cricket chased a ball from Malinga that was going away and had to leave to stunned silence.

31/2 in 6.1 overs with the two principal match-winners back in the pavilion. Bye-bye hope, welcome Insanity.

walks in Two Delhi boys :Gauti and Virat.Two future India captains maybe. It was insanity to hope that these guys will make the match out of it ... But again fate has some other plans...these two men with limitless stomachs for toughing it out and cojone (Excuse my language Please!1 ) to probably think to themselves "So what if Tendulkar and Sehwag have gone? We are still there."

They dusted off the early dismissals and focussed on the task at hand: Gambhir looked fluent from the start, Kohli first settled down and then started opening up. Visions of IND-SL match cropped up (December 24, 2009). Irrestible parallels were drawn - India chased a much higher total in that match and the combined score of Tendulkar and Sehwag was 18 then too, as it was today. Would Kohli and Gambhir repeat their heroics? Kohli, it turned out, would not. 114/3 in the 22nd over, and India was once more on the back-foot. Out walked MS Dhoni, ahead of the in-form Yuvraj Singh. He had - he said later - a point to prove: to himself. And he backed himself to prove it. It was a courageous decision on the part of a man who hadn't been scoring too many runs so far, knowing that if it back-fired, he would have had to face a barrage of questions.It didn't backfire. Dhoni didn't allow it to.

Gambhir and Kohli had taken India from despair to uncertainty. Dhoni and Gambhir took them from uncertainty to looking increasingly likely winners. Gambhir had already got to a superb fifty, and during the course of the stand Dhoni joined him. "We see your Mahela," the Indian fans seemed to be saying, "and we raise you a Gautam." The stand had crossed the century mark, and Gambhir was nearing his own. He would have got it too, except for a rush of blood that saw a fairly straight 'you miss, I hit' ball from Perera duly miss Gambhir's flailing bat and head for his stumps. Nevertheless, with 97 off 122, while chasing in a World Cup final, Gambhir had entered the pantheon of the select few who have played great World Cup final knocks.

Out walked India's World Cup talisman - Yuvraj Singh. The game was in the balance, with India having a slight advantage. Recognizing the moment and realising that he
needed to seize it, MS Dhoni turned it on. He had been scoring at almost a run-a-ball until Gambhir's dismissal. After Yuvraj's entry, he unleashed a brutal square-cut for six. When Malinga came back for his final spell, there was one quiet over, after which he was taken for 11 runs, with 9 of them coming off Dhoni's blade. With that, India's required rate was 5 runs to win off 12 balls.

5 off 12, becomes 4 off 11 with a single and MS Dhoni is back on strike. He finishes it in the way only he can. Ice-cold eyes, even cooler head and a mighty swing over the sight-screens. He's had a previous highest of 34 in this World Cup, and he ends it by scoring 91 not out off 79 balls. For the first time after 28 years, a nation erupts with joy and the prize we sought is won!!!!!

Finally It was the Hope which prevails and took us home !!!!! love you team India.... You made us Proud !!!

"Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." - Andy Dufresne, in reply to Red. From, 'The Shawshank Redemption', 1994.

Nehra !! The man gifted with the most famous set of teeth in the cricketing world after Kamran Akmal’s !!!

The most important cricket match in a long time was threatening to go horribly wrong for India. Ashwin had just been replaced with Ashish Nehra.Experts were going ballistic, fans had started collecting stones, and Ashish Nehra was facing the scary prospect of becoming Piyush Chawla and Ashish Nehra rolled into one. But the man with the physics-defying motor action proved everyone wrong with two wickets, an economy rate of 3.3 and a fielding effort that had everyone rubbing their eyes in disbelief. How did he do it? A thorough investigation reveals the secrets.Below are the top 5 reasons for Nehra's performance..
1 Sreesanth’s tweet :
On the eve of the match, Sreesanth tweeted ‘You have to believe in yourself when no one else does’. Now, if one can get past Sreesanth’s exterior, one may discover the Aristotle within him. Nehra is one of the few who has managed to do that. Sreesanth’s tweets have always had a profound impact on Nehra and, suddenly, he forgot all the jokes on him doing the rounds and was re-invigorated with new-found confidence. It was just the kind of confidence he needed to perform in front of Prime Ministers, the Gandhi family, a billion people, and Viveik Oberoi.
2 Astrology and Mandira
Bjorn Borg had once said that he handled pressure by sleeping, preferably not alone. Imran Khan advises sleeping pills before an important match. Nehra needed neither company nor pills to sleep. On the night before, Nehra had just switched on the TV where he saw a Hindi news channel declare India’s victory. “Dhoni ki kundali kar degi kamaal. Pakistan ko le doobega shani,” they declared vociferously. On another channel he watched Mandira Bedi tell Javed Miandad that India was going to win the next day. Surely, the stars and Mandira Bedi both couldn’t be wrong, he reckoned. He slept peaceful in the knowledge that all will be good the next day.
3 Breakfast :
The next morning Nehra followed a breakfast routine that many believe to be a foolproof way to succeed. At breakfast, his eyes followed Sachin Tendulkar the way Shane Warne’s follows a pretty young thing. Sachin picked out a banana, so did Nehra. Sachin poured cold milk over his cornflakes, Nehra followed suit. Sachin crushed a walnut and bit into it. Nehra did the same, with scant regard for the most famous set of teeth in the cricketing world after Kamran Akmal’s. For Nehra, nothing would come between him and success in this match.
4 Dressing room debate::
As India lost wickets, Nehra knew his batting would be called upon to take India to a defendable total. But, there was one problem. Munaf wanted to go in before him. Given that this decision could have a major impact on the match, tempers flared. Eventually, when Zaheer got out, Nehra rushed out into the ground before Munaf could react. In the end, Munaf too got his chance to go into the middle. “Chalo sabki batting aayi,” Nehra said offering an olive branch. But the argument pumped up both the speedsters. And it showed.
5 Cheerleader No 1 :
“Do it for Poonam,” a spectator screamed at Nehra while he fielded at 3rd man. It was just the war cry he needed. Nehra remembered that the country wanted to win the cup, not just for Sachin but also for Poonam Pandey who’s promised to bare it all if India wins the cup. Nehra certainly didn’t want to be the one to deny the country such a momentous occasion in its history. And, the rest is history.

The Atlas who would not shrug : Tendulkar

21st May 1997: A date that has annoyed, irritated or in some cases tormented many a cricket fan. It was on this day some Saeed Anwar broke Viv Richards' record for the highest ever score in a One Day International. The record was thus passed on from a legend of the game to a player who was merely good, but by no stretch extraordinary - Anwar averaged 37.62 against the major nations in ODIs, and away from home his average shrank to 26.70.

Then last year, another name joined Anwar at the top of the list: Charles Coventry. Even after he scored 194 not out, a lot of people in a lot of cricketing discussions over lots of beers in lots of pubs, would still be asking: Charles who ?

The anomaly at the top of the record charts was begging to be corrected. As my friend gaurav said, he was waiting for this day since that fateful May night almost 13 years ago.

He was not alone. There were thousands - millions probably - who felt that the name that belonged at the top of the table was that of Sachin Tendulkar.

In what is proving to be a golden twilight of his career, Tendulkar has systematically gone about checking all the un-checked boxes in his cricketing CV. One important one was ticked when he led a mammoth fourth innings chase against England at the same ground that he had failed to complete the job against Pakistan in 1999. Another was accomplished today, with the world's highest ODI score and first ODI double-century. No other name seemed to have belonged so naturally at the top of the list than his.

Until today, Tendulkar had seemed like the logical successor to Viv Richards as the greatest ODI batsman of his generation. Not anymore.

He is now undoubtedly, the greatest ODI batsman ever. He has made the great Viv seem like a mere prelude to the real thing.

From the moment he came out to bat and stroked his first boundary to the moment when he raised his arms in triumph, in release, in acknowledgment - he looked like he was batting in a different zone. This is supposed to be a man on his last cricketing legs, but he didn't use a runner for a single minute of his innings and came out to field from the first ball to boot! With Sachin Tendulkar though, what is supposed to be and what is, don't always match.

One man is not supposed to carry the hopes of a nation of a billion every time he walks out to bat. But he does.

One man is not supposed to be the barometer of a country's happiness - he is being thrust with an impossible responsibility. But he is.

A man who makes his debut as an impressionable, precocious 16 year old is not supposed to last for 20 years as an international celebrity and not have any outrageous scandals associated with him. One man isn't supposed to display a superhuman quality of being human, if he has been granted the superhuman gifts that Sachin Tendulkar has. But he remains so.

A man is supposed to be mortal, to be granted the allowance for errors. But he isn't.

A man is not supposed to retain the same enthusiasm for a sport across more than 20 years, having spent the majority of those years under public scrutiny like no other. But he has.

I thought I had expended all possible superlatives for Sachin Tendulkar, when he completed twenty years in international cricket but I forgot, for a moment, that with Sachin Tendulkar superlatives don't ever exhaust themselves. There might come a day when Roget's Thesaurus will fail to find adequate words to describe the man, but he himself will not fail.

As he raised his arms in triumph, a country pumped its collective fist and let out a collective primeval roar. The relief, the sense of accomplishment, and the satisfaction at getting to the landmark was all the more keenly felt because for a long time now, there has been only one man who seemed capable of breaching the 200-run mark in an ODI. Sehwag has also threatened to do that, but Sehwag has never come as close as Sachin has. He made 186 not out against New Zealand at Hyderabad, but that was in an era when 300 was an almost certainly winning score. He then hit 163 not out against New Zealand a year ago, but retired with cramps. And then of course there was that heart breaking 175 against the Aussies in November last year.

Many of us feared that his best shot at the record was gone with the end of that innings. When we, his fans, could not pick ourselves up after that shattering loss, how would he manage to do so?

However, while that loss might have broken lesser men, it seemed to spur Sachin Tendulkar on towards ensuring that such heart-break was never to be experienced again. The next time he came so close, there would be no denying him. And so he battled on. He had hit the ball with unbelievable power, and his hands must have been tiring. He had placed the ball with unbelievable dexterity, and his inventiveness must have been ebbing. He had run every single run with unwavering commitment as hard as he could - his partners' and his own - and his legs must have been sending urgent messages to his brain to let up. But nothing was going to sway him today. There had been too many golden moments snatched from him at the last moment. This one was going to be had.

The final flourish of a golden career is going considerably better than the purple patches of most other batsmen's careers. Two check-boxes remain to be ticked - a Test triple century beckons, but more than that, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar will want to keep his date with destiny on April 2nd 2011 in Mumbai.

Even if those landmarks are not achieved though, India will remain happy. He doesn't require much effort to keep India happy - all he has to do is get hold of a bat and stride out to the middle.

And so, years from now, when he has retired, we will be fondly paraphrasing Robert Browning to the next generation and the next: Sachin Tendulkar was in his batting gear and all was right with India.

Tendulkar become Sachin again...!!

Nov-5 2009

Coming November, Sachin Tendulkar would have played 20 years of international cricket. During those twenty years, although things have changed radically in Indian cricket, someone who looked at the scorecard for today's match, would have been forgiven for thinking that Indian cricket was stuck in a time-warp and that nothing had changed from Tendulkar's early years to now. It was a familiar tale of Tendulkar being the one-man army taking on the opposition under daunting circumstances. But what an army he proved to be! He very nearly pulled off a miracle for India, but destiny had only one landmark in store for him today. The man himself would have much preferred an Indian victory to 17,000 runs, but it was not to be


It is not every day that you can make 175 in an international game of cricket and feel so thoroughly miserable,but its Sachin !!!Nobody does solos better than him, nor, perhaps, has anyone endured as much heartbreak during those solos. Tendulkar almost broke the record for the highest score in one-day internationals (19 short of Saeed Anwar's mark - and 11 short of his own personal best); he almost led India to what would have been the second highest winning score batting second in an ODI (they finished four runs shy of beating Australia's 350-4 and had needed only 19 off 18 balls when Tendulkar was out); he almost kept India's hopes of becoming the world No 1 alive (now that Australia have a 3-2 lead in the seven-match series they cannot be overtaken). It was India of the 90s all over again: Again the same Sachin careless and free , Fighting alone .. same india choking again !!!! Tendulkar almost chased 351 on his own but, with the target in sight, he got out and the rest choked, falling short by three runs with two balls still to go. Remember In Chennai January 1998-99, Tendulkar, having played an innings as incredible as this, left the last three wickets 18 to get; tonight he left them 19 off 17 and we did it again !!!

And to cap all that, it was reported today that some 12-year-old kid has beaten one of Tendulkar's earliest feats. One Sarfaraz Khan made 439 off 421 balls in a three-day match for Springfield Rizvi school in Mumbai against the Indian Education Society. When he reached 330, he passed Tendulkar's best as a schoolboy, which he set in 1988 as a 15-year-old.
Sarfaraz then went on to pass the 349 that Vinod Kambli had made in the same game as Tendulkar - they shared a stand of 664 - and by the time he was out Sarfaraz had the highest score ever made in the inter-school Harris Shield tournament.

Is this the new SACHIN in making ...!!!

The Master moment !! The man with billion expectations..

I have read somewhere that :
“For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.”
After Sachin Tendulkar’s first Test match in Karachi 20 years ago produced just 15 runs and five wicketless overs for 25, hardened cynics might have questioned the wisdom of thrusting a 16-year-old on to such a stage.


A week later, in Faisalabad, there was nowhere to hide. When Tendulkar arrived at the crease to join his Mumbai teammate, Sanjay Manjrekar, India were in disarray at 101 for 4. In a column many years later, Wasim Akram wrote: “It was a lush green wicket, possibly the greenest I’ve seen in Pakistan, and Tendulkar was batting on 20-odd when a ball from me hit him. I immediately asked him if he was alright and he looked me in the eye and nodded. I was a 21-year-old then, so I did not give the matter much thought, but in retrospect that score of 50-odd was the first hint the world got about Tendulkar’s special talent.”

For the world, it was a hint. For the boy himself, it was so much more. “My first innings was a disaster,” he said. “When I walked out at Faisalabad, I told myself that I would do my best to just stay at the wicket, even if I didn’t score runs.” He finished with 59, having stayed at the crease for a shade over 4 hours. And although it didn’t win the Test, or set the pulse racing, it meant a lot to someone thrown in at the deep end. “I said to myself, ‘You can handle this, it’s not a place where you don’t belong.’”

In one of its special issues, Time magazine had Tendulkar’s debut at No. 4 in its list of Top 10 Sporting Moments, behind Michael Jordan’s The Shot (against the Cleveland Cavaliers), Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose being banned from baseball and Arsenal winning the English league title in the last minute of the 1988-89 season. In the years to come, you can take it for granted that thousands will claim that they were at the National Stadium on 15 November when he walked out in an India cap for the first time. In retrospect, it was certainly an I-was-there moment, though few could have imagined that Tendulkar would still be punching the ball through the covers two decades later.

Perhaps we in India can’t really fathom the full extent of the adoration and expectation that he has had to deal with in that time. Matthew Hayden, another batting colossus of our age, gave voice to what many outsiders feel when he wrote: “His life seems to be a stillness in a frantic world and I admire his mental strength. When Tendulkar goes out to bat, it’s beyond chaos—it is a frantic appeal by a nation to one man.”

Some, like Muhammad Ali, protected themselves with a veneer of loudmouthed arrogance. Others, like George Best, lost themselves in a haze of boozy, womanizing nights. With Tendulkar, the humility, the feeling that he considered himself truly fortunate to be doing what he did, never went away, even if it cost him any semblance of a normal life. “I could say that I didn’t get to do all those things that a normal teenager would do,” he told once, “but then again, not many people get the opportunity to do what I do.”

That awareness of the big picture was best illustrated in Steve Waugh’s final Test at SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) in January 2004. Twenty minutes before stumps, with Australia seemingly safe, Waugh—who had scripted a typically defiant 80 just when his team most needed it—swept a delivery from Anil Kumble to deep square leg, where Tendulkar wrapped his hands around it. As 40,000 Australians rose in unison, it took Tendulkar a moment to comprehend the significance of the occasion.

“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that I had a hand in Steve Waugh’s last dismissal,” he said later. “I was thinking of how we could pull off the win. But once I realized that it was his last innings, I ran all the way from the boundary to congratulate him. I said, ‘You’ve made every Australian proud, and every cricketer admires you’. That was about it really, nothing more.”

Just as Sunil Gavaskar was defined by his heroics against the all-conquering West Indies, so Tendulkar remains peerless because of the enormity of his achievements against Australia. Numbers matter in sport, but nothing counts quite as much as how you do against the best. With 10 Test centuries and eight one-day hundreds against the dominant team of his era, Tendulkar’s place in the pantheon is beyond dispute.

More than cold statistics though, it’s the moments that will endure long after he’s put his bat away for the last time. That final over in the Hero Cup semi-final. The audacious assault on Shane Warne in Chennai. The cold-eyed targeting of Shoaib Akhtar at Centurion, South Africa, in 2003. That 175 in Haydrabad !!! , That match-winning century in Chennai, just a fortnight after the streets in the vicinity of his restaurant in Mumbai had resembled war-torn Beirut.

And most of all, Perth in February 1992. That magical 114 on a lightning-fast pitch, even as the team was routed by 300 runs. Watching the teenager stand on tiptoe and cut and drive with the panache of an old pro in baggy green, Merv Hughes, he of the walrus moustache and the colourful sledges, turned to Allan Border and said, “This little ***** is going to get more runs than you, AB.” And He was right.

Vettori of the Year !!!

In a shocking mix-up that's sure to have major implications on cricket, the ICC has totally misunderstood Ricky Ponting's views on dead-rubber ODIs and have introduced the world's first dead-rubber international world cup.
According to the new tournament rules, eight of the world's top cricketing nations will play each other in a league stage consisting entirely of meaningless dead-rubber matches. The four best teams will then play the two semi-finals and the final, which will also be dead rubbers. The tournament winner will then be decided by a draw of lots.
"This is the first in a long list of initiatives from the ICC to revitalise cricket, based on feedback from the game's many stakeholders, including players, boards, the media and fans," said an ICC spokesman, pulling a rabbit out of his hat for effect. Explaining some of the future plans the ICC has in store for the game, he said, "We all know that fans come to see fours and sixes, so in the future we'll be introducing a new format that will eliminate those pesky singles, twos and dot balls, and will consist solely of boundary hits."
He also hinted at the possibility of a future event that will consist purely of media coverage, with no actual cricket being played. "We'll see how those pampered punk players complain about too much cricket then, shall we?" he thought to himself, making a timely exit before anyone asked inconveniently pertinent questions.
The new tournament has generated mixed responses around the world.
"This idea is worse than the 51 which Sepp Blatter has every day," said an anguished Ponting, who is distraught at being wrongly credited for the innovation. "It's ridiculous. You say one thing and people hear something completely different. Now I know how Harbhajan Singh feels," he said, in an unexpected show of sympathy for Australia's best loved offspinner.
"Oh! Awesome! This is great news for South Africa!" said a delighted Graeme Smith. "We usually lose crucial matches, but since the dead-rubber World Cup will have no crucial matches whatsoever, we're sure to win this time," he pointed out, rather logically.
In another exciting development, India, which recently fired Venkatesh Prasad and Robin Singh as bowling and fielding coach respectively, has given Singh back his job, albeit in a different role. Singh and former India team-mate Ajay Jadeja will be the new "futile 50-partnership in a losing cause" coaches for the Indian team.
"When your team is down four wickets for 25, chasing a 300-plus total, you need batsmen who can buckle down and put on a dull, pointless 50-run partnership, raise false hope, and then trigger a collapse by needlessly getting run out or holing out to long-on. Robin and I were past masters at this crucial skill, and we're extremely excited to have an opportunity to pass on our knowledge to youngsters," said Jadeja, with Singh nodding his approval.
"It's a skill that has pretty much disappeared from the Indian side, though Praveen Kumar and Harbhajan Singh showed some glimpses of promise in that game against Australia. Still, it was far too exciting to be a true classic in the Jadeja-Robin Singh tradition," said BCCI President Shashank Manohar. "By hiring the former greats as coaches, we hope to bring this aspect of the team back to where it once was," he added, causing a sharp rise in the blood-pressure levels of Indian cricket fans worldwide.
And finally, to save enormous amounts of time and money, New Zealand Cricket has decided to consolidate all their national cricketing awards for bowling, batting, fielding and coaching into a single award called the "Daniel Vettori of the Year".