Echoes

This article has been posted at Cricbuzz and at Ten Sports.

It had the echoes of 2005, but they were faint and far-off, being reflected only in the identical scoreline of 2-1. The Ashes 2009 couldn't match the quality and drama on display in 2005, but then the series four years ago couldn't match the sheer unpredictability of this one. Not a single Test match went the way the pundits had predicted. 'Momentum' is possibly the most used and abused word in the cricket lexicon today, and it was conspicuous by its absence. Instead, in a physics-defying series, the side that appeared to have the upper hand in the preceding Test, always came up short in the next one. Australia won Cardiff on all but paper, England then broke free of history at Lord's. Defying the script of the series, England carried their form to Edgbaston, where rain and Michael Clarke took Australia to safety. Australia then detonated England at Headingly, only to implode at the Oval.

The yo-yo could have been the official emblem of the series.

Here's a look back at the series, Test by Test.

1. Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
Monty Panesar came into the Test match with the following batting statistics to his name:
1. Batting average - 5.30
2. Average number of balls faced per innings - 12.5
As the fifth day of the opening Test played out, you could almost hear the old-time English fans resigning themselves to another sixteen Ashes-less years. After all, the script was being played out as it so often has in the past - England opened well, Australia then responded with characteristic ruthlessness, and as the Test was concluding, the Australian bowlers were cleaning out the English batsmen. However, in the most impressive punching-above-the-weight performance of the Ashes, Monty scored 7 runs, survived for a precious 35 balls, and echoing namesake Monty Python (in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) seemed to take the attitude that "None shall pass" - none of the Australian bowlers pass his defensive blade that is. The Test was saved, and that was to remain Monty's most significant contribution for the rest of the series.

2. Killing the past, and coming back to life
Andrew Strauss made 161, Alistair Cook made 95, James Anderson took 4 for 55 to trigger Australia's collapse in the first innings, and Michael Clarke played a flawless innings under pressure in the fourth innings - but the headlines all belonged to one man who took 5 wickets in an innings for just the third time in his career. Trust Freddie Flintoff to first turn the spotlight on himself and then step up and deliver a performance worthy of it. The statistics say that Flintoff was not a great of the game, and they don't lie. But his ability to lift his team and the fans, and inspire by sheer presence is second to none. He also has the knack - in common with great sportspersons - of choosing the most apt stage to deliver his chef-d'oeuvre. Thus decades of English misery at the home of cricket were buried under the giant weight of Flintoff's boots, and England finally tasted victory at Lord's over Australia.

3. The cloud bursts thunder in your ears
Rain robbed the Ashes of what promised to be a fascinating Test match. England dominated it for the most part, but Michael Clarke conjured his second masterpiece of the series, to ensure that if England had the time to mount a fourth innings chase, it would have been far from easy. With Australia ahead by 263 runs with 5 second innings wickets intact, the odds actually favoured Australia more than England. However, even more ominous for England than their inability to get past Clarke's defences, was the troublesome knee of Andrew Flintoff. After his Lord's heroics and his Edgbaston hobble, Flintoff may have been reminded of the lines:

For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.

4. How I wish you were here
England's nightmare came to pass, as Andrew Strauss must have been left wishing for the services of Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen - none of whom featured in the annihilation at Headingly. In spite of Andy Flower's brave words of England being able to win the Ashes without their two superstars, the only match of the series in which both were injured saw England crash and burn. To complete their cup of woe, both Aussie bowlers who had struggled on tour until then - Siddle and Johnson - picked up fifers. With the return to form of their strike bowlers, and the continuing runs from the batsmen, no critic gave England a hope of a chance in the deciding Test.

5. We'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph
Cometh the hour, cometh the man - England found its new set of heroes and the Australian knights lost some of the sheen from their armour. This Test will go down in history as a landmark event - it not only saw England win an Ashes decider for the first time, but also ended Australia's hegemony at the top of the world rankings. The English selectors did a spectacular job in ignoring the media, and backing their judgment of Jonathan Trott as the next-in-line batsman, and were rewarded for it. And when it seemed, just for a moment, that Australia might pull off the improbable, that man Andrew Flintoff sealed it for England by a pin-point throw. England's lynch-pin had taken out Australia's, and with the departure of Ricky Ponting, the series momentum shifted for the last time, and stayed with England.

It was a series that will be remembered for the unexpected grace that Ponting displayed - being booed at all the grounds, but not losing his composure; for the emergence of Andrew Strauss as the unquestioned leader of England; for the downfall of the once-mighty Aussies to human plains; and for the magnetic persona and sheer joy that Andrew Flintoff exuded and awoke, wearing England whites for the last time.

The IPL's Most Valuable Player

This article has been cross-posted at Cricbuzz

Now that the IPL is done and dusted, we can all go back to our normal evening routines (even if there's a weirdly empty kind of feeling at 4 p.m. and you log on to Cricbuzz to check the latest score updates, only to figure out there is no match happening - not for the next week anyway).

We can think back to our favourite IPL memories - Shane Warne's ruffled look as he spun the ball in his hand before ripping one across the batsman; Anil Kumble's fiercely competitive streak that made the people who were calling for his head wonder why he retired; AB de Villier's masterful strokeplay and the rare delightful time when the commentary box was empty of Ravi Shastri, Ramiz Raja, Pommie Mbangwa, Ranjit Fernando and Danny Morrison.

However, discussions will continue unabated over who exactly were the 'best' players in this edition of the IPL. While there is no way to quantify the quality of runs scored or wickets taken, the pitch conditions and pressure situations et al, we can attempt to pull out numbers based on the quantity of runs scored, strike rates, economy rates and wickets taken.

Towards that end, this is an attempt to form an index for the 'Most Valuable Players' of the IPL.

Each player has been assigned points for batting, bowling and fielding, and the player with the highest number of points is, appropriately enough, IPL Version 2.0 MVP.

Batting Points:

The batting points were fairly straightforward to calculate. You have to take care of two parameters: the number of runs scored and the strike rate. The simplest way to do this is by multiplying one by the other, but there is a qualitatively better method and that is to calculate points based on the Relative Strike Rate.

The Relative Strike Rate is simply the ratio of a particular batsman's strike rate divided by the tournament's average strike rate. So if the average strike rate for the tournament has been 120.00 and Batsman A has a strike rate of 150.00, his relative strike rate would be 1.25.

The batting points are then assigned thus:

If R is the number of runs a batsman has scored, and S is his relative strike rate, the number of points B, the batsman will get is: B = R * S.

The only other thing that needs to be factored in to this is a batsman remaining 'Not Out' at the end of the innings. To make matters simple, every 'Not Out', contributes 10 runs to a batsman's score for the purpose of this analysis. Therefore, if N is the number of Not Outs, the formula becomes: B = (R+10N) * S

For IPL-2, the average strike rate has been 116.61.

The top 15 batsmen by this method, along with their batting point tallies per innings, are:

		Team	Runs	Strike Rate	B
1.	Matthew Hayden	Chennai	572	144.81	722.73
2.	Adam Gilchrist	Deccan	495	152.31	646.51
3.	AB de Villiers	Delhi	465	130.99	567.24
4.	Suresh Raina	Chennai	434	140.91	524.42
5.	T Dilshan	Delhi	418	122.58	470.92
6.	MS Dhoni	Chennai	332	127.20	416.69
7.	Brad Hodge	Kolkata	365	117.74	398.82
8.	Sachin Tendulkar	Mumbai	364	120.13	395.59
9.	JP Duminy	Mumbai	372	114.46	394.58
10.	Rohit Sharma	Deccan	362	114.92	386.31
11.	Herschelle Gibbs	Deccan	371	112.08	385.43
12.	Dinesh Karthik	Delhi	288	132.72	384.68
13.	Yuvraj Singh	Punjab	340	115.65	357.01
14.	Jacques Kallis	Bangalore	361	108.73	355.26
15.	Ross Taylor	Bangalore	280	134.62	346.31

Not too many surprises in the rankings, there! Most people would have probably had a similar list if asked to come up with their top 15 batsmen. However, it is nice to be able to put a number to the contributions of various batsmen.

The only team who doesn't have a batsman featuring here is Rajasthan. Their highest ranked batsman is Ravindra Jadeja who makes an appearance at No. 20 in the list.

Bowling Points:

For the bowlers, the parameters are slightly more complicated, as is the fact that straight multiplications will not work, because the lower a bowler's figures are, the better he has performed (a lower average/economy rate is better than a higher one).

The factors I have taken in account while awarding points for bowlers are:

1. The number of wickets taken and the strike rate

2. The number of balls bowled and the economy rate.

The reason for clubbing the factors as above is that for any given economy rate it is more credit-worthy for a bowler to sustain it over a higher number of balls - i.e. it carries greater weight to return an analysis of 4-0-16-0 than 1-0-4-0. The method followed is similar to that for the batsmen, and involves relative economy rates. The Relative Economy Rate (E) of a bowler is the tournament's average economy rate divided by his own. So if the tournament's average economy rate has been 8.00, and Bowler A has bowled his overs at 6.00, his Relative Economy Rate will be 1.33.

If O is the number of balls a bowler has bowled, he would then get O * E points for economy rate.

For his wickets, the points are assigned thus:

Each wicket will fetch him the number of points (W) that an average wicket has cost in the IPL, i.e. W = Total number of balls bowled/ Total number of wickets taken.

This would then be multiplied by his Relative Strike Rate (S1), which will function on the same principle as the Relative Batting Strike Rate, and the Relative Economy Rate. The reason the wickets taken are multiplied by the relative strike rate is so that a part-time bowler who might have picked up a stray wicket or two does not get inordinately rewarded for the same. Therefore the total number of points a bowler gets (B1) is:

B1 = (O*E) + (W*S1).

To homogenize the ratings between batsmen and bowlers, B1 is multiplied by a constant so that both can be measured on the same scale.

For IPL-2, the average economy rate has been 7.31, while the average strike rate for bowlers has been 21.07. Each wicket has been worth 25.67.

The top 15 bowlers, with their normalized ratings are:

		Team	Balls Bowled	Runs	Wickets	Econ Rate	Strike Rate	B1
1.	RP Singh	Deccan	358	417	23	6.99	15.57	480.53
2.	Anil Kumble	Bangalore	355	347	21	5.86	16.90	456.26
3.	Ashish Nehra	Delhi	306	346	19	6.78	16.11	396.24
4.	Lasith Malinga	Mumbai	297	312	18	6.30	16.50	382.61
5.	Pragyan Ojha	Deccan	321	348	18	6.50	17.83	371.22
6.	Munaf Patel	Rajasthan	209	241	16	6.92	13.06	361.66
7.	Irfan Pathan	Punjab	302	390	17	7.75	17.76	328.57
8.	Yusuf Abdulla	Punjab	168	241	14	8.61	12.00	316.77
9.	Muralitharan	Chennai	300	261	14	5.22	21.43	316.69
10.	Pradeep Sangwan	Delhi	280	360	15	7.71	18.67	286.58
11.	Dirk Nannes	Delhi	297	372	15	7.52	19.80	286.05
12.	Shadab Jakati	Chennai	174	217	13	7.48	13.38	284.68
13.	Amit Mishra	Delhi	252	294	14	7.00	18.00	279.98
14.	Shane Warne	Rajasthan	300	365	14	7.30	21.43	267.68
15.	Harbhajan Singh	Mumbai	264	256	12	5.82	22.00	256.60

There aren't too many surprises in this list too, though Lasith Malinga has suffered due to his team's early exit - a few more games and wickets and he could well have been heading the table. RP Singh just about manages to edge the titanic Anil Kumble into second place, and that is the beauty of numbers - though most people would pick Kumble as the bowler of the tournament, pure numbers without qualitative analysis give the crown to RP Singh.

The only thing that remains is to factor in the fielding points - which I have taken as 15 each for a catch or a stumping - and arrive at the combined value of each player in the IPL.

So, taking into account batting, bowling and fielding, the Most Valuable Players of this year's IPL have been:

		Team	Batting Points	Bowling Points	Fielding Points	Total Points
1.	Adam Gilchrist	Deccan	646.51	0.00	270	916.51
2.	Matthew Hayden	Chennai	722.73	0.00	75	797.73
3.	Suresh Raina	Chennai	524.42	149.18	105	778.60
4.	AB de Villiers	Delhi	567.24	0.00	195	762.24
5.	Rohit Sharma	Deccan	386.31	253.17	75	714.48
6.	Dinesh Karthik	Delhi	384.68	0.00	255	639.68
7.	Irfan Pathan	Punjab	229.78	328.57	60	618.34
8.	RP Singh	Deccan	11.30	480.53	105	596.83
9.	T Dilshan	Delhi	470.92	46.91	60	577.84
10.	Jacques Kallis	Bangalore	355.26	136.53	75	566.79
11.	Brad Hodge	Kolkata	398.82	135.04	30	563.86
12.	Anil Kumble	Bangalore	54.88	456.26	45	556.14
13.	Herschelle Gibbs	Deccan	385.43	0.00	165	550.43
14.	Yuvraj Singh	Punjab	357.01	117.02	75	549.03
15.	JP Duminy	Mumbai	394.58	92.88	60	547.46

A word about Matthew Hayden and AB de Villiers: The men have been in such awesome form that they have outperformed people who have brought bowling, batting and fielding skills to the table. They were, without a doubt the batsmen of the tournament, and had Delhi performed better in the semi-finals, AB could well have given Hayden a run for his money. No less impressive are RP Singh and Anil Kumble who have made it to the table largely due to their bowling efforts. Everyone else is an all-rounder of sorts with Gilchrist and Dinesh Karthik being the wicket-keeper batsmen, except for Herschelle Gibbs who also makes it to the top 15 due to his batting.

Adam Gilchrist has been the star Aussie though. In much the same way as last year, a retired, legendary, all-time great Australian cricketer, led a bunch of initial no-hopers to IPL glory. People will remember Gilchrist's innings in the semi-finals when they talk about IPL 2.0, but do not forget that he ended the tournament as the second highest run-scorer - and that after scoring a duck in the finals. In some way, it was fitting that he fell to Anil Kumble, seeing whom perform would have given immense joy to many an Indian fan.

Appropriately enough, the winner of the Man-of-the-series is also the Most Valuable player by a quantitative analysis - which might go some way towards demolishing Navjot Sidhu's oft-quoted dictum about statistics, viz. "Statistics are like bikinis - they reveal a lot, but not the most essential parts!"

Disclaimer: Yes, I know - I've put that pic up, just to get more hits on the site :-)

IPL Predictions

this article has been published here

With IPL version 2.0 all set to dazzle its audience in the same manner that IPL 1.0 did, it’s time to stick one’s neck out and jump into astrologer territory and make predictions for what will unfold. There is the risk of ending up with egg on my face, but there is also the infinitely satisfying reward of having an ‘I-told-you-so’ smirk on my face to consider. So here goes (drumrolls reaching a crescendo) – Ladies, Gentlemen and those who merely watch the cricket to ogle at the cheerleaders – the predictions for how teams will fare:

The four semi-finalists this year are likely to be the following:
Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils, Mumbai Indians and Rajasthan Royals.

Here is why:

Both Chennai and Delhi have used a smart buying strategy and built a very good core of Indian players. Bearing in mind that of the playing XI, seven have to be Indians, this is a hugely important fact.

Mumbai and Rajasthan are also well balanced, and with Rajasthan you have to take into account the X-factor of Warne’s charisma and the franchisee’s talent-spotting ability.

To take my prediction (and my sticking-out-neck) further, Chennai and Delhi are the teams that I see contesting the finals on the 24th May. They edge out the other two, simply because they look better balanced in all the departments of the game – they have powerful batting lineups and bowling attacks with considerable teeth. Mumbai and Rajasthan are also brimming with potential – and I can’t wait to see how Ryan McLaren and Graham Napier of Mumbai and Tyron Hendersen of Rajasthan perform – but they’re not quite at the level of Chennai and Delhi.

I see Punjab and Hyderabad at the bottom of the table this season. Hyderabad has a very weak bowling attack, and as last year showed, an awesome batting line-up on paper is no guarantee of even an average performance. Their batting would need to click in every match for them to have a chance at all – and I don’t see that happening.

Change Hyderabad to Punjab in the above paragraph and you have the story for the King’s Eleven, except that their batting, if anything, looks weaker than Hyderabad’s on paper. Punjab will be sorely hit by the absence of Brett Lee, James Hopes and Sreesanth – leaving their bowling looking like an orphaned child. They sorely need Shaun Marsh to be fully fit and available, which also doesn’t seem likely.

The Bangalore and Kolkata outfits seem to have got their strategy wrong. After Pietersen leaves, the Bangalore captain would be Jacques Kallis – whereas he hasn’t done enough last time to merit an automatic selection in the starting XI. Including him at the expense of either Boucher, or Cameron White or Ross Taylor might not be the soundest strategic move.

As for Kolkata, their balance – like last time – doesn’t look good enough. They will also be sorely hit by the absence of Pakistani and Australian players. And Chris Gayle is available for only 2 weeks. If that wasn’t enough, Buchanan (who probably needs to stop reading Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ and start reading Don Bradman’s ‘The Art of Cricket’) has stirred up a hornet’s nest with his multiple captain theory. Somebody ought to tell the man, that captains are not like orgasms – multiple ones are not a good idea.

It's a Mad, Mad World

[this article has been published here]

There are times in life when everything you do seems pointless. You reach for something, only to find that it has eluded your grasp, you say something and nobody understands you. The world in general looks topsy-turvy.

And then you pick yourself up off the floor, try to stand steadily - and if you're lucky, get helped/carried/dragged home so that you can sleep off the after-effects of 20 straight tequila shots.

However, sometimes the world doesn't seem to make sense even when there is an acceptable level of blood in your alcohol system. It still feels as if you're viewing the world through a tequila haze.

Sample this:

Mohammed Azharuddin (that great patriot), has now found the ideal platform for himself. He can now be in one of the few places in this country where his crimes seem like those of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, in comparison to the deeds of his soon to be colleagues.

"Former Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin has begun a new innings. He has joined the Congress and is likely to contest from Hyderabad in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Azhar says, 'I have always been a fan of the Congress party, the Gandhis." [Link]

If the prospect of a man who has been pronounced guilty of selling his country while doing a job that others would kill for is the cake, then the icing is this interview, where Azhar says "I am good at making speeches."

Having grown up watching Azhar being far more eloquent with the bat than he was with his tongue, especially when he muttered 'webattedbadlybowledbadlyandfieldedbadly' after every Indian defeat (a number of which he had probably himself engineered), I thought that the interviewer did a commendable job at not laughing in his face.

Those who have seen Azhar the batsman, speak of his wonderful timing, elastic wrists and sublime strokeplay.

Those who have been hurt by Azhar the bookie, speak of his wonderful timing, elastic wrists and sublime strokeplay and where they can all be shoved.

Meanwhile, that master of self-effacement - Anil Kapoor - has said that Slumdog Millionaire is like his story. [Link]

The critics will point to the fact that losing your mother in riots, growing up as an orphan, being almost blinded and having to steal to survive while growing up, are as far removed from Mr. Kapoor’s childhood – which he spent attending Our Lady of Perpetual Succour High School in Chembur (one of the more upscale schools of the time) – as modesty is from his persona.

But what the heck – every Slumdog has his day.

And if the day is long in coming, some people go looking for it – by er… climbing a tree:

“Tense moments prevailed at Saidapet sub-jail here when two inmates, accused in robbery cases, climbed a tree, in protest against not being produced in court for a long time.” [Link]

You would think that this kind of monkeying around would be appropriate only for certain members of the Australian cricket team who shall remain nameless. Apparently not.

One can’t really blame the prisoners though – maybe they were inspired by the story of cops having to refund bribes with interest.

“Eleven years ago, when SHO Gulshan Rai and assistant sub-inspector Rao Ramkumar winked at murder accused Mukesh Kumar, asking the terrified man to shell out Rs 30,000 to escape torture at the police station, they hardly knew they would one day have to actually return to the victim not just the principal amount but add interest of a healthy 9%.” [Link]

Personally, I’m rooting for the day when Monday mornings are declared illegal. That would tie in nicely with the tequila haze.