India Australia Series Review

Hi Cricket Lovers 

Even before the start of this test Clarke had made it clear that they will not take anything less then a 4-0 win over India and that's what Australia showed us how to employ their skill at the most to achieve what they intend to.

The test started with Clarke winning the toss on a wicket which looked a much better wicket to bat on compared to the last three pitches.It all started well for India as they were able to take 3 top order wickets by lunch time but when Ponting and Clarke came on to the crease it seemed like India were facing their Nemesis again. These two have been the thorns in the way of the Indian bowlers who did not seem to find a way to get this pair dismissed quickly. This pair amassed a record 386 run partnership before Clarke was dismissed. The way these two have batted throughout the series they never looked in any trouble except for Clarke who had a bad start to the series at Melbourne.

Ponting looked comfortable even though he had not scored a century for 36 innings. He has 544 runs runs to his name while Clarke had 626 runs to his name thanks to a double and a triple century to his name. While Indian team and only 2 major contributors to the batting where the youngster Virat scored 300 while Sachin was mere 13 runs behind with 287 runs. While bulk of the runs Virat got were from the last 2 tests with him being  the only Indian player to score a ton with Sachin missing the chance of scoring his 100th Ton twice in the first 2 tests.

Australian Bowling attack was young but potent with Ben Hilfenaus leading the wickets tally with 27  followed by Siddle with 23. While Zaheer and Umesh Yadav were the next 2 in line with 15 and 14 wickets to their names. None of the two spinners had a bit of success in this series till the last innings of the test when Nathan Lyon too 4 top order wickets and even accounting for Sachin's demise in what can be his last innings in Australia as a Test Player. Only two positives came out of last test for the indians were the century scored by Kohli showing that this young player has a potential to become a good test player while Wriddhiman was really good behind the stumps hence giving indian selectors a good back up for Dhoni in the future series.

Preview of the 4th Test @ Adelaide

Hi Cricket Lovers

Leaving behind the Perth Test Debacle where the Indian Team could not manage to outscore Warner innings of 180 we can only think of one positive thing which came out of this test for the Indian team. It was the bowling of Umesh Yadav on the 2nd day where he bowled his heart out to pick up his maiden 5 wicket haul. All the batsmen failed barring  Virat Kohli whose inning of 75 in the 2nd innings showed that he has some test potential in him.

I think it would be a blessing that Dhoni will not be playing the last test as he was banned by ICC for slow over rate for the Indian Team in the Perth Test. It might be good for him to get a break before a long T20 and ODI series start where he can focus on the strategies he is going to adopt in the upcoming series while sitting in the dressing room watching his team play without any pressure in the last test at Adelaide.

Hearing from the reports it seems that Adelaide pitch will not be as Bowler friendly as the last three have been. Hence, there is a possibility of the Indian Batsmen showing what they can do as a batting unit. All this though will depend on how well they start this test. If they all stay positive i think the Indian team has the capability of turning things things around and gather a momentum which they can carry through the rest of the series in which they still have to play 2 T20's and at least 10 ODI's before the finals which again will be a best of 3 affair.

SCG Test Match Review

Hi Cricket Lovers

Sorry for the delay. I was away from Cricket for almost a week due to some personal loss. leaving that aside there was still cricket going on in Australia.
SCG was hosting it's 100th Test and All cricket lovers were betting on Sachin 100th International ton and that would have meant a tally of 5 consecutive tons in first innings of New Year tests for him.

When India won the toss and elected to bat on a bright sunny day it seemed like a very good decision but the things did not work out as planned hence due to a very good bowling effort from the Aussies and some rash stroke-play from the Indians they skittle out for a meager total of 191 on a bright sunny day. It looked to be a even contest till Zaheer Khan was able to take out the 3 top order wickets by the end of 9th over at the score reading 37 but when the 2 experienced players like Ponting and Clarke survived the early stint of the Indian fast bowlers and ended the day without any more loss the match started turning in their favour. Day 2 totally belonged to the Aussie captain who played through the day completing his maiden double hundred. Ponting departed at 136 which was his first Test century after 36 innings. This innings said that he still has something left in him to give back to his country in Test matches. Aussies lost only 1 wicket for the loss of 622 runs till they declared with Michael Clarke at the score of 329 not out. This was a surprise for most of the viewers as most of us would have thought Clarke could have at least tried to over take Mark Taylor's mark of 334* if not break Brian Lara's 400*.

Clarke thought otherwise and declare which gave them 9 sessions either to bowl out India and win the match chasing if need be. In the Indian 2nd Innings all the focus shifted to Sachin's 100th century which was stopped by none other than the triple century maker Clarke with his slow left arm spin. He was able to bowl a delievry which draw Sachin into a stroke and turned enough to take an edge which ricocheted off Haddin into the hands of Hussey at 1st slip. Most of the SCG crowd turned silent for a moment but then gave Sachin a standing ovation for the innings which might be his last at SCG in Tests for India.

After that India started losing there way and got dismissed about 68 runs short of making Australia bat again. The comeback pacer Hilfenhaus was the main wrecker of the Indians with 2nd 5 wicket haul of the series. Clarke was a unanimous decision for the Man of the Match while Australia have take an unassailable lead which will mean that India can at Max draw this series by winning the last 2 tests. The upcoming Test at Perth will be the most testing of All for the Indian as history suggest the pitch will be fast one with a lot of grass on it. The media are calling the pitch to be 'the Green Demon' which is very fearsome as it sounds.

As of now I think if the Indians have to show how good fighters they are they should repeat there performance at Perth from 2008 and defeat the Aussies using the Pace attack which is bolstered with Zaheer finally making it to Perth this time around. Umesh and Ishant will be very potent on this pacy and bouncy pitch for sure if they maintain there composure for all the days where they bowl their hearts out.

That's all for now.

Till then Bye

Boxing Day Test analysis using Impact Index

Happy New Year 2012 to all Cricket Lovers

First of all i will give you all people a brief introduction to Impact Index as to how it is calculated.Jaideep Verma is the creator of Impact Index

 I have been associated since May 2011.

source : Impact Index Methodology

Impact Index, unlike every other cricket statistical system in the world, is completely transparent in its workings. It is possible to do all these calculations manually too, at the back of an envelope, once the system is understood. However, to save time and energy, we have automated the entire system and are in the process of running all cricket data through it. A simplified step-by-step list of its mechanism is given below, in case you want to understand how it really works. This methodology is for limited over matches. 1) Based on the innings totals, a base figure is generated for the match. This is measured in runs, for all players (batsmen and bowlers and wicket-keepers). 2) Every performance in the match is thereafter measured against this base figure (as a ratio). One IMPACTpoint is procured when the performance is equal to the base. That is seen as merely the par performance for the match. 3) For a batsman, IMPACT points are garnered for a) Runs Tally b) Strike Rate c) Pressure d) Chasing and staying not out in the second innings. e) Partnership-Building. 4) The Strike Rate IMPACT can go into negative or positive depending on his strike rate vis-à-vis the base strike rate in the match. 5) The Pressure IMPACT only measures pressure that comes from fall of wickets. It kicks in when a batsman comes in to bat in a tough situation (as defined from how many wickets have fallen) and crosses the base runs. Tough situations are defined as per the base runs. 6) For a bowler, IMPACT points are garnered for a) Wickets (the top 7 wickets and the last 3 have different values, in most cases, as per the circumstances of the match) b) the Economy Rate (again, calculated against the base economy rate of the match - in T20 matches, the economy rate has a slightly higher value, as per the circumstances of the match)  c) Breaking Partnerships (its limit is set by using a multiple of the base) d) Building Pressure (taking quick wickets within the base). 7) Catches, stumpings and credited run-outs all get extra / IMPACT points (a fraction of the base). The winning captain also gets an addition to his IMPACT (again, a fraction of the base). Wicket-keepers get flat points for doing an assigned job. 8) All the above points are measured against the base figure, and are therefore ratios of the base in some way (which is fundamentally why they are measurements and not ratings).

Given below are the overall Impact Index of the players on the scale of 0-5 (only exceptional performance sometimes go above 5). The green tick symbol (√) signifies awesome performers while the red cross( × ) signifies the below par performers for the test match. Yellow exclamation (!) means Average performance in comparison to the top performers.

We all know that the key contributors for Australia in the Match were Ricky Ponting,Michael Hussey, James Pattinson, Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle while for India it was just the duo of Zaheer Khan and Umesh Yadav. It was after a long time it was seen that two of its fast bowlers were the major contributors to the what could have been a well fought victory if the at least 2 of its batsmen performed as well as they had done in this match.

Ben Hilfenhaus score of 5.79 showed that he deserved the Man of the match award ahead of Pattinson. Another reason behind that was the fact that Hilfenhaus had not played for Australia since Ashes last year and  to be the main reason behind Indians losing their last 8 wickets for just 68 runs. Pattinson score of 5.18 was also helped by his knock of 37 not out in the 2nd Innings which helped Aussies build a lead which was tricky to chase down on the pitch which was assisting fast bowlers. Though Pattinson really bowled well in the final innings when his fiery pace bowling softened the master blaster a bit which then resulted in the master giving away his wicket to a wide delivery from Siddle. Ricky Ponting scored twin sixties with the 2nd Innings score being significant because of the state of play he came at while Aussies were reeling with pressure at 2/17 then soon at 27/4 and then he built a partnership with Hussey whose 89 was the highest impact innings (3.5 out of 3.88 came from his knock) of the match.

Umesh Yadav was the best performer with a score of 5.42 from the Indian side attributing to the 7 wickets he took in the 2 innings. He was fiery keeping up his pace throughout the match. He got pressure building points during both the innings as he was responsible for taking quick top order wickets. Zaheer also added 7 wickets to his name which resulted in a score of 5.15. It was an exceptional performance considering that he had returned straight from an Injury after a long break of 4 months without any practice behind him with just a 2 first class matches and the tour opening practice game.

As i said earlier if any 2 of the batsmen (say Sachin and Sehwag) performed and scored while chasing it would have meant with India would have won the MCG test after 30 years since the last time they won here.
A positive start from Sehwag like the one he did in the Chennai test against England when he scored a quickfire 83 of just 68 balls which resulted in India chasing down a stiff target of 387 very easily would have helped a lot.

There were a lot of below par performances from both the teams with the worst performance coming from the new off-spinner Lyon who just took a solitary wicket in the match. Shaun Marsh's return from injury was not very good as was Laxman's and Virat's performance in the match. Ishant's bowled really well in the first innings but luck did not favor him at all and he went wicket-less.

The wicket keepers Dhoni and Haddin both performed well behind the stumps but did not contribute well with the bat.

Hope you guys like the section and will keep updating the post match analysis like this for the SCG test after its over. Will continue with my end of day reviews too for the SCG test where everybody is waiting for Sachin who averages an astounding 221 at this venue will try to complete his 100th Ton in the 100th Test at SCG which will be an icing on a cake for all the cricket lovers.

Till tomorrow
Bye