Farewell Zaheer Khan

"The toughest call in a cricketing career is when one has to walk away from the game itself. You almost 'will' yourself and want to push that few, extra miles but then the body, after nearly two decades, decides not to respond."

These were the opening words of the farewell statement by Zaheer Khan, without doubt one of India's greatest fast bowlers and cetainly the best left-hand pacer the country has produced.

The numbers first - 610 wickets in 92 Tests, 200 ODIs, 17 T20Is in a career spanning 14 years. These are numbers to be proud of. And to this add being a member of a World Cup winning XI. But sheer numbers cannot define his contribution. He was the leader of India's pace attack and its de facto bowling captain over a large part of his career. And he left quite a few memories to cherish for the Indian fan. Here are my favorite ones.

1. The yorker to knock out Steve Waugh's stumps in the ICC Knockout event in Kenya in 2000. What a wonderful sight it was to see a yorker delivered by an Indian fast bowler.
2. 4 consecutive sixes off Henry Olonga to end the innings against Zimbabwe. Yet India contrived to lose that game.
3. The jellybean incident against England which riled him up so much that he proceeded to destroy the English batting and take India to a rare away series victory.
4. World Cup 2011 - where he finished as the highest wicket-taker and came up with this memorable quote - "As a bowling unit I think I am doing quite well". Probably a slip of tongue but truer words have seldom been spoken.
5. The atrocious opening over in the 2003 World Cup final, where he was bowling wides and sledging Gilchrist. But this was more than compensated in the 2011 final where Zaheer started with 3 maidens on the trot.
6. And the sometimes comical, sometimes exasperating but always entertaining batting.
7. And finally for this - from a game in which he was not even playing

Thank you for all the wonderful memories Zaheer Khan!

As he himself closes out his statement.

'Zak is Back' is perhaps a headline that may come my way again, as I have every intention of giving back to this game and our wonderful country which gave this kid from Shrirampur the opportunity to chase and live his dream!

Full Text of the statement

Ranji Trophy 15-16: Jharkhand vs Saurashtra

Match Summary: Jharkhand (168 & 122) lost to Saurashtra (205 & 86/2) by 8 wickets

Points: Jharkhand 0, Saurashtra 6

A second consecutive loss and the season goes from bad to worse. This time the game barely lasted 2 days. The pitch was a minefield with both batting sides unable to do much about it. The home team though had the inspirational figure of Ravindra Jadeja who picked 13 wickets and top scored in his team's first innings. And that made all the difference in the result.  This was the Sir Jadeja performance which the Indian team expects but rarely gets.

Game Notes

• Varun Aaron is leading the Jharkhand squad.
• Quite a few changes made from the first game by the Jharkhand team with seamers Ajay Yadav, Rahul Shukla & Jaskaran Singh dropped and their places taken by Aaron, Kaushal Singh and Vinayak Vikram
• Vinayak Vikram made his first class debut

Highlights

Young Ishan Kishan's blistering 87 off 69 balls in the 1st innings. An innings which got a whole cricinfo article for itself (Link)

Season Stats

Top Scorer: Ishan Kishan 118 @ 29.59

Most Wickets: Shahbaz Nadeem 6 @ 17.67

Points Tally - 0 after 2 games. Lying at the bottom of the table. Still there is some time and we need to get in a few wins now.

Coming Up Next - Another away game against Kerala.

Ranji Trophy 15-16: Jharkhand vs Services

Match Summary: Jharkhand (45 & 192) lost to Services (161 & 78/1) by 9 wickets

Points: Jharkhand 0, Services 6

Being shot out for 45 on the first day of the new season is not the kind of start anyone was expecting. The game was over in the first innings itself. The bowlers did fight back, but the Services last wicket stand added 43 crucial runs and ensured a healthy (given the context) lead of 116 runs. The batsmen performed slightly better (not much though) in the second innings. Services were left chasing a target of 77 which they managed easily but lost a wicket and lost out on the bonus point as well.

Game Notes

• Varun Aaron not playing was a surprise given that a big home series against South Africa is around the corner. 
• Services was supposed to be one of the easier games. We had beaten them easily last time around. 

Highlights

Nothing much to note here except for a couple of 50s in the second innings by Virat Singh & Saurbah Tiwary.

Season Stats

Top Scorer: Virat Singh 62 @ 31.00

Most Wickets: Rahul Shukla 4 @ 21.75

Points Tally - 0 after 1 game. Currently lying in 8th place. 

Coming Up Next - An away game against league leaders Saurashtra who thrashed Tripura in their opening encounter.

Farewell Brad Haddin

First the hard numbers – nearly 7000 runs and 500 dismissals in 66 Tests, 126 ODIs, 34 T20Is in an international career spanning 14 years. All pointing out to the fact that Brad Haddin was certainly one of Australia’s better wicket-keepers (and coming from the land of Marsh, Healy, Gilchrist et al thats quite something)

He had to wait a while to make his Test debut due to the presence of a certain Adam Gilchrist. Yet Haddin ensured that the absence of even the irreplaceable Gilchrist wasn’t felt much in the Aussie line-up. A feisty character, a team man but he was also the kind of player who took the “Gentleman” out of the Gentleman’s game.

Exhibit A 

He sledged the Kiwi players in the 2015 World Cup Final because they had been “nice” to Aussies in an earlier group game. In an interview to a radio station Haddin is quouted as, “You know what? They deserved it. They were that nice to us in New Zealand and we were that uncomfortable. I said in the team meeting: 'I can't stand for this anymore, we're going at them as hard as we can … I'm not playing another one-day game, so they can suspend me for as long as they like.” 

Exhibit B

From another New Zealand – Australia match (Link)

Dislodging the bails with your hand while claiming a bowled - might have gotten away in earlier time but not in HD era.

Why do the Kiwis get his goat so much? Maybe because they are nice folks.

So farewell Brad Haddin. You had a good run in international cricket but the sport will be a lot nicer, albeit less interesting, without characters like you.

Arbit Stats #46: Opening Low

The ongoing India-Sri Lanka series has been a a bad one for the opening partnerships. After 12 completed opening partnerships, the highest opening stand is 15 - which is the lowest, opening stand in any series featuring three or more Tests ever.

Kudos to Dhammika Prasad, Ishant Sharma and co. for this achievement.

Galle 2015 - The Soon to be Unremembered Classic

Test Match #2176, Sri Lanka vs India, Galle

It had all the ingredients for a Test Match Classic – A match about which reams of newsprint should have been written and thousands of blogs published. One to been remembered for ages. Yet somehow it wasn’t.

Day 1&2: The home side began by winning the toss and getting knocked over for a paltry score on the very first day. The tourists take a huge lead of 192 runs built on the back of a huge third wicket stand which itself surpasses the home side’s tally. And then quickly remove both the home team’s openers for ducks by the close of the second day’s play. They are in the driver’s seat with not many thinking of the match going beyond the third day.

Day 3: The nightwatchman is dismissed off the very first ball. Little partnerships happen but the big wickets keep coming. At lunch with half the side back in pavilion, the home team trails by nearly hundred runs and an early finish to the day is on the cards. But their wicket-keeper has other ideas and produces one of those fearless, nothing-to-lose counter-attacks. The deficit is chipped away rapidly and then the lead starts building up. A small one at first, it soon enters the irritating category and then progresses into the “we have a match on our hands” zone. The home side eventually get dismissed after setting a 176 run target. The visitors lose one of their openers but watch out the rest of the day’s play. They are still very much in driver’s seat. 

Day 4: Its the Independence Day for the tourists. But the runs are very hard to come by as the batsmen are shackled up by the home spinners. The same spinners who had no effect in the first innings. The wickets have start tumbling. One after the other, the visiting batsmen are snared. And the home side manages to secure a big come-from-behind victory. Meanwhile the visitors are left stunned, trying to figure out how this dramatic turnaround came into being.

As if the dramatic action on the field wasn't enough, there were lots of other stories

• The series is the last for one of the home side legends. The home supporters are taking every opportunity to bid a grand farewell to their hero. 
• The tourists have a new captain who has been talking a lot about playing aggressively and getting the results after having spent quite some time getting hammered all around the globe.
• The tourists get a big first innings lead based on one big partnership featuring a man playing with a hairline fracture in his hand. Add the chance that he might not even have played this game if his regular opening partner had not been injured.
• The home side’s wrecker-in-chief in the second innings is an ageing, rotund spinner who himself is coming back from injury. He picks up seven in the second innings after none in the first. Quite a turnaround in fortunes.
• In between one of the visiting players sets a new world record for the most catches by a non-wicket-keeper in a Test match.
• And finally, it was one of the Big Three playing against a (relatively) tiny cricketing nation. The richest team in the world taking on a team whose players sometimes are not paid (One of their ex-captains on being fined by ICC said, first I need to be paid to be fined).

An exciting match, a dramatic turnaround, a potential David vs Goliath battle, a retiring legend, records getting broken, players battling through injury, umpiring errors – in short all the ingredients to be count as an all-time classic.

Except it was another India vs Sri Lanka match – already forgotten.

A lesson for the cricket administrators here - contests need a context. And rivalries are developed with time not frequency

Jharkhand Domestic Schedule: 2015-16 Season

The home season is around the corner and as is wont with all the cricket boards, some more tinkering has been done by BCCI for the coming season. While the Ranji Format remains the same, the Vijay Hazare & Syed Mustaq Ali Trophies have undergone a revamp. The zonal structure has been dropped and the teams have been divided into four groups. Also the Mustaq Ali Trophy has been brought forward to be played ahead of the IPL Auctions (although there is a question mark on IPL itself, but that's another issue) so that the teams get a better idea of the domestic players. 

Slipstream Cricket will try to continue following the Jharkhand team's fortunes in the new domestic season. Last year wasn't a good one though the team did try some promising youngsters. Lets see what the new season has in store.

Following is the team's schedule

Ranji Trophy - Last season was a bad one, though there was a flourish at the fag end with two outright wins in a row, but the team is still in Group C.

1. October 1-4, 2015: vs Services (A)
2. October 8-12, 2015: vs Saurashtra (A)
3. October 15-18, 2015: vs Kerala (A)
4. October 30 - November 2, 2015: vs Goa (H)
5. November 7-10, 2015: vs Jammu & Kashmir (H)
6. November 15-18, 2015: vs Tripura (A)
7. November 23-26, 2015: vs Himachal Pradesh (A)
8. December 1-4, 2015: vs Hyderabad (A)

The knock-out matches will take place after the conclusion of the Vijay Hazare & Mustaq Ali Trophies.

Vijay Hazare Trophy - In the revamped groupings, Jharkhand is in Group B

1. December 10, 2015: vs Jammu & Kashmir
2. December 11, 2015: vs Gujarat
3. December 13, 2015: vs Kerala
4. December 14, 2015: vs Haryana
5. December 15, 2015: vs Karnataka
6. December 17, 2015: vs Railways

All matches in Karnataka

These will be followed by the knock-out stages. The Vijay Hazare Trophy winner also plays in the Deodhar Trophy

Syed Mustaq Ali Trophy - Groupngs have revamped like the Vijay Hazare Trophy. Also a great opportunity for the players to shine and land an IPL contract. And maybe stake claim for a place in the 2016 T20 World Cup squad as well.

1. January 3, 2016: vs Tripura
2. January 4, 2016: vs Rajasthan
3. January 6, 2016: vs Punjab
4. January 7, 2016: vs Jammu & Kashmir
5. January 9, 2016: vs Saurashtra
6. January 10, 2016: vs Kerala

All matches in Kerala. 

These will be followed by the knock-out matches

Jharkhand play Jammmu & Kashmir is all three formats.

Arbit Stats #45: Spinning Ducks

Test Match No. 2176 - India vs Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka 2nd Innings
FDM Karunaratne b R Ashwin 0
JK Silva b A Mishra 0

Thus becoming the first pair of openers to be both dismissed for zero by spinners in the same innings.

Combination of spin-friendly pitches, innovative captaincy, good bowling and scorecard pressure.

Bell Rings in 5 Urns

Slipstream Cricket would like to congratulate its patron saint, Ian Bell on his tremendous achievement of being part of five Ashes winning campaigns - only the second Englishman after Sir Ian Botham to do so since the Second World War.

Says a lot about the longevity of Bell and also the frequency of the Ashes Clashes - he has also been part of 2 losing campaigns including 2 whitewashes Down Under.

Image Source - Cricinfo

Arbit Stats #44: Surnames

Found this gem from twitter.

England's playing XI for the Trent Bridge Test:

Cook

Lyth

Bell

Root

Bairstow

Stokes

Buttler

Ali

Broad

Wood

Finn

11 names comprising of a total of 53 letters between them - the smallest tally in the 2175 match history of Test cricket.

Just to put a perspective to this figure - Sri Lankan XIs usually have more initials than this.