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Thursday, July 2, 2009
FEATURE - Broad looks to turn potential into performance
LONDON (Reuters) - Stuart Broad, as befits the son of former England opener Chris, has always looked a cricketer of the highest pedigree.
An Ashes series against Australia starting next week will be the perfect opportunity for potential to be translated into consistent achievement with both bat and ball.
After 17 tests, Broad averages 31.35 with the bat which gives a hint of the ability good judges predict will make him into a test class all-rounder.
But his 46 wickets have cost an expensive 37.95 runs each and it is in this area the selectors will expect a marked improvement as England strive to regain the Ashes surrendered so tamely in Australia two years ago.
Broad, still only 23, saw himself primarily as a left-handed batsman like his father before he had a sudden growth surge and turned himself into a pace bowler.
He was selected for the England A side in the West Indies at the age of 19 as a replacement for James Anderson, his new ball partner now in the national side.
Broad made his England debut in Sri Lanka in 2007 then cemented his place in the side on the following tour of New Zealand where two of the regular pace attack, Matthew Hoggard and Steve Harmison, lost form.
He made an immediate impression with his stylish late-order batting and bowled with pace as well as proving an athletic and versatile fielder.
AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE
For a period in his early test career Broad experimented with a more open action, which may have helped avoid the back injuries that plague so many modern fast bowlers but meant he moved the ball less. He can also be expensive even when bowling well.
But on the tour of the Caribbean this year he impressed with his determination and aggression on pitches without a semblance of life and he has reverted to his natural action. He is now among the first names pencilled into the England side.
At an England media day this week, Broad said he had made his first class debut for Leicestershire four years ago when England regained the Ashes after 16 barren years.
"It was a great summer to start playing professional cricket and it inspired me to bigger and better things and gave me the real excitement to push and play for England," he told reporters.
"It's all moved on very quickly for me but it will be a fantastic opportunity. Hopefully we can play the same sort of cricket as 05, that's why it was so famous. There was always something going on.
"The key in that series is the ball moved off the straight and the wickets offered a little for the bowlers. Hopefully the grounds will be similar.
"No one wants to see slow and low wickets. In the Caribbean we played on three or four of those and it was turgid to play in and watch."
Broad, who played club cricket near Melbourne, said he had learned a lot from his time in Australia.
"I had a feisty six months there after leaving school. It was aggressive and it taught me a lot," he said.
"But I've never played against Australia and neither have a lot of boys in the dressing room. It's going to be new for both sides with a lot of players who haven't experience what an Ashes summer is like. They will be fresh and free-minded."
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FEATURE - England's Bopara plans to prolong golden run
LONDON (Reuters) - Three consecutive ducks in his first three tests were the worst of times for Ravi Bopara. Centuries in his last three test innings are the best.
Through both early failure and recent success, England's new number three has tried to keep sport and life in perspective.
"I work very hard on the player I want to be (but) I didn't think too much about what happened in Sri Lanka. I didn't change a lot," he told reporters recently.
"I just try to enjoy it. You can put pressure on yourself and make too much fuss about it. I think it's important you go out and enjoy yourself. When you're a kid you don't worry about anything."
Bopara, who was dropped after scoring 42 runs in his first five test innings against Sri Lanka, seized the moment in the Caribbean this year when Andrew Flintoff flew home injured.
Selected at number six for the Barbados test, Bopara responded with 104. He was dropped for the next test when the selectors opted to play an extra bowler and keep faith with Owais Shah.
True to his philosophy, Bopara remained upbeat and was rewarded by winning selection ahead of Shah, Ian Bell and Michael Vaughan in the problematic number three spot for the opening test against West Indies at Lord's in the return series.
ULTIMATE CHALLENGE
Bopara came to the crease with Fidel Edwards at his fiery best. He survived a venomous first ball and went on to bat with increasing authority to score 143.
He followed up with 108 in the second test in Durham to become only the fifth Englishman to score three test centuries in a row.
In the Twenty20 tournament that followed, Bopara and Kevin Pietersen were the only England batsmen to live up to their reputations and now he faces the ultimate challenge in a key batting spot against Australia.
Shane Warne, still the master of psychological warfare in retirement, has suggested that Bopara may not be up to the challenge.
The former Australia leg-spinner said Bopara was "not an international cricketer" and was "someone who's too worried about how he looks".
Warne's comments imply that Bopara, an open admirer of the great Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar, is more concerned with style than runs.
It is a criticism that Bopara emphatically rejects, although he knows the most effective riposte will be to bring his form against West Indies into the Ashes series, which starts next Wednesday.
"Over the last couple of months I've earned my place on the team," he said. "I've always wanted to bat in the top order for my country. To do it against the best in the world will be a great challenge for me."
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BCCI drops Deodhar Trophy to make way for domestic Twenty20
The waning interest in one-dayers and the growing popularity of the Twenty20 version was evident at BCCI's Tour Programmes and Fixtures Committee meeting here on Wednesday, as it cancelled the Deodhar Trophy, the country's premier zonal one-day tournament, to reintroduce the T20 domestic competition in the itinerary.
Ironically, the reason the Deodhar Trophy had to make way for the Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament was the early start to the Indian Premier League's Season III. A top official conceded that that the March 18 start of the IPL a month ahead of schedule as compared to Season I left the committee with the near-impossible task of fitting in too many tournaments in too few days. "The change of the IPL schedule was non-negotiable. So we had to drop a tournament. Since there were already a few one-day tournaments, we dropped the zonal event," he said.
The 50-50 tournaments that will figure in the 2009-10 calendar are the Ranji one-dayers, the Challenger Trophy and the Corporate Cup.
There was also a strong view among the committee members to re-introduce the T20 Mushtaq Ali Trophy a tournament that got dropped from the calendar last year because of the IPL. "With the growing interest in the shortest version and importance given to the version internationally, we thought bringing it back was a good idea," said a committee member.
Another change in the domestic season involves the Duleep Trophy, the zonal four-day tournament, which has also been crunched. Unlike the long-drawn league format it's played in, the Duleep Trophy will now be played on a knock-out basis.
Besides these decisions, the committee also finalised the venues for the seven-match one-day series between India and Australia, which will be played between October 25 and November 11, right after the ICC Champions Trophy in South Africa.
Guwahati, Delhi, Mumbai, Mohali, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Jaipur will host matches during the series against Australia. The match-schedule will be finalised after the logistics are worked out, the BCCI announced in a statement.
However, the fixtures for Sri Lanka's tour of India and the tri-series in September between Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand will be finalised in August at the BCCI working committee meeting.
Sri Lanka is scheduled to tour India for three Tests and five ODIs soon after Australia's tour to India.
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No auctions, no stars, but parallel T20 league still making an impact
Twenty20 has hit the headlines consistently over the last two years, for reasons as varied as India's title triumph in the inaugural world championships two years ago, the success of the Indian Premier League and the rise and fall of the rebel Indian Cricket League.
For the past eight years though, away from the glare and the riches of the high-profile format, an entire parallel infrastructure of Twenty20 cricket has been running successfully, catering solely to the backward classes and the economically weaker sections of society, with matches played out in far-flung villages such as Nabha in Punjab and Fazilka in Rajasthan.
Established in 2001, the Indian Twenty20 Cricket Federation (ITCF), with its headquarters based in Patiala, is registered under the Societies Registration. It registered its trademark and copyrights in 2006. A full-fledged congregation of 32 state units, empowered with its own Anti-Doping Policy and Anti-Corruption Unit, the ITCF has as many as 1,00,000 players currently under its umbrella.
The body categorically states that it's not affiliated to the BCCI or the ICC and is hoping instead that the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs gives them recognition, wherein the certificates awarded by them is accepted by the public sector undertakings and colleges from players under sports quota.
On its website, the ITCF calls itself as the "national governing body for Twenty 20 and Twenty 20 innings cricket in India and the original promoter of T20 Cricket in India." Even so, they have a completely non-confrontational approach as far as the BCCI goes.
"We are making efforts to provide an official platform to the poor sections of society, people who nurse a desire to play cricket in remote areas and tehsils but can't get anywhere near the mainstream because of the high costs involved and the lack of opportunities. This is a federation of the aam aadmi (common man) and what we're doing is not in conflict with the BCCI," says Piyush Rana, founder and secretary general of the association.
"Our federation is on similar lines as the School Games Federation of India. The fact that we are able to sustain ourselves for eight years and going strong says as much about our popularity."Interestingly, Piyush was also a consultant with the Indian Cricket League.
The BCCI had reacted sharply to the formation of the ITCF back when they had started off and has since ignored them. They have, however, gone from strength to strength, managing to generate funds and filling up the stadiums. The federation has a simple membership policy of Rs 600 per annum, and uses the interest accumulated, apart from local sponsorship, to conduct tournaments.
At present, they organise national and zonal tournaments in five categories U-14, U-16, U-22, U-25 and seniors. Their tournaments are named after famous Indian freedom fighters and are organised on grounds owned by state governments.
Besides the regular state units, the ITCF also includes Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Uttranchal and Chattisgarh under its umbrella all associates and affiliate members of the BCCI. They have plans, Rana says, to tap into the North East as well.
The federation is also affiliated to the International T20 Cricket Federation based in Florida, USA. The international body has 23 member countries, including Italy, Poland, Japan and Malaysia apart from the regular cricket-playing nations.
The BCCI and the ICC have been doing all they can to tap into the seemingly bottom-less market for the game's shortest version. As it turns out, there's plenty still left over.
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BCCI finalises venues for ODI series against Australia
Mumbai, July 1 (IANS) The Indian cricket board Wednesday finalised the seven venues for the one-day series against Australia in October-November.
The Tour Programme and Fixtures Committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that met here to decide the fixture of the 2009-10 season at the Cricket Centre decided that Guwahati, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mohali and Nagpur will be hosting the series from Oct 25 to Nov 11.
The BCCI in a statement said that the schedule will be finalised after working out the logistics.
The fixture for the tri-series in Sri Lanka involving India and New Zealand will be finalised at the BCCI working committee meeting in August.
The committee also decided that the Duleep Trophy will be played on a knock-out basis while the inter-state Twenty20 tournament will be named the Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy.
There was some disappointment for women cricketers as they will not get to play any Tests in the 2009-10 season and would be concentrating on ODIs and Twenty20s.
In the junior group, both the C.K. Nayudu (under-22) and the Cooch Behar Trophy (under-19) will be played in elite and plate format on home and away basis.
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More than 1000 teams in one tournament? Believe it
THE HIMACHAL Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) has successfully pulled of an enterprise that most would not even undertake. The HPCA has just presided over a tournament in which as many as 1017 teams from every nook and corner of the state took part.
The tournament, played in 55 venues across the state, kicked off on May 1 and finished on June 16. Even as most people sat glued to television sets during the Indian Premier League and the T20 World Cup, cricket enthusiasts in hamlets of Himachal Pradesh turned out in hordes to try their hands at the newest format.
"The idea behind the tournament was to spread the sport to rural areas of the state. We were expecting a good response, but to have more than thousand teams compete in the tournament was overwhelming," said Sanjay Sharma, a HPCA spokesman.
The fact that any club or individual from within the state could form a team and enter the tournament - there were no restrictions on age of participants even - helped the HPCA get such a massive response. "We had teams from all 12 districts of the state. The tournament was first played out at the district level, from where the winner and the runners-up made it to the next round where we had 24 teams," said Sharma, adding that final was played under flood lights at the Dharamsala Stadium.
It's the unusually high number of teams that could put the tournament in the record books. "Once we received this overwhelming response, we checked up with officials of the Limca Book of Records (LBR) to enquire if they have higher participation registered with them. They told us this was the highest, and would consider it in their next year's edition," said Sharma.
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Pietersen warns Aussies of their reverse swinging bowlers
Melbourne, July 1 (IANS) England's star batsman Kevin Pietersen Wednesday asked Australians to be wary of their reverse-swinging bowlers who scripted the baggy green's downfall in the 2005 Ashes.
Even though only Andrew Flintoff remains from the four-man pace and swing battery that inspired England's only Ashes triumph in the past ten series, Pietersen believes another generation is on the move.
'I'm sure the Australians are hoping that the weather doesn't stay like this because (Jimmy) Anderson, (Stuart) Broad and Flintoff bowling reverse swing the way they do, I certainly don't want to be facing that,' Pietersen was quoted as saying in The Australian Wednesday.
The hot, humid and unstable conditions that aid swing bowling are predicted to last at least until the beginning of the first Test in Cardiff next Wednesday.
'If the weather stays like this the ball will certainly reverse swing,' Pietersen said. 'We are going to be really tough to play against. I am looking forward to watching their batters play.
'Even if their batsman conquer our reverse swing, I look forward to watching that because it will take some serious batting to play against guys who bowl at 90 miles an hour (144km/h) and reverse swing it both ways. It will be very good cricket to watch.
'When I saw Anderson bowling the way he did against the West Indies -- 91, 92mph and swinging it both ways -- I said, 'How do you face that'.
'I know as a batsman who goes OK against swing bowling, to face that is the biggest test of all.'
In 2005, England's pace attack bowled wonderfully as a unit. Flintoff was the leading wicket-taker with 24 at 27 and Simon Jones claimed 18 at 21 in four Tests.
Australia's batsmen managed just three centuries in five Tests and only Justin Langer averaged in the 40s.
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