Posts Tagged ‘Shakib al Hasan’

Lankan Diary: Day 10 – Pakistan fans confident of lifting the World Cup

Posted: September 26, 2012 by thecognitivenomad in Cricket, World T20 2012
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Chandrasekhar Jayaramakrishnan

We noticed a couple of Pakistani fans in the resort where we were staying in Mt. Lavinia. They`d just checked in the previous day, and we sensed an opportunity to pick their brains on suggestions that Pakistanis is among the favourites to lift the trophy this year.

Arshad and Zoheb live in Birmingham, UK and are here in Sri Lanka until the finals. They`re very confident that their team will repeat the feat they`d witnessed in England back in 2009 – when Pakistan, under Younis Khan`s captaincy, were crowned World T20 champions.

Arshad feels that their strength lies with the top order batting – a solid start, he feels, could be the difference between a par score and a mammoth total. Zoheb, on the other hand, backs the bowlers to even defend a miserly score, if such a situation arises. Understandably, he picks Saeed Ajmal as the bowler who could hold the trump card to take Pakistan all the way.

Zoheb would have had concerns in the manner in which the Bangladeshis piled up a challenging score of 179 yesterday. That skipper Hafeez backed his own abilities at the start of the innings seemed bemusing – given his lack of effectiveness. He might have done well to take himself off the attack earlier.

This paved the way for Shakib – arguably one of the better Asian all rounders today – to craft an outstanding innings that took Bangladesh to the total they eventually gathered. The only glitch was a series of amusing misunderstandings with skipper Mushfiqur Rahim when calling for runs – a string of errors that couldn`t stop keeper Akmal and Afridi from sharing a laugh.

Although I would imagine they wouldn`t have had half a heart to smile when Sohail Tanvir dropped a dolly offered to him by Rahim at mid-wicket. I must have looked at the replays half a dozen times and the comicality of the drop never fails to make me laugh. That he pointed to the lights and pulled down his shades afterwards marked out what is idiosyncratic of fielders who drop catches – what brings one laughter can leave another bewildered. I have a strong belief that this video will have a healthy shelf life on YouTube.

Arshad, on the other hand, would`ve taken heart out of the Pakistani`s batting performance. He`d pointed out a healthy start as a key factor in either posing large totals, or chasing larger ones. Imran Nazir`s batting style makes it easy for the audience (and predictably, his team mates) to accept that his audacious strokes are what lay the foundation in the top order – given the snail`s pace (in the context of T20) at which Hafeez historically paces his innings. I guess they understand each other`s game, and this seems a method that the Pakistanis are certain of in working to their favour.

As they progress to the Super 8, tougher tasks lay ahead. To have India, Australia and South Africa in the same group is enough to ingrain fears of an early slip, but unpredictability is what drives T20 cricket forward today. And it will continue to.

The Myth About Captaincy

Posted: September 9, 2011 by The CouchExpert in Cricket, Opinion
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Srikrishnan Chandrasekaran

Kapil Dev, Allan Border and Clive Lloyd led their respective teams to their first world cup titles

The hottest topic that is discussed during any series in the sport of cricket is about captaincy and captains. Captains from both winning and losing team will be called up after the completion of every match to talk about the positive and negative of that day’s match. The Indian media is very famous for the creating hype about the series and also the way they convert small information into an atom bomb which sometimes results in good players being dropped. (One example is the former Indian captain Ganguly). In case the Indian team ends up losing the series, they invite former players from India and other countries to discuss their failures and especially about the captaincy.

Recently the Bangladesh captain and vice captain were sacked from their responsibilities for losing in Zimbabwe. Every country is king on their home soil irrespective of the opposition. Even though Zimbabwe had not played much cricket over the years at international level, they will have played a lot in those conditions domestically. It is really difficult for any team to play against a team which has not appeared in international arena for few years.

Even the first test match between Pakistan and Zimbabwe was very closely contested wherein Zimbabwe players missed several opportunities of catching Pakistani batsmen. Generally it is Pakistan who are renowned for missing opportunities while fielding. It was a nail biting finish to the first ODI as well. Even though Pakistan is better side than Bangladesh with the amount of experienced cricketers in their side, they still found it difficult to win a match against them convincingly so far.

In the recent years, there has been improvement in the Bangladesh cricket team. They should be given some more years of time to stabilize at the top level. At present they don’t have any players who have got good experience in International level to lead the team.

Fans, reporters, former players, editors across the cricket world often talk about the captaincy. There were astute people who were good captains between 1970 and 1990 – like Clive Lloyd, Allan Border, Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Mike Gatting.

Clive Lloyd led the West Indies to 2 consecutive World cup wins in 1975 and 1979 and to the final of 1983. The WI team during 1975 through 1983 had got real talent comprising of great fast bowling and excellent batsmen.

Kapil Dev became  the first Indian captain to win the World cup in 1983. He led a team which had a good mix of quality batsmen and bowlers.

Allan Border became first Australian captain to win the World cup in 1987. The team had real class batsmen and good quality bowling.

Starting 1990 there has been only a marginal improvement in terms of captaincy. There are still a lot of talk towards some of these captains being great captains – Mark Taylor, Arjuna Ranatunga, Wasim Akram, Nasser Hussain, Shaun Pollock, Steve Waugh, Richie Richardson, Ricky Ponting, Stephen Fleming, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Grame Smith, Kumara Sangakkara, MS Dhoni, Andrew Strauss as they have won more no. of matches and tournaments for their respective countries.  Are they really so?

These captains lead a team which had got at least 2 out of 3 bases covered with some of the best cricketers. Qualities like very good batsmen, best all-rounders and great bowlers. There is nothing really great when you leads a team which has such brilliant talents. Even 50% of the players perform, the team ends with a win. None of these leaders really took over the team when it was at the bottom 3 or 4 in the ranking table and finished their career as captain in the top 2 position.

It seems almost mandatory rule a team should have a captain and a vice captain. To project that for every team players have been picked and given the position to lead. None of these captains really led their team to a tournament victory with less skilled players in the team.

Some of these captains holds the skill of utilizing talents existing in their team at the right time of a match / tournament and succeeded with good results. It is part of a job of a captain. There are only few eligible players who can be considered as emerging captains like Shakib Al Hasan, Misbah-ul-Haq and Bredon Taylor. Their teams are currently in the bottom 5 of the ranking tables. Let’s see their performance after 2 years as how they transformed their lead role talent to form their teams to next level.