The other day I happened to meet some of the top observers of cricket at a informal drink and dine evening . Among other topics , the T20 world cup was also discussed . The observers who were present on the occasion to express their views included a former batsman Tejoe , cricket observer and a key think tank to the Indian cricket strategies Venkatesh Kumar and S Saini from COTN .

The ICC World Twenty20 kicks off in 6 days with amazingly lop-sided looking groups. Considering this mega event and the different it has made to the world cricket order and to the careers of some of the cricketers like Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh. The top probables which was unanimously reached to were 4 teams India , Pakistan , South Africa and Black Caps New Zealand.


First up Venkatesh said that the two teams he could put his money were New Zealand and Pakistan . He discounted India echoing his opinion as par with Vengsarkar. He said that India and South Africa have played too much of Cricket last 6 months and are fatigued.
He said

I think Pak are one of the favorites definitely.. not only do they have a very good 20-20 record (better win-loss ration than all international teams) but they also boast of the 2 top wicket takers in all T20 internationals - Gul and Afridi.Plus they are also the runners up.

His arguments against S Africa were that very pinpointed . He said " Have they ever won a World Cup? Knowing their luck, rain, a silly run out, or a blazing West Indian bat will keep them away from the title. In the recent past Johan Botha has captained South Africa in T20s. Smith is going to have a hard time taking over.

The final punch that he gave was "South Africa usually start every championship as one of the favorites, and we all know where they end up.I don't see why this time will be any different."

We he had a point well made that 12 of South Africa's world t20 squad members appearing in 7 different IPL teams, its going to be one hell of a confusion-galore dressing room with tons of strategies that neither Arthur nor Smith will know how to comprehend.

Ace batsman Tejoe on the other hand said that it has always been in the T20 form that the underdogs have taken the limelight and eventually win the crown . Eventually it will boil down to which of the unpredictable performers make their day and change the course of the game .

He says

I honestly believe any of the top8 can win, except for England who I just can't see winning 2 games in a row . India and SA are probably strongest on paper but it is being played in English conditions so I'd hesitate in backing India, Zaheer Khan will be key . I'd put my early money on SA but then again I'd never bet on 2020 as it's a bit of a lottery sometimes . My money is on the Black Caps NZ ... looks like a bunch of great guys who are very talented and unpredictable ... should be the series that makes Ross Taylor and Ryder into superstars in my opinion

.

Tejoe was harsh in his evaluation of Australia . He said that it will be interesting to see the Australian squad when it comes out. There has been no assemblance of a settled T20 squad for Australia since it's inception. Seems anyone who can hold a bat or roll the arm over has had a game in the last few years.

Another top Ranji star from North Zone S Saini had the final wrap up comments on India's chances

He said

I think its a good squad, the only change I might have made would've been to have Abhishek Nayar in the side instead of Jadeja, as the squad already has plenty of spin options, another medium-pace all-rounder would have been handy (especially in English conditions).

Who ever wins , seems like another fest for the Cricket fans across the globe . COTN will be closely following the tournament and will bring all the views and analysis.

To comment on the views expressed by the expert panel, send your feedback to cricketonthenet@gmail.com

Kevin Pietersen is on a serious mission after making his most shocking admission to date: "I'm not very good at Twenty20 cricket, am I?"

On the eve of the World Twenty20 in England, Pietersen made the searingly honest appraisal of his short form career so far, but has vowed to make amends next month.



Despite being one of the world's finest batsmen in Test and one-day cricket, Pietersen's Twenty20 career lags too far behind for his liking and he is determined to do something about it.

In fact, Twenty20 cricket hasn't been particularly kind to him at all on the field and for a player of Pietersen's talents and mindset, serial failure simply won't do.

He has made just one Twenty20 50 for England, averaging just 26, and even though he became the most expensive player in the Indian Premier League his record there wasn't much better.

Bangalore Royal Challengers paid $1.55million for him to be their inspirational batsman and captain, but he could only muster two wins from the six games he played, and when he returned home to resume England duties the team reached the final without him.

"I made a great captain didn't I" chuckled Pietersen. "We won two out of six when I was there and then Anil Kumble took over and they got to the final.

"People are going to take pot shots at me over the IPL and the money I earned in two weeks, but it was such a great experience. I loved it.

"To captain the side four days after arriving and not knowing what some of the guys did and not knowing most of their names made it a huge task for me. I wasn't as focused on my batting as I was on trying to learn guys names and what they did.

"The more you play T20 cricket the better you become and I haven't played a lot of it, and I'm not very good at it.

"The more I play it though the more I'll catch up with my records in Test and one-day cricket definitely. I just know that I will get much better at it. I've worked out some new theories about how to go about my batting in T20 and that will make a difference, hopefully starting next week!"

Thankfully for England fans it is rare for Pietersen to consistently fail and the World Twenty20 that begins a week today against Holland is the perfect time to put things right.

Usually when Pietersen puts his mind to something he succeeds, in fact he is probably guilty of switching off when the pressure and intensity is not great enough. He is a big match player and he knows this World Twenty20 will be as big as it gets.

It was less than two years ago that Pietersen called Twenty20 a 'silly game with silly shots' but he admits his attitude to the game has since changed.

If he can start firing and the rest of the side can make their home advantage count, not even the missing Andrew Flintoff should dampen England's chances of glory.

He added: "The way T20 has now turned into a huge, huge business and the way that it has grown into having World Cup T20 tournaments, playing for your country means that my opinion of it has changed hugely.

"You have to be serious about it. You're playing for England in a World Cup at home, that is serious. It is no longer a silly game with silly shots, I want to win it full stop.

"The standard of cricket in the first tournament probably wasn't as good, whereas now the seriousness with which the guys are putting their heads to it means that the standard is going to be really high.

"I'm so excited about this tournament, it is going to be huge. It is a massive event, and since we have never won one of these global tournaments, it is about time we did and that is why it is such a big thing for me.

"It is a shame that Fred is not available, but we can definitely win the T20 World Cup if we play good positive cricket consistently."

PIETERSEN RECORD

Tests: 52 RUNS: 4494 AVE: 50.49 100s: 16 50s: 14

Odi: 92 RUNS: 3127 AVE: 46.67 100s: 7 50s: 20

T20: 15 RUNS: 379 AVE: 26.78 100s: 0 50s: 1

1. Rod Marsh & Ian Botham : When Botham took guard in an Ashes match,Marsh welcomed him to the wicket with the immortal words: "So how's your wife & my kids?" Botham replied: Wife's good but your kids are retarted."

2. Robin Smith & Merv Hughes: During a 1989 Lords Test Hughes said to Smith after he played & missed: "You can't *****ing bat". Smith replied to Hughes after he smacked him to the boundary: "Hey Merv, we make a fine pair. I can't *****ing bat & you can't *****ing bowl."



3. Merv Hughes & Javed Miandad: During the 1991 Adelaide Test, Javed called Merv a fat bus conductor. A few balls latter Merv dismissed Javed. "Tickets please", Merv called out as he ran past the departing batsman.

4. Merv Hughes & Viv Richards: During a test match in the West Indies, Hughes didn't say a word to Viv, but continued to stare at him after deliveries. Eventually Viv said, "This is my island, my culture. Don't you be staring at me. In my culture we just bowl." Merv didn't reply, but after he dismissed him he announced to the batsman: "In my culture we just say ***** off."

5. Ian Healy & Arjuna Ranatunga: Healy's legendary comment which was picked up by the Channel Nine microphones when Ranatunga called for a runner on a particularly hot night during a one dayer in Sydney... "You don't get a runner for being an overweight, unfit, fat c*nt!!!"

6. Shane Warne & Daryll Cullinan: As Cullinan was on his way to the wicket, Warne told him he had been waiting two years for another chance to humiliate him. "Looks like you spent it eating," Cullinan retorted.

7. Glenn McGrath & Eddo Brandes: After Brandes played & missed at a McGrath delivery, the Aussie bowler politely enquired: "Oi, Brandes, why are you so fat?" Brandes retorted, "Cos every time I ***** your wife she gives me a biscuit".

8. Ricky Ponting & Shaun Pollock: After going past the outside edge with a couple of deliveries, Pollock told Ponting: "It's red, round & weighs about 5 ounces." Unfortunately for Pollock, the next ball was hammered out of the ground. Ponting yelled to Pollock: "you know what it looks like, now go find it."

9. Steve Waugh and Parthiv Patel : Amidst all the hype surrounding his farewell match, Steve Waugh had to contend with an unexpected dose of his own medicine from a player half his age. As Waugh fought a grim battle to stave off defeat in the series-deciding fourth Test in Sydney, 19 year-old Indian wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel tried to unsettle the veteran batsman through some banter.

The baby-faced Patel egged on the 38 year-old stalwart to play one of his sweep shots one last time. The India 'keeper was saying, 'Come on, just one more of the famous slog-sweeps before you finish' Waugh replied: 'Look, show a bit of respect. You were in nappies when I debuted 18 years ago' .

10. Special Mentions:

Inzamam-ul-Haq once told Brett Lee to " stop bowling off spinners".

In the recent Karachi Test when Irfan Pathan came to bat in 2nd Innings Afridi shouted two times " O mera Shehzada aaya ! " (Oh! my prince has come) .

Hoggy: Welcome to My World: The Peculiar World of Matthew Hoggard (Hardcover)
by Matthew Hoggard (Author)
I can’t pursuade you enough. Having a Memorial Day long week gave me a chance to read some books, and Matthew Hoggard’s is one that I’m making my way through. It is like no sporting biography I’ve encountered before, which is just as well: most are tedious and premature. Hoggy, on the other hand, has written his with an England career behind him.


Like the man himself, it is unashamedly bonkers and refreshingly obscure. There are scribbles and cartoons (of his wife, Sarah, though they look as though his toddler son Ernie drew them), and whole paragraphs dedicated to his dogs. He attributes his run-up to a quirk in the layout of his garden when he was young. And he is surely the first cricketer, nay sportsman, to mention masturbation as a key aspect of surviving long tours overseas.
I can’t urge you enough to read a paragraph << CLICK TO READ of it . It’ll surely bring a smile to your face

Ashes 2009 is drawing close and the itinerary for Ashes 2009 is announced for the good news of Ashes followers.

The England and Wales Cricket Board, Chief Executive David Collier and Cricket Australia James Sutherland announced the Ashes 2009 schedule.

David Collier says in a statement, “already there is great expectations surrounding the nPower Test series (Ashes) which will follow the twenty20 World Championship in an exciting summer of cricket.”

Now that’s true! The 5 test Ashes series begins from July 8 2009 at the Sofia Gardens in Cardiff, the new stadium, and the second test will be at the Lords (this has been that way; very much conventional), the next at Edgbaston, the fourth at Headingley and the 5th at Oval will complete the Ashes series.

One cannot forget the Ashes 2005 as it still ticks my memories to be one of the fiercest cricketing battles I ever witnessed and England regained the Ashes with a 2-1 after 18 years. Remember Andrew Flintoff’s form in the series? The interest generated for Ashes from then on has been multiplying every year in England.

This year; however, Australia will be missing 3 biggies including Shane Warne (one cannot think of separating Ashes from this amazing spinner. Can you?), Glen McGrath and Adam Gilchrist (I am a big fan of this wonderful ambassador of the game).

Intentionally, the bad boy fame Andrew Symonds is not picked for the Ashes 2009.

With 3 all time greats and attacking all rounder Andrew Symonds not featuring in the Australian team, what can you expect?

Well, the new Australian line up will be showing fresh, young blood raring to go; that’s the spirit Ashes generates between the 2 teams if not anything less.

While England also is in the transitional phase. Ashes might not see the 4-man pace package of Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, Simon Jones and Andrew Flintoff playing together for England.

Instead, there will be Ryan Sidebottom and Stuart Broad continuing the pace proceedings and we can only hope to see Andrew Flintoff coming after his surgery.

2009 Ashes Series Schedule
1st Test (8 July - 12 July) England vs Australia (SWALEC Stadium, Cardiff)

2nd Test (16 July - 20 July) England vs Australia (Lord’s, London)

3rd Test (30 July - 3 August) England vs Australia (Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Birmingham)

4th Test (7 August - 11 August) England vs Australia (Headingley Stadium, Leeds)

5th Test (20 August - 24 August) England vs Australia (The Oval, London)

The month long twenty-20 extravaganza has come to end and it is now clear that the shifting of venue could not affect IPL Season 2. Starting from the franchisers to the broadcasters and every single stake holder, IPL Season 2 ended in a happy note. Everybody including the champs and the finalist and also those who could not quite make it to the top layer - all of them seemed to manage higher revenues, thanks to a re-worked deal between BCCI and Multi Screen Media (MSM) that owns Sony channels.

Since the very beginning it was marred in controversies. Finally the tournament had to be relocated for security concerns. Those who predicted that Indian Premier League outside India will die like fish outside water are now left with eggs on their faces. For not only every stake holder has made a profit this year, they also managed to increase their revenues despite the increased logistic costs.

And not only the Deccan Chargers and Royal Challengers that have made profits on the merit of their performance - every single team has been reported to have made a profit out of this year’s tournament. Knight Riders, the team that finished off at the bottom of the league table, has managed to make the third-highest profit of Rs 25.8 crore in IPL Season 2. The highest profit maker of the season however, is Team Jaipur which has made a cool profit of Rs 35.1 crore at the second season of Indian Premier League.

The prize money for the winner is Rs 4.8 crore, Rs 2.4 crore for the runners-up and 1.2 crore each for the losing semifinalists; Rs 80 lakh for the team that finished fifth (Kings XI Punjab), Rs 70 lakh for the sixth placed (Jaipur), Rs 50 lakh for the seventh (Mumbai Indians) and Rs 40 lakh for the lowest one. However, what has really helped the franchises accumulate such huge revenues is the sharing of the common pool of the broadcasting rights.

According to the renegotiated contract with WSG, BCCI got about Rs 335 crore, which is straight 90% jump from the figure in the original contract that was signed for ten years.

BCCI’ s profit from last year’s IPL was Rs 350 crore, while Sony’s profits from ad-sales alone stood at Rs 270-280 crore for the last season. But this year, both the entities decline to divulge the exact figures. “We are yet to calculate the profits,” said a BCCI official from South Africa. This year Sony has doubled its air-time rates to sell the 10 second spots for anything between Rs 3.75 lakh and Rs 4 lakh. While the MSM officials confirm the rise in the revenues, they too refuse to disclose the actual figure. “We have increased our revenues significantly over the last year, but can’t disclose figures,” MSM president (network sales) Rohit Gupta said.

However, it was the unlikely rise of the Royal Challengers to the prominence that sent the punters on tenterhook, while leaving the bookies all smiling. One bookie described the tournament as worse than race betting with no pre-tournament favorites having made it to the finals. In all, over Rs 5,000 crore were exchanged during the championship, informs a bookie on condition of anonymity. With hardly any pre-tournament tips working in their favor, punters could make little money, while it was really the day for the bookies when Deccan Chargers beat the Royal Challengers in the final.

In a nutshell, it was Deccan Chargers that won the title, but each team tasted success-that is on the cash side.


** With Inputs from Cricket360

Results are Unpredictable: Sometimes bottoms up
I think 20-20 is such a game that we can't predict the result.It can be the team's day when that day is any player's day of the team.I do agree that sticking to the basics would do better and the reason why the Deccan chargers have made it is the same reason.RP and Rohit came in touch with bowl and bat respectively and later also made it with bowl at some instances and Symmo will always contribute in team's performance.But the jackpot for the DC is the Gilly's form.It has been a consistent performance from Adam, and has impressed a lot with gloves.In fact all of the team members has contributed a lot when required.

Muti dimensional players are a farce
One of the reasons why DC lost last years was that they selected too many multi dimensional players, Afridi, Symonds,Styris, Rao. These days there is hardly a true all rounder in the world who can take care of both batting and bowling consistently, Afridi everybody knows he can’t bat anymore, Symonds failed with the ball bigtime,Styris I don’t know why he was hired in the first place, Rao batted well but his bowling was not that good.Bits and pieces players failed to execute their roles and in the absence of quality bowlers they failed to defend even decent totals.Laxmans personal form also didn’t help much.But I have always maintained that the Chargers always had 4 foreigners,RP Singh, Rohit Sharma and Laxman as the players in the side. Rest were making up the numbers.

Wham Bham licence does not work always
I think DC management must have now realized the difference between a slogger and a quality batsman,the definition of a T20 specialist batsman has been changed.Anybody can bat like Afridi, give them a Wham Bham licence and a little net practice even your tail enders will loft the ball for a few boundaries. The risk associated with such batting is always high and only those players who have wide range of shots will be more successful as it has been proved by Gambhir, Marsh, Sehwag, and Sharma.I think DC will trade a few of their players this year.
This season of IPL 2 was very exciting. Deccan chargers, who was at the last place in the year 2008, has finally proved its vigor by clinching the title of this season. Certainly, the captaincy of Gilchrist proved to be a boon for DC. No doubt, the Banglore Royal Challengers have given a good fight to DC, but at the end of the day "jo jeeta wahi sikander."


Soccerisation of cricket in process
What I dd not like was the owners Rami Reddy , Dr Mallya, SRK and Preity Zinta sharing the dugout with players . It puts them in even more pressure than there actually is, it doesn't make one bit of a difference in the matter of inspiring them to even bigger heights.They are way better off minding their own business and sit tight and let the players do their job. This is in a way soccerization of cricket what Roman Abramovich trying to do to Chelsea's .

Captaincy matters
Talk about change of guard like DC and KKR and BRC , all have changed their captains in due course . One of the reasons why DC won was the fact that the change of captaincy was done with least fuss unlike the multi episode dramatic transition in Knightriders and the marginally less so change of guard in the Royal Challengers. Both Shahrukh Khan and Vijay Mallya should take lessons from DC . Shahrukh in particular should understand that showmanship may win superstar status but does not win cricket matches. Neither do abrasive blogs and potshots at living legends.

KISS (Keep It simple stupid )

RR were amongst the highest runs as well as lowest totals but what DC did was to stick to the winning formula was of sheer simplicity and back-to-basics attitude. The good old cricketing wisdom of runs, catches and wickets winning matches holds good for any form of cricket let alone bonsai cricket. Laptop analyses do not take you to beyond the KKR heights is now proved.

League maturing up
4 of the 8 captains in the league were foreigners and the conversion to win the cup for the foreign captains has been 100% . Also on the tactics front the DD captains faltered midway goes on to say that the players and captains alike are still learning their basics on the job . some imported talent has worked for some franchisees but wont continue for long . Eventually the next generation has to take on the rains and relieve the icons from the game . Bonsai will remain bonsai till the next line to guard does not mature up and demystify the fact that this form is for the retired players . The likes of Pathan , Jadeja , Rohit and also Kohli need to come forward and prove the fact that IPL is a league and not a retirees den to make gold in 30 days for 3 years .


What say folks ??