5 idiots

Way back in 1988, Mohinder Amarnath had called the Indian cricket team selectors as a bunch of idiots. 21 years later, they continue to prove Jimmy correct..!!
After the Indian cricket team lost the home ODI series to the injury hit Aussies, the selectors had the tough task of uplifting the morale of the down players and the team on the whole and at the same time select a 'good' team for the home series against the in-form Lankans, but what they presented can easily be called as more of a joke than team selection. Except for the selection of Sreesanth(Dhoni finally seems to have forgiven him for his running around act after taking his wicket in the IPL) and Zaheer Khan in the team, the rest of the team selection seems like a joke.
-Three spinners were picked up viz. Harbhajan, Mishra and Ojha.Now we all know that Dhoni prefers to play a single spinner in his lineup unless the wicket is too spin friendly and given the quality of spinners in the Lankan side, it will be a foolishness if they decide to make such a wicket.
-The out of form Ishant was again given a chance with the likes of Nehra and Munaf ignored.However, the selectors cited the reason that Nehra needed some rest and himself opted out of the test series.
-Given India's 'strong' batting lineup with Sehwag, Sachin, Yuvraj, Laxman, Dhoni, Gambhir and Dravid, it seems completely pointless to pick up Tamil Nadu's Murali Vijay and Subramanium Badrinath in the side with no likely role for them..!
-The team was chosen with the match between the Board President's XI and Sri Lanka yet to start, so it could be thought what the players would play for, as cited by the BP XI captain Rohit Sharma.

so... the selectors proved their critics right.... once again..again and again...!

the magician.... is back

Maybe he has got more critics than fans....but he remains the undisputed master of world cricket.

Almost 600 international appearances and 30K international runs later, a man who will celebrate his 20 years in international cricket on november the 15th 2009 perhaps won't regret anything in life more than the fact that after a splendid act of scoring 175 against australia at 36 years at a strike rate greater than what he did against the same opposition at sharjah when he was just 25, could not make his team win the match and eventually the series from a very commanding position.

Seeing Sachin Tendulkar play on the 5th of november 2009 at the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium, Hyderabad was something everybody would compare with his act against the aussies at sharjah more than 11 years ago, where the same man took his team from a position where they were even thinking if they'd qualify for the finals to winning the series.The only difference in the two acts were that on the former occasion Sachin made his team win, but on the later one his heroics went in vain as the Indian team once again proved that there is no resurrection of them without the little master.

To me, as a fan of indian cricket, it was a more heartening loss than the WC'07, T20WC'09, or CT'09 exits, and will continue to hurt me as long as i watch the indian team play.

Lets hope that the master decides not to retire from international cricket for quite some time now, otherwise god save the Indian cricket team.