India - no longer bad tourists

[cricfever]

If Hoggard had been fit we'd have had a better chance, if Harmison had we've have had a much worse one.

lol..that was funny Richard

 

[Richard]

I doubt you're yet fully familiar with dear old haroon... sadly I feel that way ( ) about his posts quite a bit.

(Hope this isn't considered attacking the poster... )

 

[viktor]

i consider india pretty lucky with geting away with first test.. after that they really performed well.. to some it up they perform good in the days that the luck was in thier side.

the question that i want to through in here is that if mathew hoggard and harmison was here would the result be different?

no.

 

[pup11]

I think its about time that rain and bad-light factors are taken out from international cricket, cricket boards around the would should seriously consider having roofs for their stadiums so when it rains it doesn't affect the match.

 

[honestbharani]

Give me a break India prepared a dust-bowl track at Mumbai to win the only test they won in that series and in the Chennai test in which they still needed 200 odd runs on the last day and history tells us that India have lost test matches in those situations too. But at the end of the day its the end result that really matters.

what history? Gillespie batted for 4 hours in that pitch and you are saying India could not have scored 200+ runs on the last day? Gimme a break... That pitch was so slow and good for batting (not for quick scoring, but for proper old school test match batting) that even I could have scored a few there.... It was just too slow for any bowler to be really effective by a lot. The fact that Bhajji only tasted success when he lowered his trajectory while bowling is ample proof of that....

 

[R_D]

If not for rain, Australia's wouldn't have won last series in India.

If Powar wasn't such a dickhead.. might've still been able to draw the match even with rain.

 

[Richard]

Powar?!

D'you mean Patel?

 

[R_D]

Powar?!

D'you mean Patel?

Pretty sure Powar was part of the Nagpur debacle.... or was that someone else?

 

[Richard]

Oh, the Nagpur game? Thought you mentioned rain, which IIRR only had an impact during the game at Chennai. Where Parthiv Patel also missed a stumping off Martyn, but for which India would probably have won in 4 days before the rain even arrived.

The team at Nagpur, incidentally, was Chopra, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Kaif, Patel, Agarkar, Kumble, Kartik, Zaheer Khan.

Didn't the debacle side of things chiefly centre around (whichever idiot was in charge of the Vidarbha Cricket Assocaion)'s stupid decision to deliberately sabotage his own national team's prospects by ordering a green pitch, just because he didn't get on with Dalmiya?

 

[Salamuddin]

I'd say India are a better team away from home than South Africa...and probably Pakistan too, certainly since 1 january 2001.

 

[Sanz]

If Powar wasn't such a dickhead.. might've still been able to draw the match even with rain.

Yeah. But you know I cant say that. If I said that I would be accused of being a Jgmohan Dalmiya and Sourav Ganguly supporter. The anti Ganguly wave was so strong back then that people put all the blame on Ganguly. The focus was not on the politics Powar played there but on how Ganguly faked an injury to stay out of that mach.

Indian Cricket politics was at worse during that series and that kinda added up to all the drama.

 

[Sanz]

Pretty sure Powar was part of the Nagpur debacle.... or was that someone else?

Nah you are right on spot.

"....It remains to be seen how much bounce the pitch will have, as the wicket has been relaid since Nagpur's last Test, but it will surely seam around, and Australia's stand-in captain Adam Gilchrist may be tempted to make India bat first if he wins the toss.

The sight of the pitch has dismayed Ganguly and it underlines the political tensions which grip cricket in India.

Local authority, the Vidarbha Cricket Association (VCA), has long been at loggerheads with the Board of Cricket Control for India and pitch requests from the national body have been ignored in Nagpur. Ganguly said he had asked curator Kishor Pradhan to produce a spin-friendly pitch last week.

"I made the request but he hasn't done it. It doesn't look like he's done much at all," Ganguly said. "I wanted the grass taken off it but he has his own ideas. He hasn't done enough. The last two pitches assisted the spinners but the curator here has his own ways."

The veteran curator was unbowed. "I do not take orders from anyone other than the president of the VCA. I look to no one else," Pradhan said. "The pitch will be good for batsmen and good for bowlers. What else does anybody want?"


http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/25/1098667695602.html

 

[Sanz]

Didn't the debacle side of things chiefly centre around (whichever idiot was in charge of the Vidarbha Cricket Assocaion)'s stupid decision to deliberately sabotage his own national team's prospects by ordering a green pitch, just because he didn't get on with Dalmiya?

The VCA chiefe was a sidekick of Powar. He gave instructions to prepare a pitch that suited Australia. But media chose to ignore that and and directed their focus at ganguly by making accusations that he sat out faking an injury.

 

[Richard]

That's to be expected, though - many people resent Indian conditions assisting India, and therefore laugh at someone rebelling against such a thing and deliberately preparing conditions to suit the oppo, and then laugh at Ganguly (another person highly resented) not getting what he wants, and take the chance to accuse him of basically sulking because of that.

I don't know what the media reaction in India was, of course. But everyone in England, and the little Australian coverage I read, loved that game. Then had the nerve to kick-up a fuss about the next game when India did get the conditions they wanted.

 

[adharcric]

Wait, Ramesh Powar?

Or Sharad Pawar?

Who the hell is Powar?

 

[Richard]

That had me confused for ages, I thought for all money that my initial-sake was talking about Ramesh Powar (who, IIRR, had not even debuted in Tests at that time?) Now I realise it's in fact Sharad Pawar.

 

[Sanz]

That's to be expected, though - many people resent Indian conditions assisting India, and therefore laugh at someone rebelling against such a thing and deliberately preparing conditions to suit the oppo, and then laugh at Ganguly (another person highly resented) not getting what he wants, and take the chance to accuse him of basically sulking because of that.

I don't know what the media reaction in India was, of course. But everyone in England, and the little Australian coverage I read, loved that game. Then had the nerve to kick-up a fuss about the next game when India did get the conditions they wanted.

Except that Nagpur Pitch used to be a batsman friendly pitch, Mohali and Eden Gardenss pitch were the ones made for assisting fast bowlers. Ganguly and Harbhajan were indeed injured and it was reported before the match itself (you can check the aussie link I posted).

But Cricinfo which was so Anti-Ganguly that it floated the story of Ganguly faking an injury. Not only that it also lied about the pitch too. Here is Anand Vasu's report on Pitch :-

http://content-www.cricinfo.com/australia/content/story/142743.html

"The Nagpur pitch is straw-coloured, and expected to help the batsmen"

"..Reports about the greenness of the pitch had nearly toppled the little big man's tennis elbow as the main story in the sports pages. When the reporters saw it for themselves, there was grass, but it was straw-coloured, not green. "

Anand Vasu must be suffering from some sort of Eye-sight issue, because on the link there is a pitcure of the pitch and it doesn't look Straw-coloured to me.

 

[Richard]

I never doubted for a second that Ganguly was injured, India suffered appallingly from injuries that series. Along with infighting amongst board politicians.

It wasn't just CricInfo that was "anti-India" if you will, though. As I say, most scribes over here found that game highly amusing, because of misplaced begrudging thoughts about Indian pitches - shock-horror - offering some home advantage.

 

[Sanz]

I didn't say Cricinfo was anti-India, I said Cricinfo was anti-Ganguly, which they were as can be seen in most of their articles in 2004-2005 season.

 

[Richard]

Many people were anti-Ganguly. He's always been capable of making himself unpopular. Therefore, people will do anything they can of times to make him look bad.

Equally, many people are against the idea of India having any home-advantage in India.