Who Plays Cricket

Jason Holder, the captain of the West Indies One Day International team, is quite capable of becoming a solid middle order batsman in the coming future.

Currently, he is more of a specialist bowler and bats at 8 or 9, but, some of his innings in international Cricket off late have given the indication that he has quite a bit of batting talent in him and if he starts coming slightly up the order, he can be a decent contributor with the bat too for West Indies.

There have been a lot of entertaining teams in the Indian Premier League, but, the Chennai Super Kings is different from all the others.

They are such a ruthless team and they are probably the only ones who are not afraid of losing at all.

The way they play their Cricket, it makes everybody like them. You might not be from Chennai, but, still, you would praise those guys when you see them go about their business.

It all starts right from the very top, the Smith and McCullum pair, the two devastators and they both fire simultaneously.

Graeme Swann believes England has suffered in the ongoing World Cup because of their decision to reshuffle the batting line up.

According to Swann, when you change the batting positions of the players so close to the tournament, they get a little confused how they have to go.

World Cup, frantic build-up and then an anti-climax. That seems to be the way things work when it comes to English sporting endeavours, yet we never learn from our mistakes. We allow ourselves to naïvely become drawn into an unfounded sense of optimism ahead of major tournaments.

Who could forget the national football team’s efforts (if that’s what you call it) in Brazil last summer? Or England’s exit following defeat to France at the quarter-final stage of the 2011 rugby World Cup? In fact, it seems to me that England tend to perform at their best when the pressure is off.

Brian Lara played against quite a few lethal bowlers during his career, but, he reckons the one who troubled him the most was the Pakistani legend Wasim Akram.

According to Lara, Akram had a lot of things in his repertoire. He could swing the ball if the conditions were overcast and there was a bit of zip in the wicket, but, at the same time, he also knew how to bowl on flat and slow surfaces.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar appeared in international cricket after a while today as he was included in the playing XI of India for the Sydney test match.

He bowled quite a few overs, but, the lack of match practice was clear there. He was not being able to run in hard and make the ball zip through and that made people question if it was the right decision to pick him.

Bhuvi was seen spending a bit of time with the team doctor as well on the sidelines. He was holding his ankle.

Ricky Ponting has said that Phillip Hughes was all set to make big strides in international cricket, but, unfortunately, the world will now not be able to see what he was capable of as a batsman.

Ponting compared Hughes to Graeme Smith, the previous captain of the South Africa test team.

According to Ponting, Graeme Smith also did not have the technique that was ideally needed for a guy to become a good test player, but, he still achieved a lot of success because he knew making runs with his limitations. Hughes was quite similar.

With less than a year to go before Australia prepare to set off for England in the hope of retaining the Ashes, both sides are beginning to plan for next year’s intriguing series.

2015 is set to be a big year, and betting companies such as Betfair, bet365 and the other big ones should expect to be busy with so many sporting events on next year’s calendar.

The Background
After surrendering the famous urn without so much as a fight at the end of 2013, that England team was all but dismantled in the wake of some embarrassing in-fighting and poor results.

There is a very high possibility of the first match of the One Day International series between India and England getting called off due to rain. The weather department of UK has forecasted that there will be persistent rain in Bristol on the match day.
That’s not good news especially for the Indian Cricket fans who were hoping to see some good cricket from their team in the shorter formats.

Sachin Tendulkar might have announced his retirement from all kind of cricket, but, that touch in his batting still seems to be there. Playing for the MCC against the Rest of the World XI a few days back, he played a wonderful knock.

During that knock, he hit almost all the shots that he is known for. The straight drive off the fast bowler, the cover drive, the late cut off the spinner and then, the inside out drive through extra cover, every shot was there in that innings. It was a fantastic exhibition of batting by the master blaster.