My Cricket Diary

It was pleasently surprising to see India clean up the tail in 30 minutes, and clinch a 2-0 win. Its one more case of a home team winning.., and I keep thinking what factors help the home team win. The pitches in SL, Pakistan, India behave almost the same.., and given the amount of cricket played these days, there is never really a factor that someone is more comfortable on a "Home pitch". Take Sachin for example, I'm sure to him the Ahmedabad wicket would be as alien as SCG or Rawalpindi or Port of Spain.

Does the home team win because:

• the team is always surrounded by their family/friends or people whom they know
• have their native food
• local crowd support
• the power of "thought".., I mean there are so many around you who want you to win at any cost..

I wish I had an answer. The rate at which home teams wins these days, there seems to be something terribly wrong with the way cricket is played!! Hmm., I'll wait to see if India can defeat Pakistan once again

Dilip Premchandran's article about Pathan was excellent - except for one blemish! And, this was related to remarks about Kapil Dev. While every bit said about Pathan was true, it was unfair to have Kapil in the hit-or-miss category. Of the four all-rounders during that era, Kapil was the most gifted and "natural" of them all. Every batsman tends to be compared against the best during that era, and if that yardstick is to be applied to Kapil and Imran, their ability as a batsman needs to be measured against West Indies. Please check out statistics in CricInfo, and you would see that Kapil would be well ahead of Imran against West Indies in West Indies as a batsman AND as a bowler. As a batsman Kapil was better against WI (home and away), while Imran had a better bowling record while playing only in Pakistan. And also, what one should not ever forget that Imran was more of a bowler till a point of time, his shin injury ruled him out from bowling. He was later more of a batsman than a bowler - while Kapil played in Tests always as an all rounder. Kapil will go into the history books as one of the all time greats. It is not necessary to put-down an all time great to praise a budding all rounder.