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Asian Voice - Saturday 30th July 2011
England selectors retain the same team for second Test England selectors have named an unchanged 12-man squad for the second Test match against India to be played at Trent Bridge from July 29. Yorkshire fast bowler Tim Bresnan has once again been added to the squad that defeated India by 196 runs in the first Test at Lord's. The chairman of the England selection committee, Geoff Miller, said: "There was a lot to be pleased about from the opening Test at Lord's. We saw some excellent performances with both bat and ball, which resulted in an outstanding win on the final day of what was a memorable match. "While the squad from the first Test all came through unscathed, we have included Tim Bresnan in the squad for this next Test and he'll once again be pushing for selection following a short turnaround in between Test matches," he added. The squad is as follows: Andrew Strauss (Captain), James Anderson (Lancashire), Ian Bell (Warwickshire), Tim Bresnan (Yorkshire), Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire), Alastair Cook (Essex), Eoin Morgan (Middlesex), Kevin Pietersen (Surrey), Matt Prior (Sussex),Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire),Chris Tremlett (Surrey) and Jonathan Trott (Warwickshire). By Praful Kumar Singh.
London court dismisses banned Pak cricket trio's appeal The Crown Court in London has dismissed the appeal of banned Pakistan cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir to dismiss their corruption case in a preliminary hearing. The trio, who were found guilty of spot-fixing by the International Cricket Council and are serving a minimum fiveyear ban, had filed an appeal asking the court to dismiss criminal charges that the Crown Prosecution had levelled against them. Amir and Asif attended the hearing, while his lawyer represented Butt. The trio were caught in a sting operation carried out by the British tabloid News of The World during Pakistan's tour of England last year.
Shambolic India given exemplary thrashing
By Premen Addy
The bookies were right, after all, to make England favourites for the First Test at Lord's. As much as the dismal performance of the team as a whole, the rotten state of India's cricket administration, including inept and myopic selection, should be the subject of close critical scrutiny. Cricket is a sport that commands a mass following in India, thanks to which the Indian cricket board is the richest in the world. Money ought to be a means to an end – the latter being cricket's well-being and progress. The moneychangers infesting the corridors of cricketing power in India should fear the prospect of the goose refusing to lay its golden eggs, as public enthusiasm wanes for losers without the stomach for a fight. India were hung out to dry at Lord's by an England mean machine driven by inbred professionalism and the will to succeed. They are passionate about dethroning India as the world's number one Test playing nation and occupying that exalted position, which they are likely to do by the time the series ends. England's preparation was as faultless as the immaculate line and length of their bowlers – the surgical strike force, rather than the batting, that disembowelled their opponents. One feared the worst when paceman Zaheer Khan hobbled off with a hamstring injury in mid-afternoon on the opening day, having struck early with the wickets of Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook. His figures looked good: 2 for 18 from seven testing overs, but that was the end of Zaheer's further participation in the proceedings and it signalled the end of any meaningful Indian challenge in the match. Three frontline bowlers meant India were hobbled, with the unedifying spectacle of captain/wicketkeeper Mahindra Singh Dhoni taking off his gloves and pads for an ineffectual bowl himself, something usually seen on the village green or in a minor club encounter in city suburbs. It is scarcely a state secret that Zaheer Khan is injury prone and has been so for quite awhile. The selectors, clearly, were
England celebrate their 196-run win
unaware of his condition. So he creeks uncertainly on, a doubtful starter for the Second Test at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, which begins this weekend. Of the three other regular bowlers, Praveen Kumar performed splendidly in the England first innings with figures of 5 for 103 in a total of 474 for 8 declared; Ishant Sharma had a magnificent spell in the England second innings, dismissing Kevin Pietersen (a double centurion in the first innings) for a single and Ian Bell for a duck. He also captured the wickets of the dangerous Jonathan Trott and the swashbuckling Eoin Morgan to bring his final tally to 4 wickets for 59 runs. England were 107 for 6 and reeling, but there was no gas left in the Indian engine room, with Harbhajan Singh utterly innocuous. Matt Prior (103 not out) and Stuart Broad (74 not out) took England at a gallop to 269 for 6 declared. The rest is history. India underwent slow strangulation to be all out for 261 after tea on the final day, leaving England worthy and emphatic winners by 196 runs. Rahul Dravid (103 not out) in the first innings, with VVS Laxman (56) and Suresh Raina (78) in the second bore India's burden. The others were anonymous. Returning to Indian selection, Harbhajan Singh looked what he is – a busted flush. He has lost the art of flight
and the kindred subtleties of an off-spinner's craft. He is now a defensive journeyman with scant penetration at the highest level. The left-arm Abdullah and the leg-spinner Rohit Sharma showed themselves to be excellent prospects in the IPL: too good apparently for Indian selection where mediocrity rules. So it is also with paceman Varun Aron, a product of the Dennis Lillee academy of excellence: overlooked for the wayward carthorse Sree Sreesanth, who needs satellite instrumentation to get his bowling line and length within reasonable range. Virender Sehwag is twiddling his fingers in India with a shoulder in postoperation recovery mode. Shouldn't he have had his surgery in March or April instead of in early June? He should, indeed, on every rational count except the one that animates the good and great of Indian cricket – which is money. He was ordered to play through the IPL, despite his discomfort, because the takings at the gate would fall. Only money talks, it would appear. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies. Get Yuvraj Singh to open the batting and draft in Munaf Patel to bolster the bowling. Otherwise woebegone India will repeat the shambles of Lord's. Enough said.
India bats its way up the new world order
With the euro in peril and the US on the brink of bankruptcy, the west seems to have enough to worry about without fretting about cricket. Yet a private dinner, in London on Monday night, was just the latest indication of how global power is shifting from west to east – and how India’s newly rich and powerful elite is throwing its weight around far from home. The dinner launched the foundation of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India’s cricket captain. The event, backed by highprofile business names such as Citibank and Asprey, saw a room full of rich Indians, quaffing champagne and spending vast sums on cricket memorabilia. An Indian cricket painting went for £260,000. The cricket bat with which Dhoni hit the runs that won the World Cup in March went for £60,000. The winner was so overwhelmed that, when he took possession from Dhoni himself, he upped his own bid, and paid £100,000. That Dhoni, who hails from Ranchi, an Indian town once famous for its mental asylums, should have used London to
launch his foundation was significant. Equally poignant, however, was that the location, the Park Lane Hilton, is a stone’s throw from the home of the Duke of Wellington, the man who helped conquer India for the British. The event broadcast the power of India’s diaspora: the Indians wanted the English to know that England’s old colony now controlled this newly globalised game. India tops the world’s cricket rankings, but they are the game’s new moneybags too – providing more than 80 per cent of the game’s global income. A series with India now makes more money for England than even the contest against their old rivals Australia, because of the sale of televised rights to the hungry Indian market. India’s rise as a global sporting superpower is by now a relatively familiar story, but until recently the British could at least console themselves that they still ruled the roost in their own backyard. That is now no longer true. There is a further ironic twist too, because this rise is
in truth the collateral effect of the west urging India to open up its economy to global competition. Twenty years this would have been unimaginable. Not only was India wedded to Soviet-style economic management but television had barely arrived. Then, in 1991, with India running out of foreign exchange, the World Bank forced it to abandon its controlled economy. Television arrived in a major way too, and the Indian cricket board realised it could sell cricket rights for big money, in particular to Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV. Soon Mr Murdoch, in alliance with Disney’s ESPN, began to offer wall-to-wall televised cricket to a rising middle class, with a mushrooming of channels all keen to show cricket, the national obsession. Yet India is no longer content to dominate just in India alone, but around the world too. Here, the takeover has been helped by the curious way the English ran the game. Cricket is an odd team sport, in that the domestic game makes no money, and would collapse without subsidy from
international competitions. This is not true of football or rugby, let alone American sports. Until recently it did not matter either. England and Australia ran the game – and indeed all meaningful cricket in the rest of the world stopped once the English cricket season started. But then three years ago Indians took advantage of another English invention – a shorter, more exciting form of the game known as Twenty20 cricket – to launch the Indian Premier League. This married cricket to Bollywood and saw television rights sold for more than $1bn. Nothing like it had ever been seen in a major sport, let alone this once sleepy game. Sociologists know the type of influence now wielded abroad by India’s elite as soft power. It is the flip side of India’s economic rise. We are seeing the governance of a global sport passing from west to east for the first time. The shift is unique, and irreversible. The east can now take something western, and make the west a supplicant. We had better get used to it. – Mihir Bose