*Condolences to Bob Woolmer

HI this is about and is dedicated to Robert Andrew Woolmer, known as Bob Woolmer, despite being one of my country’s biggest cricketting rival’s(Pakistan’s) coach had always impressed me. He was born in Kanpur, India, within an year of our independence. His first ODI debut was for England in 1972. His website reads that his debut to test cricket was marred by his broken hand.

Under his regime, South Africa won 10 out of Test series, which is awesome. He left his job as SA’s coach after they fail to make to the final of the World Cup. He again gets appointed as the coach of Pakistan He was only the second non-Pakistani to coach the Pakistani cricket team.His website reads he’s ‘Still Standin’ and I think no body has the user id and password to change that.
We lost somebody today with innovative ideas, does any body remember the way he was conversing with SA captain Hansie Cronje through a earpiece when South Africa took the field against India discussing and changing strategies with Hansie in 1999 World Cup? I clearly remember the match in which he put up a personal scoring board on a sheet, comparing Indian and Pakistan scores and asking the players to be calm and keep the wickets in hand while they chased down one of Indian mammoth totals a couple of years back. Though he had some political hiccups running all the way during his coaching to the cricket-patriotic asian country, we can not reject having accepted that he had taken Pakistan to the next level. It is a demise to see that nothing went right for them from the start of the Worldcup.

I have been following the World Cup hype too closely and noticed that the barometer was reaching it’s saturation when Pakistan batted awfully against Ireland. And as expected all hell broke loose when the Barometer finally burst that evening after Ireland chased down the target with just a few blips. Yesterday, that is On 18th March 2007 at approximately 17:15, it was reported that Woolmer had been taken to hospital after he was found unconscious in his hotel room, it was later confirmed that Bob Woolmer had died. The news that he had suffered from an un-named medical condition and that the cause of death was as yet unknown increases my concerns potentially.

This raises a lot of questions to the cricketing future, especially to Pakistan’s cricket future. I wonder who’ll take up the charge after him, passions being so high, people desperate of wins, the cricket-patriotic mobs, and so on so forth. There were wild statements made in the open by a number of fans associations asking to chop off Bob and Inzy. Few others, were sparing enough, by just asking them to step down from their respective positions. But that wasn’t helping the cause of the game either. An insight to such situations just terrifies me.
The authorities have to come out and report the actual cause of the death. Just saying it was an un-known disease doesn’t make any good to the tensions building up.
The sub continent was, is and I think will pose certain threats to the game always as it has been right from cricket’s birth. In my opinion, we should have passion and it should not cross certain limits.
Do please post your comments.

*Insight into India’s win on Bermuda.

Hi this is Adarsh. This is the opinion, I zeroed onto after the India Vs Bermuda match.

WOW what a match! ! ! What a scorecard? A complete massacre, it was just butchery. New totals, records broken, records setup, records reached…huh what a day! ! ! !. A complete reversal of patterns for India… and a continuing pattern for Bermuda!!!!! Bermuda was crumpled into pieces by the Indian batsmen first and then by the bowlers.

 

Ok too much too good said about that match by a lot of people. Now let us see what we have on the other side of the coin.

It is good that Sehwag’s bat, almost dead off hunger, had a ‘Happy meal’ to eat at the Bermuda’s Mac Donald’s. BUT having said that, did anybody observe the way he batted… I have to say, ‘I wasn’t completely impressed.’ I’m sure if he plays the same way with Sri Lanka.. he’s gonna return to the pavilion in no time. If you watched the match, one would see him miss-time innumerable number of times. There was very few times when I heard the sweet sound of the bat. Rather the disgusting sound of the ball hitting the top or the edge or the lower bottom of the bat was too often. I am impressed to see a century on papers, but not live, when he miss-timed his shots more often.

Ganguly carried on his solid stance. Though, people might argue that he should have been a bit less skeptical, considering his form and the way he batted, (although not the best of strike rates) makes me glad to say that he’s was going good after watching the way he was timing the ball to perfection most times. And in my view timing and placement is what ultimately matters when you play with better teams. Right?? May be he should work a little bit on placing in order to get all-set for the upcoming initial major target of at least surpassing into the super 8’s.

Can’t comment on Uthappa’s innings coz I missed that.

Dhoni looked impressive dugging out, most of the slower deliveries right in the block hole. Started playing well and then the worst loft (another) miss-timed shot of his innings added to a great catch threw the curtains down.

I did not find any blips through Yuvi’s and the little master’s innings. Their play was near utmost perfection. May be if we have to point out some thing I would say that Chappel would have wondered the way Yuvi scored mostly onto the leg side. What if it was better bowlers and a much better captain with a packed leg side field? Would the results have been the same?

Coming to the bowlers, every body is reiterating that we were successful in bowling too, though I see 156 runs scored!!!! (Bermuda’s highest in this WC) Good to see those ducks on Bermuda’s scorecard, but where would our bowling stand if we just subtracted their bad batting. I think Agarkar was again awful or to say the least was not at his best. He was struck for the maximum, more than once, the other day with Bangladesh batsmen banging him around and today too he was hit. Looked like he was continuing that day’s performance. Too many over pitched deliveries… too many straying in length. May be some want to argue, he just gave away 38… I see it this way, do you expect him to get away with 38 while we play SL or others?? Munaf and Zaheer were impressive again, except for some minute concerns. One of them being, Munaf sudeenly losing the line in his 8^th over, but it is understandable…considering his 8 over straight spell.

I wonder what’s wrong with Bhajji, His bowling figures are just bulging in the runs column and the wickets column is getting paltry? Manjrekar has been pleading him to get wickets even if he has to go for more runs on the cricinfo talk. But looks like most batsmen are starting to read his regular and his doosra’s quite well to survie and create some shots.

Kumble looked pretty good and again showed his urge to come onto the field.

To surmise, I think we should forget both the matches when we go onto our next major one. Let’s think them as the two complementary ones, that get cancelled and go on to battle with SL with just required amounts of confidence. No overconfidence watching NEWS tomorrow. Lets see if we can prove that we are not only people on score cards but also on the field.

Do not forget to post your comments.