India is now the No. 1 ranked team in Test Cricket

UPDATE: Dec6 2009: INDIA is now the NO. 1 Ranked Test Team basis official ICC rankings! This phenomenal achiement came when India defeated Sri Lanka in the recently concluded Test in Mumbai.

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India’s 100 Test Match Wins – Growing Win%

Have a look at India’s decade wise Test match performances, and we can easily understand that India’s win rate is increasing every 10 year years. More importantly, the more tests we play, the more we win. This chart also probably highlights how Indian team selection over the last few years has improved. The more merit involved in team selection, the better the results.

More than anything else, this coincides with the entry and rise of the Big 5 batting superstars:  Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag and  Saurav Ganguly. India’s bowling strengths were Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan. The youngsters, Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth will hopefully carry the pace bowling torch forward.

In terms of captaincy, India’s winning streak started with Azharuddin in a series of Home Wins… and Saurav Ganguly started India’s Overseas Wins.  Dravid/Kumble maintained the win rate for their brief stints. The new captain, M.S. Dhoni has taken over from the previous generation and consolidated the win percentage.

Decade	No. of Tests	No. of Victories	Win %	Cume Tests	Cume Victories	Cume Win %
1931-1940	7	0	0	7	0	0%
1941-1950	13	0	0	20	0	0%
1951-1960	50	6	12%	70	6	9%
1961-1970	46	9	20%	116	15	13%
1971-1980	67	18	27%	183	33	18%
1981-1990	86	11	13%	269	44	16%
1991-2000	69	19	28%	338	63	19%
2001-2010	96	37	39%	434	100	23%

Filed under: Sport, 100 test wins, azharuddin, brabourne stadium, captaincy, cricinfo, cricket, dhoni, dravid, gambhir, gautham gambhir, icc test ranking, India cricket, india cricket statistics, india no 1 ranked test team, India statistics test match, India Test Match, India test match stats, India wins 100 tests, India wins 100 tets matches, India's 100th test match victory, India's 100th test match win, India's wins in tests, kumble, laxman, MS Dhoni, mumbai test, rahul dravid, rank 1, sachin tendulkar, sehwag, sehwag 293, sreesanth, srisanth, tendulkar, Tets match cricket, viru, zaheer khan

Who is the Fake IPL Player? Its Anupam Mukerji.

Update: 28 August 2010

The Identity of the Fake IPL Player has finally been revealed.

Anupam Mukerji revealed his identity on the Times Now news channel today.

As predicted, he turned out to be a nobody with plenty of free time.

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The mystery author of the Fake IPL Player blog is not a cricketer.

My guess is that he isn’t even present in South Africa. He is most likely an intelligent journalist but could easily be a recently “pink-slipped” IT chap with loads of free time sitting in the US. This isn’t a money-making blog as there are no Google Ads on the blog though it takes just 2 minutes to start Google Ads on Blogger.

If he isn’t in South Africa, then how does he get his “information”?  He either makes up the story using already published news articles or probably through a “source” who could be one of hundreds of small time journalists covering the IPL in South Africa. These journalists travel from city to city ,  cover many teams and have lots of access to information most of which is hardly “secret” info and available to thousands of cricket fans. The content in the blog posts (especially the dressing room stuff) is pure conjecture & guesswork built on easily available info anyways. Any cricket fan in India who saw the pre-IPL press conference with Buchanan and Ganguly, can see that former Indian captain is irritated by Buchanan. Anyone who saw KKR matches can find out that there is no unity in the team. Very similar to the Indian National team under Greg Chappell during the world cup in West Indies!!!

If the Fake IPL Player is indeed a journalist, then it is highly probable that the journalist is a Bengali (and belongs to a Calcutta based Bengali or English newspaper) and most likely he is pretty pissed at Ganguly being insulted & snubbed by Buchanan and SRK by removing him as captain. I would be furious too, as Ganguly is India’s most successful captain in history and has the respect of almost entire cricketing fraternity in India. And the lesser said about John Buchanan the better.  Just ask Shane Warne about Buchanan. McCullum hasn’t even captained a provincial New Zealand squad, leave alone international teams. Almost nobody in India likes John Buchanan I guess. If SRK has even half a cricketing brain he would immediately make Ganguly not only the sole Captain but also the Coach of Knight Riders (like Shane Warne for Rajasthan Royals).

Of course the content of the blog isn’t of the same quality as compared to the Fake Steve Jobs blog written by a Forbes journalist, but in its own way its pretty entertaining and completely harmless if the reader’s understand it is pure fiction.

Filed under: Sport, Anupam Mukerji, appam chutiya, bengali, brett lee, buchanan, calcutta, cricket, fake ipl player, fake ipl player identity revealed, fakeiplplayer, fakeiplplayer blog, fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com, ganguly, gayle, identity of fake ipl player, Indian premier league, IPL, IPL 2, IPL season 2, KKR, Knight riders, kolkatta, Kolkotta, lalit modi, ness wadia, preity zinta, ranadeb bose, RDB, saurav ganguly, Setmax, shah rukh khan, shahrukh khan, shane warne, Sony, sreesanth, srk, t20, twenty20, yuvraj singh, zinta

Cricket’s Top 10 Test Batsmen and Bowlers of all time

The recent ICC rankings of the “greatest” cricketers of all time was so atrocious that it defies logic. The less said and written about it the better. Better rankings have been provided by Wisden and most recently by even Shane Warne.

There is even an acclaimed book written about the  100 greatest cricketers of all time by Geoff Armstrong. According to the summary in Flipkart,  the book

“presents a list of the best players, ranked from one to 100. It is complemented with a broad range of colour and black-and-white photographs, as well as individual statistics for each selected player. “

To know more, check out the book: The 100 Greatest Cricketers Of All Time by Geoff Armstrong

Here is my list of the Top 10 Batsmen and Bowlers of all time. But please note that this is not a “ranking” as different statistical models have different rankings…with the exception of the legendary Sir Don Bradman who is unanimously rated as the best. So this list shows the greatest “10″ in any order you like and is not a “rank”.

Batsmen:

1. Don Bradman

2. Sachin Tendulkar

3. Barry Richards

4. Viv Richards

5. Garry Sobers

6. Brian Lara

7. Jack Hobbs

8. Sunil Gavasakar

9. Greg Chappell

10. Graeme Pollock

Bowlers:

1. Dennis Lillee

2. Wasim Akram

3. Imran Khan

4. Shane Warne

5. Sydney Barnes

6. Fred Trueman

7. Richard Hadlee

8. Waqar Younis

9. Malcolm Marshall

10. Courtney Walsh/Curtly Ambrose

Top All rounders lists would always include any of the following:

1. Keith Miller

2. Ian Botham

3. Imran Khan

4. Kapil Dev

5. Garry Sobers

6. Wally Hammond

7. Richard Hadlee

8. Shaun Pollock

9. Andrew Flintoff

10. Jacques Kallis

Filed under: Sport, ambrose, barry richards, batsman rankings, batsmen, batsmen rankings, best test cricket players, botham, bowler rankings, bowlers, bowling greats, bradman, cricket, dennis lillee, donald, flintoff, Gavaskar, graeme pollock, greatest all rounders, greatest allrounders, greatest batsmen, greatest bowler, greatest bowlers, greatest cricketers in history, greg chappell, hadlee, ICC, ICC test rankings, ICC top 10 bastman, ICC top 10 bowlers, imran khan, kapil dev, keith miller, malcom marshall, rankings, ray lindwall, richard hadlee, sachin, shane warne, sid barnes, sobers, syd barnes, sydney barnes, tendulkar, Test cricket rankings, test player rankings, top 10, top 10 best batsman, top 10 best batsmen, top 10 greatest cricketers, top 10 greatest players, viv richards, walsh, waqar younis, wasim akram

South Africa is the No. 1 Test Team in world cricket

India is a close no. 2 and these two  teams look set to dominate the next decade in cricket. Both have recently defeated Australia in a test series 2-0.

In winning the Test in MCG, Graeme Smith’s men become the first South African side ever to win a series in Australia, dating back to Percy Sherwell’s 1910/11 tourists. It’s been a long wait – and was thrillingly set up by their remarkable six-wicket win in the first Test in Perth last week.

I think Symonds and Hayden can go on a permanent fishing trip now. Ponting now learns that he isn’t a great captain but a mediocre one who had great players like Warne, McGrath and Gilchrist.  To be a great captain you need to mould your mediocre side into world beaters – something Border and Taylor did for Australia and Shane Warne did for the Rajasthan Royals. Steve Waugh too simply inherited a great team from Mark Taylor.

Ponting is over-rated. The best captain for Australia would have been Shane Warne and its a shame Cricket Australia refused to make him captain. Now they are paying the price.

Australia also benefited hugely from 50-50 umpiing decisions going 9 to 1 in their favour in recent years, and the moment those decisions started going 5-5 (which is the right thing), they started losing. They should have never won the SCG test against India and would have lost that series too had umpires been fair.

Shane Warne, Gilchrist and McGrath didn’t need umpiring help to win as Ponting does, and that is the difference between the great Australian side of the last decade and this bunch of pretenders.  One shudders to think that after Ponting, the captaincy will go to the immature Michael Clarke….and the slide will get worse. It is time to make Huseey vice-captain now and bring youngsters like David Hussey, Shaun Marsh into the side intead of the inept Symonds and out of touch Hayden. And the Bowling? sorry…no talent there anymore. Max they can do is bring Nathan Bracken back and hope Watson recovers from injury.

Filed under: Sport, australia, best test team, cricket, graeme smith, hashim amla, india, MCG, no. 1 test team, ponting, SCG, smith, south africa, steyn, worlds best test team

Rab Ne Bana Di Test Match!

What a way for Sachin Tendulkar to finish the match by hitting a boundary to get his 41st Test Hundred!

Chasing 387 in Chennai against a strong English Test team,  India overhauled the highest fourth innings chase (276 by the West Indies at Delhi n 1987-88) on Indian soil on the fifth and final day to go 1-0 up in the two-Test series.

Full credit to Virender Sehwag to setup the victory. He single-handedly changed the course of the match. England were coasting to victory. 387 in a day4-5 Chennai wicket is almost impossible. As David Lloyd said, the wicket looked like the moon….full of craters. But Sehwag put all space-time calculations to rest and played in a different dimension altogether.

Tendulkar’s hundred, chasing a test victory in the 4th innings is the innings critics said Lara achieved but Sachin didn’t. Now even Brian Lara will give a standing ovation to India’s Bradman.

But lets also applaud the English players for coming to tour India after the Mumbai terror strike and showing that the only losers in this Test match were not the brave English cricketers but the cowardly terrorists who desperately wanted India to live in fear and not enjoy the freedoms of a democratic nation. If England hadn’t toured India, then the terrorists would have won. India winning with the final stroke by a Mumbai cricketer, was perhaps a romantic’s delight.

test hundred no 41

Sport wins, Freedom wins, Terror loses…always.

Filed under: Sport, 387, aditya chopra, andrew strauss, chennai, chepauk, colingwood, collingwood, cricket, cricketers, david lloyd, dhoni, england, flintoff, gambhir, Highest 4th innings chase, highest Indian chase, India win, India win by 6 wickets, India win first test, peitersen, pietersen, rab ne, rab ne bana di, rab ne bana di jodi, sachin tendulkar, sehwag, shahrukh khan, srk, strauss, tendulkar, test match, yuvraj, yuvraj singh