Some thoughts on the World Cup final

Yesterday's result was pretty disappointing for me, but I still managed to enjoy watching what was probably the best World Cup final since 1992.  I like a lot of the Indian players and was happy that Sachin finally got to pick up a winner's medal - and do so in front of a Mumbai crowd.  India were the better team both on the day and across the tournament as a whole.  Their superb batting line-up was the main reason for their success but importantly they also stepped up the discipline levels of their bowling and fielding in the knockout stages.

As for exactly where the game was won, the thing that really stood out for me was the contrast between the way Gautam Gambhir batted after the fall of Sehwag and Sachin's wickets and Sri Lanka's approach in the first 15-20 overs of their own innings.  On the biggest cricketing stage of all, Gambhir had the guts to keep attacking despite the early setbacks.  He didn't blaze away wildly but did take take calculated risks, advancing down the wicket and hitting over the infield frequently enough to keep India up with the required run rate. That Gambhir had the confidence to do this was partly down to the fact that he knew his side had plenty of batting to come.  Sri Lanka, on the other hand, seemed all too aware that in Angelo Mathews' absence, their tail was rather long and had to be shielded.  While there was clearly a need for caution, I can't help thinking that Tharanga and Dilshan could have been more positive in their approach at the start.

There's been a lot of criticism of Sri Lanka's team selection by Sky and BBC pundits, which I think is largely unfounded.  It seems likely to me that most of these pundits are (understandably) unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the 33 ODIs Sri Lanka had played against India between January 2008 and yesterday's final.  While I might still have preferred to see Ajantha Mendis in the side, including Suraj Randiv was a perfectly rational move, given both his recent record against India and the difference between the playing conditions in Colombo and Mumbai.  The slowish pitch and massive boundaries at the Premadasa Stadium were tailor-made for Mendis and Herath to choke opposition sides, while the truer batting surface and smaller ground at Wankhede would have rendered them less effective.  Randiv, a taller spinner who generates more bounce, was a reasonable bet.

Quarter final team previews

West Indies

Roach, Sammy, Benn, Russell, Rampaul and Bishoo have produced a number of good bowling performances.  A Gayle or Pollard onslaught is just the sort of thing that could cause the wheels could come off for Pakistan in the field, but my guess is that Afridi, Gul and co will stop that happening.

Pakistan
Anyone else noticed that Shahid Afridi often stands with his arms crossed when being interviewed at post-match ceremonies?  Is this in a vain attempt to look serious?  That said, while his batting is crazy, his bowling really is pretty serious, and Pakistan are pretty serious contenders.  They've cruised quietly  to the top of their group and now have a very winnable quarter ahead of them. I don't know why people didn't take more note of them earlier.  Be Afridi.  Be very Afridi.

India
Batting-wise, the top order's in top nick, but the middle order men can't middle it.  Here's what Zaheer Khan had to say yesterday about the bowling: "As a bowling unit, I think I am doing well."  You have to say that's a pretty entertaining Freudian slap in the face for Harbhajan, Sreesanth and co.

Australia
Likely to be presented with a juicy greentop in Ahmedabad, tailor-made for their speedsters.  Not.  Crumbled against Indian spinners in a warm-up game in Bangalore.  If Harbhajan remembers how to take wickets, I'd expect a repeat.  But beware Mike Hussey.  I repeat: beware Mike Hussey.

Sachin, Sri Lanka, Sambit, painkillers and the choke'o'meter

The World Cup is in full swing and I have to say I'm loving it.  Arguments about the format and the involvement of associate nations will rage on and on, but for me, this is still the most important tournament in the cricketing calendar and the current edition has already produced plenty of drama and excitement.

In addition to the on-field action, I've also enjoyed the accompanying feast of cricket writing.  Here are some snippets of my favourite pieces from the last week or so, along with links to the full articles.

Mike Marqusee - The "symbolical" cricketer: Sachin Tendulkar

99 down, one to go.  It seems only a matter of time before Sachin Tendulkar becomes the first man to score a ton of international tons, and it would be fitting if he reached the milestone in a World Cup match on home soil.  The tribute pieces will come flooding in, but few will be as thought-provoking as Mike Marqusee's recent take on Sachin's unique status as a "symbolical" cricketer.

"Tendulkar’s personal achievements were represented as a triumph for India as a whole, a sign of the country advancing on the world stage – like Indian corporations opening plants in Europe or the USA. Unwittingly and unwillingly, he found himself at the epicentre of a popular culture shaped by the intertwined growth of a consumerist middle class and an assertive, sometimes aggressive form of national identity. National aspirations and national frustrations were poured into his every performance, and this during a period in which the nation passed through some very dark moments (Kashmir since 1989, Ayodhya in 1992, Mumbai in 1993, Gujarat in 2002, Mumbai in 2009). How he’s not been crushed by it all remains at least in part a mystery."

Is Steyn as deadly as Lillee?

The final day of the heavyweight tussle in Cape Town may have ended in stalemate, but the previous four produced some great Test cricket. In between two epic knocks by Jacques Kallis, Dale Steyn and Sachin Tendulkar produced a battle for the ages. Steyn's sizzling spells on the third day showed just why he's ranked the number one bowler in the world right now. Cricinfo just published a piece I wrote on the South African quick, comparing him to Dennis Lillee.

Sachin sees no evil, Sri Lankans sense a storm

Speaking to NDTV the other day, Sachin Tendulkar said the following:

"In my 21 years of international cricket, I have never heard of any Indian player being approached by bookies."

Really? I guess Sachin can't have played more than a handful of matches with Ajay Sharma, so perhaps the latter's easy to forget. However, Sachin played 131 international matches with Manoj Prabhakar, 191 with Ajay Jadeja and a whopping 292 with Mohammad Azharuddin. He amassed more caps, runs, centuries, catches and wickets under Azhar than he has under any other captain before or since, and it's not as if Azhar's admission of guilt and subsequent life ban happened behind close doors.

"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil," the saying goes. Sachin may do no evil, on account of which he gets plenty of richly deserved praise, but his recent statement does make me wonder about the whole see no monkey, hear no monkey, speak no monkey episode...

Two Brett Lee's, two Shahzads and two-hundred not out

Lee handles the white ball far better than the red

Dennis Lillee greeted news of Brett Lee’s retirement from Test cricket with the following statement:

"Brett is going to go down as one of the great all-time express bowlers in the world ... 150-plus kph puts a huge strain on the body and it can only take so much. For him to play 76 Tests and take 300-odd wickets doing what he does is a credit to him."

Perhaps it takes one to know one, because I can’t for the life of me see how Lee can be considered a Test great. Apart from the first year of his career and a brief period in 2007-2008, he has actually been pretty average. He has never come close to hitting the kind of heights Dale Steyn has reached over the last couple of years. Lee has been over-hyped because he is clean living, photogenic and has happened to feature in some memorable Ashes and Border-Gavaskar battles. People’s perceptions of his effectiveness with the red ball are also coloured by his excellence with the white. Lee's ODI record may be pretty special but his Test record is not especially pretty.

At any rate, it’s sad to see him struggling with injury as he gives his all on the pitch and is very exciting to watch. Let’s hope he and his pal Freddie Flintoff both recover in time to play in next year’s World Cup.

Taxes, avatars, Sky cyber-commentary and a girlfriend-based ranking system

I just did a Google News search for the word "cricket" and it yielded 30,652 hits dated January 2010. Unless someone's been doing a lot of chirping about insects of the Gryllidae family, that means roughly a thousand articles about my favourite sport have been posted online each day this month. Between the broadsheets and the BBC, the blogosphere and the behemoth that is Cricinfo, there is an awful lot written about cricket on the web. Much of it is banal, plenty is highly biased, and rather a lot is both.

But some of it is brilliant. Here are four pieces I really enjoyed reading this month. The first two are fairly serious; the next two are more light-hearted but no less insightful.

The IPL - it's big, it's brash, it's biblical...

(A version of this article appeared in Varsity in April 2009)

Is Lalit Modi really cricket’s Moses? It was Ravi Shastri who first described the IPL supremo as a “Moses of the game, who has shown the path to blazing success.” There is, of course, a fair chance that Shastri only made this pronouncement because his contract as an IPL commentator explicitly required him to do so. Nonetheless, it’s worth contemplating this comparison for a minute, especially given what Modi himself has said about his agenda: “We have taken some bold steps. We're going forward and trying to change the world order.”