June has been a hectic month for us Indian cricket lovers. The nightmare of the Micromax Cup had not even been remotely forgotten before the Micromax Asia Cup was upon us. Confused? Don’t mix up the Micromax Cup with the Micromax Asia Cup. The former was one of the “win the toss-bowl first-win the match” kind of tournament and the latter was “win the toss-bat first-win the match” kind of tournament. ICC’s pitch committee makes sure we have plenty of variety in ODIs.
Asia cup being the premier cricket tournament of Asia, where the entire continent was being represented by 4 teams, is a matter of great pride for all nations and their strategies reflected that. Sri Lanka decided to rest Ajantha Mendis due to tactical reasons. The tactical reason being the fact that both Sehwag and Afridi had been looking forward to facing him. With Akhtar, Asif, Malik and Afridi in their lineup Pakistan decided to unleash the most controversial bowling attack ever. Ok maybe not. They did leave out Kaneria. Bookies were very disappointed. Indian team decided to rest Sachin again and give Ravindra Jadeja yet another chance. This sparked wild celebrations in streets of Pakistan, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh while the Indian commodity market saw sharp increase in trading for eggs, tomatoes and chappals.
However Yuvraj Singh could not “fit” into the Indian squad and was offloaded from the flight. That’s understandable when the side is already carrying extra luggage around the waists of Zaheer, Virender and Rohit. Poor guy spent all day shooting for advertisements and all night on the dance floor but to no avail! Guess hard work doesn’t always pay, except in cash.
Next month has more cricket in store for us. First, Pakistan is hosting Australia for a home series in England. Yes, you read it right, in England. Well whether Pakistani feel at home or not, the Aussies will definitely feel the love from the Poms. Bangladesh continue to struggle to find their feet in international cricket on their tour of England. We think it is about time they hired some professional detectives to track their damn feet down! And India plays Sri Lanka in Sri Lanka. Yet again. Seriously, these two need to get a room already.
With so much cricket in store there is absolutely no reason for you to let yourself be distracted by 22 men chasing a ball around, with usually no aim in particular. If you really can’t wait for the real World Cup to kick off in 2011, there is Champions League T20 and IPL to keep you occupied till then. Let the players complain all they want, there is no such thing as too much cricket. Unless it is between India and Sri Lanka of course.
This article was first published in the July issue of Inbox 1305, Chennai's premier lifestyle magazine.