Cummins hopes to play Adelaide Test against India
Melbourne: A heel injury might have ruled him out for bulk of the home Test series against India, but teen pace sensation Pat Cummins is in no mood to give up hope yet and said he is expecting to be fit in time for the fourth and final match of the rubber at Adelaide Oval.
A heel injury has ruled the Aussie pacer out for bulk of the home Test series against India. © AFP
The 18-year-old fast bowler is expected to be sidelined until late January with a heel injury that he picked up during his seven-wicket haul on debut against South Africa in Johannesburg last month.
Although Cummins has set his eyes on the Twenty20 international against India on February 1 to mark his return to international cricket, he has not completely ruled out his availability for the final Test from January 24.
"Cricket Australia are working closely with Cricket NSW with all my rehab and we'll be working on it all summer. I'll definitely be watching and looking forward to getting back as soon as possible," he said.
"I'll just rest it up for the next couple of weeks, and early January I'll start building up the running again and bowling, so I'm right not too long after that."
"The one-day series and Twenty20 I'm still definitely looking at, and maybe even the back of the Tests. It's only a couple more weeks," Cummins was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.
"I've never injured the foot before. It's a one-off. The doc (doctor) says hopefully once it's healed, you're at no more risk of suffering the injury than anybody else. I'll be doing everything I can to be available for the last Tests."
Talking about his injury, Cummins said he felt something wrong with his heel on the opening day of his debut Test.
"Day one was when it first became an issue. It was bearable then but towards the end, it started to get worse and worse," he said.
"It was all in that last Test match, the damage. It was an accumulation of bowling a couple of days on a bruised heel and something that's unavoidable.
"The original scan a few weeks ago was all clear, so we were pretty confident that it wasn't there. But I found out (Tuesday) when it was still causing some pain and it wasn't great news. It's a stress fracture on the bone, but right on the minor side of the scale," the lanky pacer added.
England Beat India in Twenty20; Stay no.1
AppId is over the quota
England may have had a torrid ODI series in India. However, they will go home a happy lot after comfortably winning the one off Twenty20 match at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata and may even make a pit stop at the Buddh International Circuit in Noida, New Delhi like some of the Indian cricketers are expected to.
The Twenty20 match at Eden Gardens turned out to an insipid affair for the scanty few fans that turned up for the Twenty20 match. The Indian cricket barely got going batting first, and managed only 120 after young fast bowler, Steven Finn, gave the cricket spectators a taste of what to expect in the future. Finn took two of the top Indian wickets, including that of Suresh Raina who topscored the innings with thirty-nine runs.
Tim Bresnan and Finn hit their marks and the Indian line up was left reeling until Raina and Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, briefly tried to make a go of things.The Indian innings ended on the last ball of their innings with the run out of Dhoni for twenty-one.
Set a relatively low total by Twenty20 standards, India never really had a hope while England sealed the deal with Kevin Pietersen returning successfully despite a fractured thumb to score a half century after only thirty-nine balls to steer England to the brink of victory which was not difficult thereafter as England stayed at the no.1 Twenty20 ranking with the win by six wickets.
Formula One Overtakes Cricket As No.1 Sports Passion in India. Likely?
Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One boss, believes Formula One is here to stay in India, a compliment echoed by fans in the country as well as some of the Indian celebrities including the Indian cricketers who were bowled over by the spectacle. At the end of the Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit in Noida, there was a collective relief that Formula One had come to India had come only once to India as opposed to cricket that is played around the year these days.
There is undoubtedly a grand following for Formula One amongst Indians and the fact that the racing was brought to India made it more of a celebration of adrenaline that is not easy to get over as the weekend proved in plenty. However, that it can actually match the crazed following that cricket enjoys in India seems a task even the multi million dollar speed thrill would have earn over time. And that would not be easy with just the one race in India although it would have done a lot towards making more people aware of the sport and perhaps see more viewership from India for more international F1 races, although only two remain in the 2011 season.
While cricket cannot match steps with Formula One racing's worldwide following, it would certainly have a tough task sustaining interest in a sport that will see only one race a year.
Had India Won Test Series in India, Perhaps Test Championship Would have Been On
Former England captain, Michael Vaughan has already tasted plenty of backlash after his Twitter comment that perhaps Vaseline on the bat had something to do with V.V.S. Laxman beating the Hot Spot technology during India's tour of England for the Test series. The protests not only came from the Indian cricket contingent but also, from Hot Spot and Vaseline.
Now while he is taking on the ICC for its decision to defer the Test championship, he has also not ruled out the possibility that had the Test results in England been favourable in India's favour, the shape of Test championship could have been much different. The implications are rather obvious given that India has become the new Mecca of cricket and the money that flows into the game has been phenomenal, particularly when one looks at the model of the IPL. While the ICC has made no bones about the fact that the broadcast concerns of making the same kind of financial rate of interest that would successfully replace the ICC Champions Trophy could not be arrived at feasibly to push forth the agenda of a Test championship, the sponsorship revenue would also depend on those nations that can actually help generate that revenue.
India's financial clout when it comes to cricket is too loud to be ignored, which is perhaps Vaughan is of the opinion that a better case could have been made for the Test championship had India managed to sustained their Test success of the past three years to actually make a case for creating a legitimate championship that will make Test cricket and bilateral series more sensible in pointing in the direction of a championship culminating every four years. That now appears a distant dream as far as the original planned date of 2013 is concerned.
Kevin Pietersen Hears from ICC After On Field Argument with Umpire during T20 v India
Kevin Pietersen played a terrific knock to ensure that England did not return home disappointed from India, but not before catching the ire of the umpires and subsequently the ICC as well.
England all rounder, Kevin Pietersen, batted in the one off Twenty20 match between India and England despite battling a broken finger. In doing so, he scored the only half century of the match en route to taking England to victory, a welcome result after the 5-0 ODI drubbing at the hands of India.
However, Kevin Pietersen's uncanny ability to get into controversies was not spared on this brief tour either. First it was Graeme Swann's book in which he criticized KP's captaincy that brought the attention back to KP. And in the Twenty20 match, Kevin Pietersen managed to incur the wrath of the umpires who did not like the fact that Pietersen was carrying on and on about his dismissal.
England’s Kevin Pietersen has been officially reprimanded for a Level 1 breach of the ICC Code of Conduct during his side’s six-wicket victory over India in the only Twenty20 International (T20I) of the series in Kolkata on Saturday. Pietersen was found to have breached Article 2.1.3 of the code which relates to “showing dissent at an umpire’s decision during an international match”. Pietersen himself pleaded guilty and was let off with an official reprimand to add a touch of sour to an otherwise more celebratory finish to the England cricket season.
World Cup review - Part 1 - Australia, Bangladesh, England, India & Ireland
28 years ago, I was rudely woken up by relatives screaming "We have won the World Cup". It is quite likely that Saturday's final between India & Sri Lanka also ended around the same time as that game in 1983. I was well awake this time around!
I can't recall exactly when I started following cricket with a lot of interest, but I definitely recall watching games from the 1985 World Championship of Cricket in Australia keenly. I did watch at least 1 day's play of the India v Pakistan test at Chepauk in 1987 and definitely remember Azhar taking a blinder of a catch. I can't recollect if it was off a spinner (Maninder) or off a medium pacer (Raju Kulkarni), most likely the latter since I didn't bunk school, and the last day of the test was on a Sunday. The 1987 tied test at Chepauk enthralled me. A few months earlier, I had read an account of the final over of the Brisbane tied test. Around the same time that the India v Australia game was coming to an end, with India in a winning position (50-odd runs to get with 5 wickets in hand), I was at my music class, and wondered aloud if a tie was possible. Needless to say, I got thrashed when umpire Vikram Raju's finger went up.
Back to the present though. The final was an excellent exhibition of classy batting by Jayawardene, who I still believe to be over-rated in comparison to Sangakkara, nice partnerships (Sangakkara-Dilshan, Mahela-Samaraweera & Mahela-Kulasekara, Gambhir-Virat & Gambhir-Dhoni) and a fair amount of power-hitting at the end.
Now that the tournament has ended though, teams & individuals need to introspect into whether they have achieved what they set out to.
Australia needs to take a serious look at their approach to grooming spin bowlers. Under Ricky Ponting's captaincy (possibly because of his limitations when it came to playing spin bowling in tests), the only time he used "spin" with some degree of seriousness was when he was washing his clothes. They've never identified any sort of backup options for Shane Warne other than Stuart "watch-me-bowl-a-half-tracker" MacGill. They need to find at least 1 more young batsman to play alongside Watson, Clarke & Ponting. It is rare for Aussie ex-captains to play on for too long after they've quit as captain. While Ponting may play on until the 2013 & 2014 Ashes, it is quite likely that he'd have quit ODI cricket by then.
Bangladesh need to have a rethink about their domestic cricket structure, and ensure that the top 25-30 players get a lot more exposure to cricket against first-class teams from countries that are better than them. It's quite obviouso that the talent is there, but they're not progressing beyond an odd upset every World Cup and getting thrashed by the rest of the stronger sides. Given their proximity to India & the vote that they bring to India's table at the ICC, I can't understand why they don't engage in some quid pro quo for test & ODI tours to India, and for IPL sides to pick their players.
England performed extremely well against the stronger sides, but lost it against the weaker ones (and barely survived against West Indies). This seems to indicate that it isn't a skill problem, but an inability to understand how to play limited overs cricket. Constantly complaining about the schedule doesn't get them anywhere. The Ashes-World Cup schedule was known well in advance, and they had the better part of 3-4 years since the 2007 World Cup to have a squad of 20-odd quality players to pick from. They have the bowling. Anderson, Broad, Ajmal Shahzad, Tremlett & Swann are a pretty handy lineup. But the batting is far too unidimensional with Strauss, Trott, Bell and Collingwood providing at least 2 too many 'bat 30+ overs' batsmen & only Pietersen, Bopara and Morgan providing the flair.
India won despite a bowling attack that was under threat of being smacked around every game, and a fielding unit (barring 2 or 3 players) which was ever willing to help opponents convert 1s into 2s, 2s into 3s, routine saves into 4s, etc. There's absolutely no doubt that they were the best side of the tournament, and they defeated all the top sides barring South Africa (England, perhaps conveniently, don't count). Yet, players like Virat Kohli & Sreesanth need to think about their game, and what they want to achieve. It is bizarre that Kohli, at 22, is unable to adapt his game to a situation where he goes in at #6 with a couple of overs left to go. He has to realize that he may not go in at #4 with 30 overs to go every time! Similarly, Sreesanth needs to realize that this was his 'last chance saloon'. He only had 2 opportunities to prove that he can be an effective #2 or #3 bowler in ODIs, and he fluffed up both times. If his strength is around generating late outswing, why did he pitch it so short on a very flat batting track in the final? Ashwin has most likely become the 2nd choice spinner, and I'd expect that he gets a lot more games over the span of the next 6-10 months to show that he can do a good job.
Ireland had at least 2 opportunities other than the game against England (v Bangladesh & v West Indies) to show that they should be given many more opportunities to compete against good sides, and also that a World Cup was better off with them than without them. Labels: 2011, 2011 world cup, australia, bangladesh, england, india, ireland, replica, world cup