Champions Trophy Preview : Will The Blue Prevail?

IPL IS OVERRRRRR! IPL IS OVERRRRRR!

Hey you yellow & hey you blue, & you, yes you red & you purple, its time to unite.

Take a breath. You have 15 boring overs to chill in the middle & it still wont be gone in a blink.

Oh yes. The 50 overs are crawling back to contention after some heavy dose of Boom-bang-booom.

About time we move on to the omelette from the boiled one. As Mr. Shashtri would say "Quality Cricket" with no meaningless games and run rate boosting minnow bashing. Although the quality of the teams will differ from South Africa to India to Pakistan to NewZealand, every team on their days is capable of winning the other seven.

Check the blue jerseys.

Check the "Go go go Virat" chants.

Check the "Jeetega bhai jeetega, India jeetega" prayers.

Check the mighty superstitions.

THE CHAMPIONS TROPHY IS HERE.

[Issued in viewers' interest : The following article may or may not suffer from major IPL hangovers, occasionally. Although we promise to behave ourselves as much as we can, blame goes out to the grueling bit of cricket (& off-cricket-all-the-wrong-things-too) that took place in the last month or so. Happy reading & sorry in advance!]

However, back to business  what can we expect from the team with five CSKians, three Sun Risers, two Mumbai Indians, two Royal Challengers, two Daredevils and a lone (ex) Warrior ? (#oksorry )

Unlike most of the other selections in the near & a bit distant past, the one for the CT was less outrage-worthy. Like, much. To the utter surprise (i.e : disappointment) of the average cricket pundit, the selectors showed some mostly invisible guts and left out Viru from the probable 30 & ultimately dropping Gauti & Yuvi on the D-day.

Well done, gentlemen! (?) Claps please!
But, a flawless XV, not to be.

Maybe Sandeep Patil & co. were trying to pay a tribute to Cheeka.

Picked Murali Vijay. Why? He showed some form. Format? Tests. When? At home against the kangaroos.

Uh oh. How nice of you guys. See, I'm not trying to rub salt or pepper or chilly. But he averages 17.81 in ODIs, 10.00 overseas (6.00 if you exclude Zim) & well, 22.28 in the just concluded IPL season. (He really did fail in the final even. Yeah, still can't believe.) 
Now thats very unattractive.

Che Pu would've been apt. The technique to deal the bounce & the patience to digest Dhawan-Virat's fury. Boy, he could've been some package. Le sigh yougaiz.

And Irfan's quota, to fault the wise men, could've considered the ever so economical Md. Shami from the Pakistan series. & PK has his amusing off field activities to blame & thus we miss out on seeing the Kumars together, again. Even maybe a surprise package could be arranged in the form of a Siddharth Kaul or an Ishwar Pandey.

OKAY FINE, JUST SAYING.

It feels weird to not to outrage selections. Tcha. Habit you see.

Who are we? Indians!

What do we do? Play cricket!

How do we do? Bat our way to victory!

Now then, the men with the key. As the Gautis & Virus are on a break (hopefully a long one), its time for the moustache to deliver. Da.one ofcourse. But the debate lies within the position of his partner. DK(hopefully his injury is quickly heal-able), Sir Vijay & Rohit. If fit, DK should be the obvious choice because even be the middle order crowded like a office time tube, thinking out of the box straighaway is simply not MSD.

But, that was 'should'. 'Would' will be Vijay! Dont give that damned look people, you know why.

Keys are Dr.3 & Mr.5. Virat fires, we win. Raina fires, we win. Their job is to get to a likely spin disaster & Ishant-mess proof total. Sorry guys, you two need to pull your socks as high up as possible.

In the middle, Mr. Talented looks like getting a chance to prove his omnious lazy elegance, yet again.

But mind you Rohit, this might well be the last. You might have won a trophy beating your very own captain less than a week back but who knows, next time the selectors might get lazy & forget to pick you. Get it lad?

Nothing to say about MSD. Captain knows his favourite format better than all of us combined.

No.7 is tricky. Ideally it should be Irfan because you really dont see the selectors favouring him for anything else other than it being UK & him being a Fast bowling allrounder. May Sir Jadeja blesses him from the bench. Amen.

How we should line up :

Dhawan, DK, Virat, Rohit, Raina, MSD*, Irfan.

How we shouldn't :

Dhawan, Vijay, Virat, Rohit/DK, Raina, MSD*, Jadeja.

Never a stronghold. Will never be. Will always lack something. Existence of same old problems which goes back to old, not so good or good back then yet outdated solutions.

Like getting back to Irfan. He was proven. He has the experience. Reputation too. Form? Who cares. That is how Indian cricket works. Though we have no choice but to give him a go and hope he lives at least upto half of his next Kapil Dev tag (Strictly on cricketing terms and not fixing) which revolved around earlier. Half will do. Or bit less than half even. Something is better than nothing when you consider the fact that next world cup is there in down under.

Here is one Kumar of Indian bowling and he has no criminal cases against him. He is fresh and swings it both the ways around. Meet Mr. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar. In some brilliant form, he is one of our hopes. In fact, he is our strength.

India should go for a lone spinner and is Ashwin really good enough ?

Ashwin who has played his 20% of games outside subcontinent has a poor wicket tally (seven wickets in ten matches at an average of 54.28) and a terrible strike rate (60.8) which is almost double when compared with his sub continent statistics. Amit Mishra on the back of a brilliant IPL who has no significant international numbers to back or neglect- with his corrections to his no ball problems- could well be a choice. With numbers not in his support Ashwin should not consider himself as first choice which is the case for Mishra too. Anyway with the tag of lead Indian spinner (Sorry. He may well just be the go-to-man in India) he could (he will) get into the eleven and We can only hope that , somehow Dhoni rather comes out of the mental block to try and test than dwell on a fixed mindset.

So you might have a question here.

If not Ashwin, then who else? Well. Not exactly. Like the Indian spearhead, Indian lead spinner is also a polished myth as of now. Nice attractive and catchy words, isn't it?

How we should line up ?

Bhuvi, Umesh, Ishant/RVK, Irfan, Ashwin/Mishra.

How we shouldnt?

Any attack with Jaddu. Because we are not playing in India.

And finally, a request or two for the pseudo old man (Look at his beard, dude.) & the real old man.

Dearest Skipper & Mr. Goggles,

• Please give the random stupid selections on board a break. Not to go by reputations & all. (C'on, they won't do those this time around. Will they? Yes? Ouch.)
• Not to play the ones that might risk the fate of our campaign. e.g Vijay & Jaddu.   (As to quote our Skipper Fantastic, "Horses for Courses.")
• Lets NOT offer a (by-all-chances-non-performing-yet-soooo-talented) Rohit a lot of merci. He has had enough when it comes to the blue jersey. Time to hit out or sit out, really.
• Beware of the Africans. They have one bearded genius in their ranks. Then their wicketkeeper batsman can bat a bit to be honest. Plus there is that one beast by the name of Dale Steyn. Although we have a colossal stat of never losing a game to them in CT (Yes. Two out of two. Achievement. No?) But still, beware.
• Last but not least, the off-field issues over the last couple of weeks have been beyond disappointment & distraction. But lets not the dark of betrayal & guilt not hit the boys in blue. Atleast giving it a shot-able, no doubt.

Have had enough, enough, absolutely enough overseas affliction in the last couple of years. Now, just when we started to dream of a crown earned in not so favourable conditions, the darkest era of cricket in India decided to hit us. Hard.

Does that give enough reasons for why we, the battered fans, the scarred pundits would love to see the trophy coming home?

Oh please. Who are we again? We are Indians. Whatever happens, cricket lives on with us. It flows in those veins, man. We can't help it. Like a constant from one of the Physics journals.

Good luck guys.

Asking for a soothing performance for these jaded cricket-corrupt-hearts.

May you return victorious.

(Nothing wrong in hoping. Okay? Okay.)

[ P.S : This preview was written before the mute (almost), reluctant (much), cautious (very) press conference by the respected Captain of the Indian Cricket Team after reaching Birmingham.

                                                                                 i.e : We were a bit lazy to re-edit.]