Today is my friend, RP's, birthday. Not even she would have imagined that the week culminating in her birthday would witness so many cricketing feats worthy of books by themselves. Murali crossed 600, Kumble crossed 500, and my favourite pacer who is also the fastest bowler in the world - Shane Bond - is back!! (Yes, I know Lee and Akhtar are faster but I hope you get my point).
All three of them are men of a different breed. Murali has been abused and vilified for his bowling action and yet the man keeps chugging away. He bowls an inordinately large number of overs almost as if he is hell-bent on bowling his arm out before bowing down to the naysayers.
Kumble went through a phase where he was not the first choice of the former captain and even now, in a perverse way, Dravid ensures that Bajji gets the ball first, almost as if to prove to his detractors that he is not partial to his fellow Kannadiga. In spite of all that the leg-spinner, whose bowling arm injury was the catalyst that paved the way for player contracts from the BCCI, keeps attacking only as he knows best. He is still fit enough to play for a few years, and judging from the way he batted yesterday, his resolve to put up his hand when the team is in trouble has not left him.
Shane Bond is a rarity - a fast bowler that Australian batsmen fear. In the 2003 World Cup he produced spell after spell of devastating fast bowling, almost single-handedly leading New Zealand onwards. If a 10 over restriction had not existed in ODI's I believe that he would have blown away India in the Super Six encounter where he ripped through our batting order. By his own admission he is one more injury away from quitting cricket. His remodeled action looks quite good and, hopefully, those stress fractures of the back are a thing of the past for the Kiwi cop.
But all of their feats paled in front of an event that I did not even watch (more on that in another post).
2 comments:
Did you read that piece about how Chris Gayle's six reversed the Windies fortunes?
The ball was declared lost and the replacement ball suddenly produced reverse swing and the collapse of the already frail Windies lineup was the outcome!
Yes, regarding Gayle, I was going to write about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but could not quite come up with a good enough entry so I did not.
I noticed something about the English bowlers too, obliquel related to that Gayle incident, that I may end up writing about, now that you mentioned it.
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