Catching up

While I was away from the blogsphere these were some of the articles that caught my eye.

a) Who is (statistically) the greatest all-rounder in the history of Test cricket? The answer is someone who has very quietly put together a very formidable career. Get this: he is the only man to have scored over 9,000 runs, taken more than 200 wickets, and snagged at least 100 catches in BOTH Tests and ODI's.

b) Jamie Alter describes Virender Sehwag's approach to the Sri Lankan bowlers, especially Mendis, en route to a coruscating double century in the second Test against Sri Lanka. A must read.

c) Yuvraj Singh really has nice parents. After hearing from his mother, it is now the father's turn to talk about his son. Of particular interest is this snippet (I will let the comment speak for itself)...

Yograj doesn’t sound too happy with all the pampering that Yuvi has got from his mother Shabnam. He emphatically states, “A mother can give birth and maintain a house. But she can never show the right path to the child. It’s a man’s job. I have ruled my family with an iron hand.”

d) Two fellows - Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash - who made their debut in the same Test, underachieved at the highest level, and then forged a formidable career in the English County scene are linked forever as members of one of cricket's most exclusive clubs - the hundred 100's club. Simon Hattenstone pays glowing tribute to the ageless warriors.

e) In all the years of Test cricket, only 9 times has a batsman batted more than 1,000 minutes in Tests without being dismissed. Astonishingly, one man has done it on 4 different occasions, the latest being earlier this year. I will give you a dozen chances to guess who that might be, but I can bet that only a few of you will get it right. Not surprisingly, this dude also gives among the most boring interviews around, filled with banal observations and very little insight into the way he really thinks. Or maybe that's the secret of his success - he is really a very simple person!

f) Dileep Premachandran wrote about the declining fortunes of the Indian middle order after they failed miserably in the first innings of the Third Test match. After the series was done, he expanded on his thoughts and discussed the state of India's cricketing cupboard.

g) One of my favourite cricket-writers is Peter Roebuck. While it is probably too soon in his career for such fawning pieces to be written about him, it voices many of my sentiments.

h) And finally, Sambit Bal reviews the process of challenging an umpire's decision that was unveiled during the just-concluded Indo-Sri Lanka series. A tentative thumb's up is his final verdict, with the emphasis on the word tentative.

It was meant to get rid of obvious umpiring mistakes - the kind in the Sydney Test that threatened to derail India's tour of Australia - but it has ended up ruling on marginal calls.