Of Jelly Beans, Howel(s) and missed chances

The recently concluded test series between India and England ended in a 1-0 win for us. For most cricket lovers around the country, it may mean our team moving that much closer to the utopian concept of the world’s best test playing nation. I will however remember the series for all the non-cricketing (wrong?) reasons. My 2 years of B-school education followed by more than a year at a leading IT organization have somehow molded me to think only in terms of bullet points. So here it goes:

1. Jelly Beans:

Main Entry: jelly bean
Function: noun: a sugar-glazed bean-shaped candy
Being a child in the pre-liberalization era was never easy. One of the disadvantages was never getting the chance to get close to a jelly bean. A jelly bean was round and sweet… or so I gathered from the Enid Blyton books.

All this changed during the course of this test series…. Messrs Prior and Peterson decided to revisit primary school, play the clown, and poke some fun at Zacs by “bombarding” him with jelly beans. They ended up in annoying the big man and the rest is history.

My word of advice: Things that are meant for eating should be eaten and not thrown at others. If you have food to waste, please think again. You are no longer our colonial masters… 60 years should be long enough to understand this fact. And yes… thanks for the wonderful Independence Day Gift. Like they say “Hum Lagaan Nahin Denge”!

2. Umpire Ian Howell:

A newspaper headline summed up my feelings:
“Not Elite and it shows”

My question to the ICC, how do you decide who officiates in test matches. Do you have a proper policy for umpires in place? If so, please revisit it coz one Mr. Ian Howell should not be allowed within 2 km radius of a cricket field, let alone officiate in one. By the end of the series, most people expected wrong decisions and the correct ones were greeted with a surprise usually reserved for finding an empty seat on the 7:13 pm Andheri fast local.

I would recommend the following training sessions for Mr. Howell:
a. “Umpiring for Dummies”
b.“LBW”: Introduction (including full form), Meaning, Practical Case Studies and of course revisiting past mistakes.
c.“The Art of Player Recall”: Issues, Challenges and virtues of fair play.
d. Don’t raise your finger unless it’s out”. - A practical guide to giving up the temptation of raising your finger just because it’s yours.
e.“Don’t Play God”: The Do’s and Don’ts of umpiring.
A small word for Umpire Bucknor: Is it not time for you to play cricket with great grand children? And by the way thanks for bailing us out in the first test match. It doesn’t however mean we are ok with your decision to give Sachin “shoulder before wicket out”. I hope you remember that. That was hilarious, now that I think of it. You have a sense of humor after all.

3. Monty Singh Panesar:

This young man won the hearts of millions of cricket fans as he huffed and lumbered across the cricket field. The monumental cheers he received whenever he touched a cricket ball or bat or merely “waltzed” across the field bear testimony to the fact that an earnest albeit a gawky striver is appreciated by one and all. His comment to Sourav after the latter hit him for a six was particularly endearing “Yaar bacche hain, thoda dheere se maro.”

4. Where have all the centuries gone? :

India reached scores of 201, 282, 481, 73, and 664,180 in the six innings of test matches it played. And surprisingly only one century and that too from Anil Kumble. The Big 4 fired at times but never crossed the three figure mark. Perhaps not the way they would have liked to finish up with in their last series in England. May be a sign that experience must give way to young Turks??

5. Warming the bench:

This series was perhaps unique in the sense that there were no substitutions from either team and the same teams battled each other for three test matches. Few lucky people had an all expense paid holiday. Oh heck we won so no one will complain.

6. Coach anyone:

A full fledged tour and no coach? Sounds funny right? Move over Guru Greg, Grandpa Borde is here. 74 year old Chandu Borde was handed over the role of the manager of Indian Cricket Team. I wonder what cricketers 50 years younger called him. It is said that Chandu Borde has a habit of forgetting names, calling Sourav Ganguly Gaurav Ganguly and Wasim Salim (I assume he remembered Salim Durrani). May be what he brought to the dressing room were peals of laughter and that lightened the mood.

A neutral observer of the game would probably not rate this test series as among the best. It was after all the battle of two relatively weak cricketing teams, a battle between an ageing batting line up and a bowling attack sorely missed the Harmisons, Hoggards and the Flintoffs but for reasons best known to me, I’m going to tell Gautam Begde Jr. all that I will remember from the 2007 Series just as my old man told me about the 1971 series :).