Thursday, 22 May 2008

An Embarassment

Cross Posted on The DLF IPL

There is no other way I can think of to describe today's defeat. It was shocking, stunning, horrible, pathetic, abysmal and inexcusable. Full credit to Bangalore for the way they fought. But that should not take away from the sheer imbecility in our performance. Any team that contrives to lose after restricting the opposition to 127 and then being 85 for 2 in 14 overs surely deserves all the brickbats that it gets.

No batsman can be spared. So here's a lowdown on each.
1) What the hell is Parthiv doing up the order ? Yet again he has thrown away his wicket. Yet again he has proved that even when he comes up with a decent partnership he does not quite look a batsman that any opposition will be afraid of.

2) What the hell was Fleming trying to do ? Complacency oozed out from every shot of his in the later stages of his innings. WHY ?

3) What the hell was Dhoni doing ? All it needed at that stage was for Dhoni to stay till the end and victory would have been assured.

4) What was that shot from Badrinath ? Why would a batsman with his arsenal attempt a ridiculous shot like that on the last ball of Kumble's spell ? Did he get pressurised by the close-in field ? Does he have a mental weakness in that case ? Is that the reason why he has not yet broken into Team India ?

5) Where is Morkel when we need him ? The hook shot is the one shot that is not quite in his toolkit. Why did he have to go for it that too off a quality bowler like Dale Steyn ?

6) At the expense of sounding harsh, why does Vidyut frequently bat like an idiot ?

7) What about Goni ? Forget the way he got out, weren't the hoicks that he played and missed before that ridiculous enough ? And why did he have to get out when 10 runs were scored off that over already ?

8) And finally what about Raina ? He played a couple of glorious cricketing shots and otherwise came up with ugly heaves which he predictably failed to connect. Just earlier in the day Sachin Tendulkar had given a master-class in elegant 2020 striking. Pity this youngster touted as the future of Indian batting didn't quite pick it up.

It was indeed pathetic and pitiable to see him at the end trying to hold on to strike by all means and being unable to connect even a single ball. Praveen Kumar bowled the last over for 1 run !!!

Meanwhile credit to Bangalore. Really heartening to see Dravid smile and get pumped up again. And what a spell by the old warrior Kumble ! The only tragedy is that it came at our expense. Why couldn't they do this to Delhi or Punjab or any other team instead ?

Revenge Battle Results
Patel v Praveen - Draw
Raina v Praveen - Clearly Praveen gets the revenge !
Raina v Akhil - Draw
Dravid v Gony - Draw

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Super Kings have become the Duper Kings. The batting has always been suspect once Hayden and Hussey left. I think it is time that we had N. Srinivasan and Sivamani pad up and replace Raina and Vidiot. It will at least keep the entertainment value going.

This team is all set to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Watch the butt kicking in Jaipur and Hyderabad...

சரண் said...

Deeply disappointed. Pathetic performance. I'm gonna support Punjab Kings 11 from now on.

Viswanathan said...

Lets not lose heart.

This is the time to rally around the team.

CSK for Semi's!!

Thiru Cumaran said...

Complacency at its very best! At least its good that this loss came before 2 crucial matches. A good wake-up call and I just hope that they don't mess it up against Rajasthan and Deccan!

Murali said...

I think it is high time we fans of CSK realize this is not a team worth support and back up by fans.

We are just reeling on the initial victories provided us by the Aussies.

If you set aside the first four victories, and look at the rest of matches, I guess we had won just 3 out of 8 matches, which classifies us in par with teams like Royal Challengers and Deccan Charges.

Our winning percentage with the current team is very poor.

And for people who support and watch the matches with hopes of CSK doing well, even if CSK makes it to the semi-finals, we are just away of one more match to be knocked out of this tournament, bcos the other probable teams in the semifinals (Rajasthan, Punjab, Mumbai) are doing really great.

I sought to believe there is no team for Chennai.

BTW, can we file a law suit preventing any private club use "Chennai" as their club name ?

I support 'RAJASTHAN ROYALS'

Gaurav said...

@all
After last night's performance this is the time to hold strong and keep faith in the team. It is not that our players are incapable, it is just that they were complacent. Next 2 games become even more crucial. I did not go to the stadium today, but with what happened, I for one, will surely be there on Saturday to egg the team on. We should be critical of such poor performances yet unwavering in our support for the team !

Calling all Chennai Super Kings fan to rally and bounce back strongly to help and support our team through these difficult times.

CSK_FOR_LIFE said...

After all its just a game of cricket.. yes it is really a murder.. change in the batting order is reason for the loss.. but i still fell we have a chance to go to semis.. let dont lose the hope guys.

this is where the attitude is. even he is a player or a supporter. you need to be positive.
I HAVE FAITH MY TEAM..

Anonymous said...

You are right...am heartbroken... loosing to RC is like giving a BJ to Dennis Rodman!

Danesh said...

Kepler Wessels needs to give a dressing down to the batsmen who played reckless shots.

CSK should compensate this loss by winning against the Rajasthan Royals. If they do that, we can forgive them for this poor performance.

Anonymous said...

What a pathetic show that was! Dhoni says bad shot selection as a reason, im afraid if thats so ur not worth for semis. Matches against RR and DC are going to be a herculean task at hands of CSK now. I think they just lost the plot during the game ...Team needs mental conditioning coach as the RR team has in Darren. CSK u just dashed the hopes of ur supporters big time! Loss to RC ...more i think about it my BP shoots up!

Anonymous said...

What is great about your post is that it shows not one of the top 8 batsmen was thinking at all. Anyways, still planning to head out to the Royals game on Sat and think we will make the semis.

Gopalakrishnan C said...

Excellent analysis-on the weakness of every single Batsmen. However, much of the blame should be owned by Dhoni. In fact, soon after his first season, his is very tentative in his batting style. His cricketing shots look more like "Gilli" strikes- more from plucking from the ground. We had lost all matches where he had come early, and he has been responsible for slowing down the run rate. This puts enormous pressure to the later order batsmen and they fail miserably. I am not sure whether Badri was out or not. I had a feeling after watching the re-play that the ball hit his gloves first. This is not an excuse for his miserable attempt to play that stroke.

C Gopalakrishnan

Unknown said...

@Gopalakrishnan C
1. Dhoni had already held himself responsible for the debacle. Hope u heard him at the presentation. Looks like he can’t even ve a bad day! Poor soul..
2. Ya dhoni slows down the run rate but he also stops the fall of wickets which otherwise forms a train towards dressing room. Looks like u have forgotten the matches where dhoni n badri got some respectabiltiy to CSK by putting decent scores on the board otherwise it would ve been a shame shame!!
3. Let’s accept the fact that CSK is not at all a balanced team. It has become predictable, hence easy target for oppositions... same set of batsmen, no variation in bowling, mostly pathetic fielding (min 2 catches are being dropped in every match), only one all rounder in morkel.
4. CSK doesnt ve many match winners. Teams like RR and KXP have more match winners, thats why they are winning consistently. How much yuvi is performing in any match but since its a balanced unit his failure doesn’t effect the team.
5. Many of the local guys of CSK doesnt ve much experience (not even 1st class, correct me if m wrong) which was clearly visible in yesterday's match. parthiv n murli are a liability on the team.

Its gonna be nothing less than miracle if we win against RR and yes even DC!! Sorry but it’s a bitter truth… still I would be supporting and praying for CSK… Hope they emerge as winners… GO CSK!! U can do it.. Pl believe in urself..

Anonymous said...

We need to drop Vidyut. The guy is neither fielding nor is scoring runs.

We were over confident. We should've shut shop the proceedings in 15-16 overs.

Guys, support the team. I still think we can make to the semis.

Gopalakrishnan C said...

Dear Vaibhav,
I agree with your analysis. In fact, soon after the Bangalore innings , we were ( I am in UAE, but a hard core chennaite) discussing that CSK has a great opportunity to wipe out the negative run rate, if we could get the score, say, in 12 or 13 overs.

Among the available lot, the present team is a balanced one. Vidyut has a good Ranji record and let us not write him off with two or three failures. A little bit of hard counselling ( Hope Krishnamachari Srikant is doing it) he will start firing. When Yuseff, Abishek, Jadeja, Goswami, Diwan are all firing, our own local lads are also capable of coming good. Cricket is more a mind game. They should plan three or four overs ahead and plan for the current over. Aerial route is exciting, but is also fatal. Avoid "dot" balls. When the asking rate was just six, aiming for singles and occasional 4 or six on lose balls could have seen us marching out with 16 points. Neither the coach, nor seniors like Srikanth nor Dhoni had strategised the plan with the players. With a little caution, and advice our batsmen would not have perished to the aerial shots.

Let us hope, think tank starts working- hope it has not drained out.Batsmen should remember that placing for one or two is far better than a classic/ powerful stroke straight to the fielder. Four Dot balls, adds pressure to the players. If we say sachin is great, it is because of his ability to keer the score board busy, not always with a six or a four.

Gaurav said...

@all
we should not behave like vijay mallya and desert our team in this ..after all we have got the points on the board and are still in 3rd place ... delhi mumbai still have to go get them.

what was symbolic was that in between all the wild slogs raina was having and missing there was one shot when he played a beautiful square drive - text book stroke - and that went for four. that should have knocked some sense into him but unfortunately he resumed slogging. hopefully the team will have realized their mistakes by now.

personally i didnt agree with dhoni coming up the order. this was the kind of game where he should have preserved himself down in case a collapse happened, as it duly did.

i dont agree we are not a balanced team. we are one of the more balanced teams in the competition except perhaps punjab and yet we beat punjab comfortably.

i agree to some extent we have few genuine match winners - dhoni for one - but a combination of badri, raina, fleming morkel ntini murali and gony can be lethal when they do well.

@ipl08 i will be there in the stadium too. most likely ill be in the cognizant stand !

Anonymous said...

here is a good news ... the match between DD n KKR was washout
hence the Kolkata Knight Riders became the third team to be eliminated from the race for a semi-final spot. so if DD loses against the MI, we will surely go to the semi finals

Unknown said...

Hi Guys,

I agree with some of you and not with some of you. I will give my views here.

First of all, we need to support our team no matter what and stay with them. I can’t be coming for the match in Chennai, as I am living in New Zealand. However, will be watching the match with great interest!

From the start, I believed that Chennai has one of the most balanced teams, and even now I think that we do!

If we analyse the match that we just lost against Bangalore, we have to admit that our team did so well in bowling and restricting the Bangalorians. Let’s admit that they had some players coming in to form and they had nothing to loose and that can be very dangerous for any team in a given particular day. So we did well in restricting them to a low score.

We started off reasonably well and I think that Fleming is coming in to some form and also think Patel did ok. However, we know the nature of Patel from all these matches, that he gives away his wicket at around his twenties. Fleming made a mistake and got out too. I do not blame these two players, as they both had given a good start and they may have felt that it’s time go for more in an aggressive way.

But why did Dhoni come in to bat one down? I admit in some situations that he can come in to bat 1 down. If we are running out of over’s and we need to put a big total or chasing a big total. However, this was not the case. Only reason that I can think that he came up the order is to improve the run rate. But if he was going to do that he should have got Vidhyut to go one down. And I am sure that he would have been attacking, as that’s his nature. I also think that we should have sent in Badri two down and then followed by Raina and then only Dhoni should have come in to bat. So we got that batting order all wrong on that match. Because if Vidhyt failed, Badri would have been able to stabilise the innings, as he is a good player and also he is form. He got out as he was under pressure. I do not think Badri is yet ready to handle pressure yet. Clearly Raina is not able to handle pressure and he has been giving away his wicket easily and not scoring enough in recent times. I think that he might have to be talked about having a more of a conservative innings where he turns over the strike, as we do have some big hitters in our team.

Then if Vdhyut, Badri and Raina had failed I believe that Dhoni would have had his senses to bat with some purpose and seen us winning that game. Also he would have kept talking to Morkel and they would have seen us through to a win.

Run rate is important, however win is more important. Sending in Vidhyut is not going to be a bad move at one down if we wanted the rungs. No need for Dhoni to come up.

The bowlers played bad, but we shouldn’t be expecting them to chase a total when we do so badly up the order. Manpreet played the worst shot to get out. But we can excuse him as he is there in the team primarily for bowling.

Anyway, the game that we have lost is already lost. No point in thinking about it now, let’s hope that our team has learned something. I do not want to see Chennai just to make up numbers, I want them to get everything right before them play the next game.

For next game I would prefer if we can do the following:

- If we do have a good old rounder, I am not sure about Napoleon and how he is as a player, if he is good and is in form in the nets, give him a chance in place of Raina. I know Raina is a good batsman, but he need to learn a few thinks and just dropping him for a game and having some advisory sessions by Kepler and Srikkanth would be beneficial I believe. Also it will be good to check if we have a youngster who can give a different option and see if he can take it at this level. Most other teams have tried this and that’s how they have found some good new players who are boosting their side’s big time.
- If we win the toss and there is nothing to suggest that batting second is going to be hard, bat second. It will be a tough game as Rajasthan has got a good side, but we have to chase and win to make sure that we put that Bangalore experience away from our mind. Also I do believe that batting second has its advantages and offcourse Fleming is better at chasing than batting first.
- The bowling is going well, so let’s keep going with that. May be using Murali earlier on if Smith gets going. Let’s organise the bowlers in a way, so that we have Balaji bowling to specially Pathan. We do not want to see Pathan scoring too much, as he can quickly take the game away from us. Also if we can have that all rounder, that would give another option.
- Let’s open with Vidhyut and Fleming. Both of them opened well and I am not sure why we changed that partnership again. Then lets’ bring in Badri at one down. Then Raina (if he is playing), followed by Dhoni, the new guy (if we are playing), and then Patel. We can move Dhoni, the new guy (or Raina), Morkel and Patel depending on the situation. But let’s please start off with Vidhyut / Fleming and then Badri. Then it can be decided depending on the situation.
- When we are batting, let’s make sure that we minimise the dot balls, and let’s keep getting singles and hit big when we can. Also let’s not worry about run rate and things. We just need a win.
- But we should re build out confidence beating Rajasthan is the only way we are going to be confident for the semis and let’s do that if we want to have a chance in the semis.

We know that Shane will try and some surprises against us, specially since they have qualified for the semis. So let’s watch out for all his tricks. But lets all support our team! We have a great team, but just that they are lacking the confidence that they should have in the whole team.

Let’s go Chennai Super Kings!

Cheers,
Dhaya

P.S: Sorry for the lengthy note! ;-)

CSK_FOR_LIFE said...

Nice post dhaya..!

See, the match against RC's is a accident. we cant do anything abt that accident.. some we win, some we wont. i shocked abt the csk fans is, they started saying that they want to support some other team..
what's wrong with u guys. i think we never said that we are gonna support australia instead of india in 2007 world cup. its our team, we cant say that. like that, CSK is our team, we have to support them when it needed. from the start of the tournament we are in the top 4 list. so put some probabilities on it and seee. we are in the semis man.... we are gonna face Kings XI punjab in second semis.

incase we lost this tournament, be happy... after all its just a game of cricket.

see we have lots of luck in our way in this league.
* Unexpected win against RC's in first half.
* win against mumbai in final over.
* Gony's last over miracle.
* D/L method against Kolkatta.
* yesterday the washout...

everything is coming in our way. Hope we make it to FINAlS. dont ever give-up...

Anonymous said...

This team is toast!

Here are my bets:

1) Loss tomorrow to RR. CSK bat first, score 136. Rajasthan reach total in 16.4 overs.

2) Loss to DC on the 25th. Gilchrist and Gibbs go berserk and post 230 runs in 20 overs. CSK all out for 97 in response.

N. Srinivasan has the best chance to play 1st class cricket in his lifetime given that the outcome is already determined. Might as well get your photo in oversized white pants on the field after paying $90 million.... Maybe he should get his daughter also on the field.

Anonymous said...

dr ramadossisgay ... we'll be back wait and see

Anonymous said...

One down, one more loss to go.

Anonymous said...

Since this team does not have any local 'superstars' in its team, it has to depend on its imports and Dhoni has been a huge disappointment in that matter. We need a captain like Warne to lead and motivate the players. what he has done with RR is nothing less than fantastic. I think fans of CSK have to be happy with this perormance this year. But it would be a huge disappointment if they don't go thru to the last 4 as it would mean no team from the south is good enough to be in the top four !! It would be interesting to see what the players are going to fetch next year with the salary cap off, especially the aussies !!