11 for all formats

Sukumar Ranganathan — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:26:00 GMT

Reuters has an interesting story on Virender Sehwag today. It quotes an article by former New Zealand cricketer Martin Crowe that says: "Given his innings in test cricket, triple hundreds, exploits in Twenty20s and, obviously, one-dayers, he continues to defy really what batsmen have been trying to do for ages."
The reference -- what batsmen have been trying to do for ages -- is to the ability to play and dominate all forms of the game. And it isn't a challenge restricted to batsmen alone -- bowlers face it too.
Indeed, several experts and cricketers have said that countries will probably need to have three different teams for the three formats: test cricket, one-day cricket, and Twenty20 with few overlaps.
I am not convinced about that.
From the players I have watched (in person or on TV) I set out to pick a World XI that could play all three forms of the game, and probably win most of the matches it played.
That wasn't very difficult.
For the record, I'd pay money to watch any of these guys.

1. Virender Sehwag
2. Gordon Greenidge
3. Aravinda de Silva
4. Derek Randall
5. Kevin Pietersen
6. Adam Gilchrist
7. Andrew Flintoff
8. Imran Khan
9. Wasim Akram
10. Shane Warne
11. Michael Holding

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Kevin Pietersen bats for Vijay Mallya

Sukumar Ranganathan — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:35:00 GMT

Vijay Mallya isn't a gent who likes to lose and the performance of his team, the Bangalore Royal Challengers, at last year's inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League Twenty 20 tournament must have hurt.
So, what does he do but go and sign up Kevin Pietersen (for $1.55 million), the man who made history with his switch-hit, forcing the mandarins at the MCC to discuss its legality.
That's because there is no cricketing rule governing switch hits, but if there were, such a rule probably shouldn't exist -- switch hits are so tough to execute that anyone who can do so, especially with the felicity KP can, shouldn't be constrained by rules that bind other ordinary people.
It was presumably logic such as this that inspired Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek to write in favour of a world driven by markets where governments merely create a conducive environment for a market of free people and companies to function.
von Hayek, of course, became popular in India earlier this decade when, while speaking of the late Dhirubhai Ambani, then minister for communications Arun Shourie, who had taken on Reliance Industries in his time as an investigative journalist (one of India's best), cited the Austrian economist to say that , "by exceeding the limits in which those restrictions sought to impound them, they (Reliance and Ambani) helped create the case for scrapping those regulations…
Interestingly, Mukesh Ambani, Dhirubhai's elder son and the inheritor of mantle, owns an IPL team too, the Mumbai Indians.
And it too didn't do well last year.
Ambani's team, Mumbai Indians, signed up South Africa's Jean Paul Duminy,widely hailed as a once-in-generation player.
Will that help the fortunes of a team that already has such stalwarts such as Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya and Shaun Pollock?Will KP's signing on help the Royal Challengers, widely recognised as the finest test team to ever play a T20 match? Only time will tell, but at least KP and Duminy have age on their side.
P.S: Chennai Super Kings have signed on Andrew Flintoff for $1.55 million

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A Daily Download : Kevin Pietersen

11 for all formats

Kevin Pietersen bats for Vijay Mallya