More cricket off the field

And Inzi is on his way to Australia for a solitary Super Test (yeah right!) and against his will, might I add. The idea behind the Super Series was that since the Aussies were boringly dominant over the rest of the world, maybe a team of super stars (Daniel Vettori?!?!?) could combine to beat them. Now that the god-like Aussies are viewed across the globe as aged has-beens, the Super Series is completely useless. I'm not for calling the whole thing off, I just don't want Inzammam to play in it. His principled stand of opting out should have been respected, he deserved that much. Instead, the PCB has coerced him to eat his words as well as waste precious time that would be better spent preparing for England's visit. I hope there's some mention of a spine in the new PCB constitution.

Cricket off the field

I'm not going to go too deep into statistics, you can find them all at cricinfo, but I'll tell you one thing: Ganguly hasnt looked like he can bat for as long as I can remember. I've seen him score quickfire hundreds against mediocre bowling attacks, and 4-an-over hundreds against decent attacks when 7-an-over hundreds were required. All good for keeping the batting average healthy though never enough...but then, I could be wrong. So while it was only a matter of time before something was done about it, Mr Chappell has steamed in like an army man sent in to manage a team with the single minded purpose of shaping things up (where's Tauqeer Zia nowadays?) Greg has used Sarfraz Nawaz-like tact and blown a simple situation into a complete train wreck. I don't see how you can only just join a team and during your first tour, not before or after, tell your captain that he should start up the order because the middle order batsmen are better than him. "Ganguly yaar, you're game is suited for opening the innings", or maybe "Hey Saurav! The boys would be pumped up if you led from the front and came up the order!" Was that so hard?