Record of Sixes

K DATTA

What separates cricket from other sports is that no game is complete without history of kind being made. Take the history aspect out and cricket will lose much of its appeal. For example, the October-November series in which India beat the visiting West Indies team in all three formats of the game will be remembered for the number of sixes that were struck. “Battle of Sixes” is how the tour games have been described. The funny thing is that in the end it was not winning Indian team who clouted more sixes. Of the 127 sixes struck in the two Tests, five one-day internationals and three T20Is the losing West Indies batsmen accounted for 65, three more than India’s 62. So sixes, however thrilling they may be to watch by flag-waving partisans are not everything. There is something more about the game.

India’s women’s crickets

Harmanpreet Kaur Catching the mood thousands of miles from home, Harmanpreet Kaur created history of her own in Guyana with a captain’s innings of 103 against New Zealand in the World Women’s T20 Cup, Her century came in 51 balls and included as many as eight sixes.
After opening the campaign with a convincing victory over the Kiwis Harmanpreet’s girls went on to defeat Pakistan in a game which also created history, though of a different kind. With two Pakistani batters guilty of running on the centre of the pitch in spite of being warned by the umpires the team was punished with a penalty of 10 runs – a 5-run penalty for each such offence – which were awarded to India at the start of their innings. It was something which the defeated Pakistanis admitted was a “silly mistake.” No-one can tell for sure if such a thing has happened before.
The torrent of sixes continued unabated and by the time the Indian women faced Australia in the match to decide the top two teams in the group league, as many as 55 sixes had been struck in the tournament. For the record, Indiahi won their group, beating their Australian opponents by 48 runs to raise their confidence level before the semi-finals. Their campaign in Guyana has won Indian women’s cricket added respect.

Shirtless before the Lord

Sourav Ganguly Sixteen years after Sourav Ganguly took off his shirt and waved it at the hallowed Lord’s cricket ground after India’s victory over England in the 2002 Natwest tournament final, the garment, or rather the lack of it, is back in the news. Members of the Indian cricket team, including manager Ravi Shastri, made news when they were seen shirtless at the Padmanabhaswami temple at Thiruvananthapuram during their recent visit to the Kerala state capital to play the T20I match against the touring West Indies team. Temple rules require male visitors to the shrine to be bare-bodied above the waist, though it is not clear if people with gold chains and talismans dangling on the chests and arms exhibiting tattoos are welcome. Having successfully concluded the home series against the West Indies, Shastri will now hope for some divine help to remove the opinion in the minds of many a student of cricket that the Indian team are poor travellers.



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