A look at X Marshall

Xavier Marshall is in news now for his whirlwind knock against Aussies which won West Indies the game. This Jamaican burst in to the seen back in 2004 creating waves with tags like next Vivian Richards due to his aggressive style of batting. But his form after his initial success has been very poor. He scored a century in his first season but failed to score any more.
He was first spotted as a youth player, and he lead West Indies to many victories in U-19 Tournaments. His century against South Africa stands out.But he got in to problems due to his fiery temper and has been reprimanded more than once. Thanks to immense belief of West Indies board in his potential, he is come out pretty safely.This series against Australia could define his career. He has done pretty well in Test Matches scoring 2 half centuries and has started off well before the one-day series.
Will this be the making of another great West Indian batsman???He is got age on his side, but he will need to be more consistent and play more of first class cricket. West Indies would be hoping this generation of players would bring back their old glory and surely X Marshall will be in their plans.

So far...So good...

The group stage of Euro 2008 has concluded. Holland,Spain and Croatia have been phenomenal. Specially Holland,which was grouped with Italy,France and Romania. They thrashed Italy and France , something which was least expected. Croatia too caused an upset when they defeated Germany. Spain as expected cleaned up all the teams in their group. Portugal also played well with Ronaldo,Deco and Simao in great form. Germany were scratchy but were lucky to be grouped with Austria and Poland. Italy may well have been out, but thanks to Buffon who saved a penalty by Mutu, they finished of their campaign defeating France 2-0 to qualify for the next round.Turkey came back strongly from 2 goals down, to win 3-2 against Czechs who were let down by a rare mistake from Peter Cech. Russia too came back after their ransacking by Spain to win last 2 games and reach the quarter finals.The worst performance was from France scoring just 1 goal and losing 2 games. They were expected to easily make the cut from their group. Switzerland,Sweden were outplayed by lesser known teams. Greece were just a shadow of the team which won the last Euro.Austria,Poland and Romania had nothing much to cheer about. They played their part as minnows very well.
David Villa has been the striker in form, scoring a hatrick in his first,and the winner in his second. Wesley Sneijder has been in great form scoring 2 spectacular goals. Podolski has shown why he is regarded as a very dangerous striker.
The quarter finals start today. Spain have the toughest game ahead,against Italy. This will their real test. Germany also face a tough opponent , Portugal.This would be really interesting. Holland play Russia and Croatia play Turkey,both could be as much tricky as it could be one sided. So lets wait and watch who will be crowned the Champions of Europe.

The Case of Switch Hit!!!

The MCC has ruled Kevin Pietersen's switch hit as allowable. This is seen as a success for batsman as this allows them to whack the ball changing their stance without prior notice. But reverse hits have been a part of the game ever since, then why was this raised before MCC??
The original Reverse hit was the reverse sweep. When this shot was played only the bat's position was reverse , both the body and stance remained same. This new concept of switch hit has the player suddenly changing his stance and his grip and then executing the shot. It can be seen as a bowler changing from over the wicket to around the wicket without telling before hand. So if a right hand batsman plays this shot , its like a whack over mid wicket played by a left hand batsman. The first instance of this was KP's shot against Muralitharan back in 2006. He recently scored 2 sixes against Newzealand employing this shot. This was the reason for this to be referred to MCC.
Now since they have ruled for it citing it provides a chance for the bowler also to strike. Will we see more of this innovative shot or will this be confined to batsman like KP??

Form Trouble for Aussies

With Simon Katich scoring back to back centuries and Phil Jacques also in form the Australian management are faced with a dilemma , regarding their star batsman Mathew Hayden. How will they accommodate him???One possibility could be to use Katich as a middle order batsmen but then who is to be replaced??Ponting , Hussey , Clarke , Symonds and Haddin are playing well. And then maybe , only Hussey and Haddin seems to be a bit out of touch.When teams are looking forward to players scoring a century here we got them scoring in almost all the chances they get.This could be interesting as we might witness a consecutive centurion being replaced.Hard Luck Katich!!!

Pakistan : Played to the occasion

How many times have India been through this??Playing well all through out and finally faltering when it matters the most. The 2 matches prior to this had been fully dominated by India , yet we saw a very familiar sight in the final. Well we can say our middle order did not have match practice since openers dominated the other 2 matches , but in the end we lost the Cup. Its a fact a our bowling was relatively inexperienced , but this was the same attack which won us the first game. But this team has made a pretty strong statement that they have come to stay. This was a first experience for many playing a final. Anyway we can take lot of positives from this so called Tri-Series.Fielding standards has been great barring a few occasional miss fields and Gambhir has made it a point that he is not only good in 20/20 format. But if you notice the last time India won in Australia there was this factor Sachin Tendulkar , which shows that experience counts. Hope India learns from this loss and wait and watch what happens in the Asia Cup.

Allen Stanford strikes!!!

The deal has been signed.The next 5 years will see England and West Indian players play 20/20 matches. The format is very interesting.The winners take all the cash i.e US$20 million. So if England wins the match each of the XI players earn US$1 million , the rest of team share another 1 million , the management gets 1 million and the rest is shared by their respective cricket boards. This will see players earning much more than the IPL players except a few top players.The deal for 5 years is worth US$100 million making it one of the biggest, the cricketing world has ever witnessed.

The Story behind Allen Stanford

Allen Stanford is a Texas based billionaire financier and he has been into sports from early days.He has been sponsoring lot of tournaments in golf , sailing,cricket,tennis. His involvement in cricket has been Stanford 20/20cricket tournament. He built a stadium for that in Antigua and the tournament was first held in 2006 July. This tournament has the Caribbean nations fighting out for the trophy.
After the 20/20 World Cup there were offers up to US$20 million to from him to team India to play a 20/20 match(Initially he said 5 million and finally he was ready to shell out a whooping 20 million). This was not considered by India. Recently he has offered US$100 million to England Players to play 5 games. If this takes place this will go down as the maximum money earned by players bettering IPL. This would be a great chance for the West Indian players also. Time will tell us if this man is going to make history!!!!