ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 ends ...

Retirement of Glenn McGrath:
"A wicket off his last ball in Test cricket and his penultimate ball in ODIs, a 5-0 Ashes triumph in his last Test series and a World Cup win in his last ODI appearance, coupled with the Player of the Tournament ... Glenn McGrath bows out of international cricket on an incredible high."

Here's a list of some glorious and not so glorious (minnow) careers that ended at the ICC World Cup 2007.

Andrew Miller on the farce at the end of the Final:
"How many ICC officials does it take to change a lightbulb? At least a committee of five, none of whom will have read the instruction manual, but each of whom will have a louder and more forthright opinion than the other about how best to do it. If that reads like the start of a bad joke, then it is nothing compared to its ending. Somehow a team of four of the most experienced officials in the game, plus a former Test captain in Jeff Crowe, managed to grab hold of the most luminous event in the world cricket calendar, and fumble so hopelessly that they ended up fusing the entire building."

Sambit Bal on the The Aussie team:
"Australia though contributed in an entirely different and positive way, to the hollowness of this World Cup. But it was hardly their fault they reached such heights that no team came within touching distance. They dominated the tournament like no team has ever done in the history of cricket. They should have been entitled to two victory celebrations. They were almost twice as good as their opponents.

Good moments were scarce. There was Tamin Iqbal's sensational charge against India, Boyd Rankin's energetic bowling against Pakistan, Herschelle Gibbs' six sixes, Muttiah Muralitharan's magical spell against India, Lasith Malinga's sensational four-in-four, AB de Villier's turbo-charged hitting on one leg against West Indies, Mahela Jayawardene's sublime hundred against New Zealand in the semi-final, and ultimately, Adam Gilchrist's demolition of Sri Lanka in the final. Too few for a tournament lasting 46 days.

In the end, it will be a tournament that will be remembered for the bad, ugly and terrible. A horrible death, under-performances, resignations, sackings, and retirements kept us busy. The legacy of this vast and meaningless World Cup will be despair and emptiness. It couldn't have ended sooner."

Onto the WC Final, again!

"The trouble with Australian professionalism is that it has become such a cliché that even watching it at its calibrated best can be numbing. Glory be flaws."

They need to introduce the handicap system, ala Golf, in Cricket. If a team dominates for too long, as is Australia's wont, they should have to score their runs in 20% less overs or score 20% more runs than the opposition. Australia actually lost one such adjusted match against the local Mumbai side. Not that this would have stopped them from reaching their fourth straight World up Final, unbeaten at that !

"I'll be rooting for the Sri Lankans to win for many reasons and one of them is that Sri Lanka is the only team on show that brings the variety of Test match bowling to limited overs cricket: medium, fast-medium, fast, plus left-arm orthodox and right arm off spin, absurdly unorthodox! Blond highlights, round-arm thunderbolts, leg-spinning off-spinners, deadly old men: weird and wonderful is what they are!"

Very good summary of some astonishing, high profile clear-out, post the World Cup.

Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding pictures

After tons and tons of justified and unjustified media coverage, here's some fresh and exclusive pictures from the "Biggest Wedding of The Country"

NZ need Plan B

Australia v New Zealand, Super Eights, Grenada
April 20, 2007

NZ cannot always field first and concede such freakish scores and try to chase it down. They will falter as they lose wickets. Admitted, They have performed admirably in the face of injuries, but they need Bond & Oram back in this bowling line up. Good job by Patel. Drop the two Ms and then we have a championship contender in the business end of the WC.

Entertain, you did !

"I would like to be remembered as someone who came out there and tried to entertain."

Even though I consider myself as one of the biggest fans of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, there is no denying that Brian Charles Lara was the best batsman of my (youth) generation. If nothing else, he has certainly played a lot more defining innings. It was indeed shocking and sad hear him quit Test Cricket too. He certainly had a lot left to offer as player if not captain of the Test team.

"To study his figures was to marvel the scope of his conception. He made the most runs in an over, an innings, a career. Anything anyone did he did bigger. Can you imagine someone making five hundred runs at one shot? Nobody twinkled his feet so and angled his blade so and keep hitting gaps like Lara. Nobody could so strongly confirm that this here is the ultimate individual sport played by a team. Nobody made the game look better and few ever played it better."

Dress Rehearsal and Shrewd Tactics

Excellent article.
Other differences:
Aus - Batsman heavy, go back to their fist choice XI.
SL - Not batsman heavy and are without their top three bowlers.

I think that SL are trying to get some psychological advantage since whatever the result of this game, they will end up playing NZ in the semis and also if they win or even run the Aussies close with a second string side, the Aussies might panic. Why unleash Murali on them when he can be held back and used as a shock weapon with the newly perfected doosra and the round the wickets to right handers line in The Final. Tom & Mahela, Brilliant move?

Sure the bowling will be strengthened by the return of Vaas, Murali and Malinga. But the problem has been the batting. Without the exception of the most-experienced ODI player in the world, Sanath Jayasuriya, and Chamara Silva, to a lesser extent, none of the batsmen have stamped their authority and won the game. They should have brought in Marvan Atapattu in place of Upul Tharanga to give him some match practice. He wasn't even in the side against Ireland. However, all of the challenger sides have beaten each other. Soouth Africa beat Sri Lanka who beat New Zealand who beat South Africa and Australia (atleast in the previous ODI series). So finally the competitive matches begin after the rest of the Super 8s. I do not think there will be a repeat of the last two one-sided finals.

Will Stephen Fleming rest Shane Bond for the dead rubber against Australia?

Dancing in the Whites/Suits

Pair of winners: Cricketers and Dancing With The Stars (UK) champions, Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash, face each other - but on the pitch, not the dance floor, as Yorkshire take on Surrey at the Oval, 18 April, 2007

© Surrey Cricket

Munnabhai Chale Amerika

Trailer for the third part in this hilarious series:

Doing our bit to save trees

Just sent this email to the entire office as the local representative of Environment, Health and Safety team.

PAPER RECYCLING IS HERE!

You can now recycle all your paper at the Shred-Pro bins, which are typically located near copiers and printers!

A paper recycling survey launched in January by the Environmental Team indicated that 99% of the respondents supported a paper recycling program!

If you took the Paper Recycling Survey and requested a desk side paper recycling bin, please contact your building Paper Recycling Contact to get your bin:

Recycling paper saves:
- trees (recycled paper, instead of trees, is used to make new paper)
- water, pollution emissions, oil (it takes fewer resources to process recycled material than new material)
- disposal costs (we save dumpster space and landfill fees)

Please see the top of the Shred Pro containers for what is OK and not OK to recycle.

Please consider reusing the blank backside of your paper before recycling (as a notebook, putting back in the printer or copier to print on, or initially printing on both sides (how to instructions at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP011543871033.aspx)).

Brought to you by your Environmental Team