November 19th

Today is International Men's day and also World Toilet day.



We cannot even have a day for our own sake, we are sharing the spotlight with a toilet:-)

Shut Up Mr. Ian Chappell!

End of Day 3 at Nagpur and India lead by 86 runs. I thought there was some shrewd captaincy from both sides. Ponting, by bowling Krejza, played on Indian's mind and confidence and drew Indian batsmen to a point they became over confident and start playing recklessly. Dhoni for his part, employed an one-sided field and dried up runs for Australia to a point where they were frustrated and started losing wickets and gave India the lead eventually.

Ian Chappell in his column makes this point "It is not the sort of cricket I like to see. Administrators have got to think about suggesting that perhaps no more than two-thirds of the fielders can be on one side of the wicket. It really isn't a lot of fun watching the bowlers bowling well wide of the stumps and batsmen putting their bats on their shoulders. " As a spectator, I agree, it was boring to watch at times, but you cannot complain the way test cricket is played. If you are going to make changes to every single rule (like one-day and T20) to make it more batsman friendly, it will truly kill the essence of test cricket.

On an another note he writes "The over-rates were appalling again. The Indians really showed the true colour of cricketers. They are just not bothered by fines. They were quite prepared to slow the over-rate in the morning and even use it as a tactic. That is ridiculous. You shouldn't be allowed to use it as a tactic. Until the administrators suspend the captain for a couple of Tests, they are not going to get anywhere with over rates. They haven't got anywhere with fines because fines don't work. They need to start suspending the captain. " and I have no idea why he is complaining now. If you look at the last 3 tests, when Australia bowled, they did not complete the alloted overs in a session on almost all the occasions (even worse they used 30 extra minutes in the evening and still not completed the stipulated 90 overs) and no one cried foul on Ponting. Ponting was guilty of over rate even during the last series back in Australia.

Shut Up Mr. Ian, the fact is Dhoni did come with a plan to put Australia on a defensive mode and then purchased wickets by playing on Aussies patience and he executed his plan to perfection. Now it remains to be seen if India can stay positive tactically and win the series.

(Thanks Getty Images)