NEW BLOOD NEEDED in the team -WAQAR

Waqar Younis said during a press conference along with Captain Shahid Afridi in Qadaffi stadium today that the time is right for the new blood to come into the team. We have selected some new faces for the Asia cup and these new comers are immensely talented and I expect them to perform well in the Asia cup.

He further said that his job is just related to the coaching, he is not concerned with the management issues but the damage caused to the Pakistan cricket due to the recent incidents that took place which were post Australian tour is incredible and nothing more has damaged our country’s cricket then the recent issues have. The issues could have been dealt better but unfortunately they were miss handled.





For me, the first thing is to maintain discipline in the team, it is important for me to maintain discipline. You must have seen the team work in the West Indies, but this is not the end, we need to work hard on this issue. Team unity is a key to success.



Waqar further said about Shoaib Akhtar, that we don’t want him to rush back, i know how difficult is it to make a comeback after 2,3 years, you need to start from the beginnings, i hope he performs well in Srilanka, but yeah we will not be putting pressure on him. He further said, every tour is important for me.



Shahid Afridi accompanied Waqar Younis in the press conference, he said the team is balanced, I am satisfied with team combination and there is one thing that is in our hands and that is the effort, we are making effort to make a mark.

He said, he has talked to shoaib akhtar that this is a new team, so you need to maintain discipline in the team, and he was very keen to behave good.

This is cricket new for you, where every new thing in cricket is possible !

what you need to have to be a fast bowler

I was listening to Allan Donald during the mid innings break during the micro max mobile tournament in Zimbabwe yesterday. Mike haysman asked him different questions regarding how to be a fast bowler. It was really interesting to hear some really helpful comments.

During his interview, he talked about different fast bowlers like dale steyn, brett lee and Mitchell Johnson. He said the most common thing among all the fast bowlers is this that they all are natural athletes; have flexible muscles, they are physically strong and have a very good rhythmic run up.

He first talked about dale steyn, look how fit he is. He bowls around 150kph at regular interval. He is the South African spearhead for some time now. He is the fittest player in the team. He is a natural athlete with good body shape. He further said he works extremely hard on his fitness, he is a stretching maniac, even in his hotel room, he does stretching of his muscles and he also Trains hard in gym.

He then talked about brett lee. The most beautiful thing about brett lee is his smooth and attractive run up. He has injuries problems from the last 3 years or so, works extremely hard on his fitness. He is a gym fanatic. If you look at the picture attached with the blog, you can see the flexibility in his body, the front foot landing, the power in his hand, everything is just perfect.

Any new bowler who is trying to become a fast bowler can learn from what allan Donald said. Allright, let’s have a revirew and summarize what allan Donald said what you need to have to be a fast bowler,
• You must be a natural athlete
• Flexibility is the key, u must stretch your muscles as much as you can
• You must be physically very strong
• Gone are those days when you just had to do running, now you must work hard in gym to gain physical strength
• Nice, easy and smooth run up is important
• How you land your front foot is very important to generate pace
• Foot wear is a key for every bowler, sort out what suits you best
• Must do training, even if you are not playing, do it in gym or wherever you like, continuous and consistent training is important.
• To remain down to earth is also an important element to be a fast bowler.
Well if any new bowler follows these points, then he can become a great fast bowler.

This is cricket new for you, where every new thing is possible in cricket.
This is all from my side, would love your comments.

BYE BYE YUVRAJ FOR ASIA CUP

The BCCI has announced their 15 men squad for the upcoming asia cup in srilanka, surprise surprise, yuvraj singh has been left out. BCCI has selected some new faces including saurabh tiwary, the hero of Mumbai Indians in IPL. He is raw, new and talented player, we all have seen it in IPL.

Another interesting omission is of yusuf pathan, as he is also been left out, whereas ashok dinda and R ashwin has retained their place. BCCI accepted the request of sachin tendulkar of rest, as they have not selected him for the asia cup.

MS Dhoni comes back to captain a team that is bolstered by the return of Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar and Ashish Nehra

Saurabh tiwary is only the new face as he will be playing for the time for india. Tiwary, 20, was one of the finds for Mumbai Indians during the IPL this year, where he struck three fifties in their run to the final. That was preceded by a successful domestic season, where, playing for Jharkhand in the Ranji Trophy Plate League, he scored three centuries in five games at an average of 98.83.

Yuvraj has been struggling with a wrist injury and fitness problems in the recent past. He was recently issued a show cause notice by the BCCI for being involved in a pub brawl in St Lucia on the day India were knocked out of the World Twenty20. Yusuf hasn't been able to replicate his IPL success in international cricket. He has two half-centuries in 37 ODIs, and averaged just 10.50 in the World Twenty20.

Kris Srikkanth, the BCCI's chairman of selectors, said fielding and fitness were two important factors considered when picking the squad. "A lot of stress was given on the fitness of the players. Fitness and fielding are very important. We have gone through the record of last one year and put lot of stress on it. In recent past, we lost some matches or struggled in some matches because of poor fielding," he told reporters. "We also put stress on consistent performances. Lot of players have done consistently well and apart from the seniors, we have blooded some youngsters as well so that they know what international cricket is all about."

The BCCI, in its media release, stated that Tendulkar wanted to spend time with his children, in view of the hectic schedule ahead.

Squad announced for asia cup is as follows,

MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan Singh, Praveen Kumar, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Pragyan Ojha, Ashok Dinda, R Ashwin, Saurabh Tiwary.

this is cricket new for you, where every new thing is possible in cricket !

YOUNIS FREE TO PLAY

Welll well well as everyone expected, PCB came out with another predictable decision regarding their players. Guess what, now YOUNIS KHAN is free to play. Isn’t this funny? PCB imposed life ban on him but now they have over turned their decision. At first hand, i don’t understand why the ban was imposed? Ok , fie, if the ban was imposed then why did they over turned it?

Well this thing shows that PCB is not serious, they make decisions under pressure. They try to make players obedient, but in fact, reality is this, certain players exhibit powers.

This is not enough, fine of rs 3M on captain has been finished entirely, whereas the fines on akmal brothers have been reduced to half. Don’t forgert, shahid afridi was fined due to ball tempering issue.

Ever since Shoaib Malik's one-year ban was last week, the PCB had indicated that the punishments for other players would also be lifted. At a press conference to announce Pakistan's Asia Cup squad two days ago, board chairman Ijaz Butt revealed that he had already recommended these measures to the independent arbitrator overlooking the appeals of the players. Butt staunchly defended the overturning; it wasn't a u-turn, just the following of "a constitutional process."

The decisions were announced by retired judge Irfan Qadir after the latest set of hearings on Saturday morning. Afridi, he explained, had already been punished by the ICC, which had banned him for two Twenty20 internationals, so the question of a second punishment was not on. "The ICC has written a letter to the PCB indicating that the second punishment is wrong," Qadir told reporters after the hearings in Lahore. "I must appreciate that Afridi accepted his wrongdoing. He accepted that he should not have done it but since he realised it himself I thought that was good and so removed the order on him."

Much the same reasoning was applied to the Akmal brothers, whose fines have been reduced to Rs1 million. The brothers accepted their mistakes. "They were candid in accepting their disciplinary issues. The PCB wanted to halve the fines [Kamran was fined Rs3 million] but I felt all players should now be treated on a par and so brought it down to Rs1 million."

The orders leave undecided for now the fate of only two from the seven originally punished. Rana Naved-ul-Hasan is likely to get the same relief at his next hearing on June 19, while it is still a mystery that whether M. Yousuf would make a come back or not as he had already annouved his retirement and even afridi insisted him to play in engalnd tour, he didn’t take his retirement back.

Ijaz butt said, we just followed our constitution, which allows palyers to appeal again st such bans. However, he admitted that other factors came into play. "There were many appeals from many quarters which asked us to reconsider the punishments. For example the national assembly committee on sports met and the chairman asked me, after detailed discussions with a number of people, to review the decisions. I said there is an appeals process already in place and it is on and we are looking at it as we should and that we will review them. The independent arbitrator was appointed and he took into account many things before coming to this. A process has been followed."

Butt further said that we will certainly not tolerate any indiscipline in the team, if any player mis behaves during asia cup or England tour, i have given the authority to captain and team manager to send the player back without any delay.

We will wait and see how the players will behave after PCB’s attitude. It is just a matter of time that some of our’s questions will be answered. We hope Pakistan do well in asia cup and engalnd tour, but honestly saying with this attitude of PCB, only players are getting stronger and stronger.

This is cricket new for you, where everything is possible in cricket.

This is all from our side, we will welcome your comments.

CRICKET NEW: PONTING NOT WORRIED FROM AFRIDI

Ricky Ponting said he is confident that Australia can get the better of Shahid Afridi, the new Pakistan captain, during their two Test matches in England in July. Surprisingly Afridi has not played a Test since 2006 and in 44 games against Australia across all formats, he has only ever scored one half-century.

Interestingly Afridi will be the third man to captain Pakistan in Tests since the start of 2009 and Ponting is not worried about him as he is not one of Pakistan's best 11 Test players. Ponting said he was confident Australia's pace attack would be able to counter Afridi's attacking style in the five-day game.

"Yeah I'm pretty sure we do," Ponting told AAP. "He hasn't played much Test cricket of late, has he? If you read between the lines he's almost in there as that leader and captain, not necessarily one of their best Test players. So we'll test him out.

"Even in the one -dayers in Australia last season with our quicks bowling the way they did to him, I think we can sort him out in Test cricket for sure. I see Shoaib Malik's life ban has been lifted as well, so who knows what happens around their set-up, but we know they're a dangerous team.

"I guess with him being captain of the Twenty20 side it was a natural progression for him to be the Test captain with all the rest of the guys they've tried there not having succeeded. But that's all irrelevant stuff to us, it doesn't matter who's captain and it doesn't matter who's playing, we just have to make sure we're focusing on our little things to be the best team we can be when we play them."

Australia will play ashed series after PAKISTAN matches so he added;
"I guess we speak pretty loosely don't we about looking forward to the Ashes and all that, and we are, but it's not with both eyes," he said. "We've got one eye on that and one eye on what we need to get in place to make sure we're the best team we can be for November."

It will be interesting to note that what strategies will be employed by Shahid afridi against Australia as Australia has aleady started the verbal battle and we all know how good Aussies are in their verbal battle and of the field strategies to pressurize the opponents. I m eagerly waiting for Shahidf Afridi's comment about AUSTRALIA

well this is CRICKET NEW for where every NEW thing is possible in CRICKET !

THIS IS all from my side, your comments will be welcomed

Malcolm Speed slams move to block Howard

Malcolm Speed, the former chief executive of the ICC, believes it is "outrageous" that Zimbabwe and South Africa are pushing to block John Howard's nomination as the ICC's president-designate. However, Speed is confident that Howard will gain the support of India and have his nomination confirmed.

"There is some irony in this," Speed told the Australian. "Zimbabwe throughout has said 'you must come and play against us for the sake of our cricket. You can't have politics in cricket, you can't make political considerations', and the ICC has consistently endorsed that position

read the full story on the following link,
Malcolm Speed slams move to block Howard

CRICKET NEW: CRICKET SOON IN USA

The following interview of Lockerbie ( USA cricket CEO) has been taken from CRICINFO's timeout

"In 1994, the soccer World Cup took place, and it generated great interest in the sport and it was followed by the Major League Soccer which started in 1996, two years later," Lockerbie said. "We are looking to do that too. We would love for the ICC to look at the United States in the future for some ICC events.






"We are well under way in a planning situation wherein we are working towards professionalisation of cricket in the US," he said. "We are working towards equalising what some of the other Associate nations like Ireland, Scotland, Holland and Canada have been able to do recently; beginning to put some of their players on professional retainers, and some of these players are now travelling and playing all over the world and getting IPL opportunities. We need to do that in the United States, and along with that will come a professional league."





USA recently hosted a Twenty20 series between Sri Lanka and New Zealand, and Lockerbie said that was the first step towards getting more fans to the game. "We are looking to bring in the best teams in the world," he said. "Even 14 years after the Major League Soccer started in the United States they are averaging 14,000, 17,000, 18,000 people to a match, which isn't too bad. But when Barcelona comes to play Manchester United in Philadelphia they have 90,000. Why is that? When Mexico plays the United States, they can get 100,000 at the Rose Bowl. So the point is that the soccer has a good history now of being positive. By bringing in 'Destination USA,' events, and what we think was a successful Sri Lanka-New Zealand series, we start that way."





The potential for investing in cricket in the US remained huge, Lockerbie said, given the country's infrastructure and record for hosting sporting events with success. "Well, our little game is the second most popular sport in the world, as I view it, behind football. With the great interest from the rest of the world, in the United States, people want to do business in United States. We believe that we are on our way to corporate sponsorship, investment in US cricket, development of facilities.





"The mayor of Indianapolis is very serious about building a cricket stadium; Indianapolis is often called the sports capital of the United States. The Indianapolis 500 just took place the other day, with 500,000 fans at the event, the world largest one-day sporting event. We know how to put on events, and their attitude is - cricket is the second most popular sport in the world and why wouldn't there be a stadium in Indianapolis.





"The city of New York has said to us that one day they would like to have a cricket venue, and they could see themselves as the capital of cricket in the United States. We could become the capital of cricket in the western hemisphere. This is a very big step, and I am hoping to work with my board of directors, our investors, and sponsors, to make that happen in the next three or five years."





In addition to making the United States, with its large untapped fan base, a prime destination for international cricket, Lockerbie stated two other main goals: ensuring the US national team qualifies for the 2015 World Cup and developing a youth programme by taking cricket to the schools.





While conceding Twenty20 cricket was the spark to draw more support for the game in the US, Lockerbie said that Tests and ODIs too, if played by the right teams, stood the potential to take off. "That's [T20] is the perfect storm for us. We are better organised, and there is growing interest. Even in the last five-six years, the amount of immigrants moving to the United States, who are cricket crazy, has just doubled and tripled. So we are ready to go with that perfect storm, the Twenty20 game.





"In the right city, with the right demographics, with the right two teams playing, I don't see why four-five day cricket is any different than Phil Mickelson teeing off on Thursday and winning a golf tournament on Sunday. You've had 60,000 people walking that golf course. Now if India plays almost anybody in a Test match, say in New York, we will have 40,000-50,000 people there."