ICC's ODI Super League leaves India as most unwelcome opponents

India makes its debut in the much-touted Super League for one-day internationals against Australia at Sydney. The International Cricket Council has made it the qualifying event for the 50-over 2023 World Cup to be played in India.

The dual purpose of the Super League is to make every ODI count as each game carries 10 points, leaving no room for dead rubbers even if a series is already decided. Abandoned games gain five points for each team with nothing for a loss but if the home teams will denied points of the pitch or outfield is found deficient. Similarly teams will be docked points for slow-over-rates, while tied games will be decided by Super Overs.

The league includes 13 teams of which the top seven along with hosts India qualify directly for the 2023 ICC CWC leaving the remaining five to fight it against second tier teams to make the list of final 10 in the mega event.

The league features nine Test-playing nations - Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies - along with Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ireland and the Netherlands, who made the grade courtesy of their having won the 2017 ICC World Cricket League Championships .

The Super League was launched on July 30 when England faced Ireland but lost one game out of three and then could win only one out three against the visiting Australians. Even though are at the top of the league table with 30 points out of a possible 60.

The final rankings will be decided on basis of the points earned in 24 ODIs, only three ODIs counted per series of which four each home and away will be designated. It will obviously present struggling teams to pick and choose opponents off whom they feel points can be gained.

Great news indeed for the likes of Ireland and the Netherlands ... no offence meant to either but they are anything but a cricket powerhouse!

Where does that leave India?

As hosts, Team India makes the grade automatically. So no need to look at the points table or qualification race but what, in reality, makes India attractive opponents is the price the TV rights garner for a series in the subcontinent or hosting them. But money matters may have to be put on the back-burner since playing the ICC World Cup is of highest importance for any of the Test-playing boards.

Since the Super League qualifying process, so far, ends March 2022, it remains to be seen how teams organise themselves for the task ahead. Obviously India, being the tough opponents that they are and with no qualifying place to worry about, may hardly be the chosen team to face in the coming 18 months or so in the 50-over format.

The global pandemic has caused the ICC Future Tours Programme into the shredder, leaving all decisions regarding tours and match schedules bilateral. It will not be easy for teams to pick India as their ODI rivals, given the current uncertain scenario. 

And ICC has hardly helped its cause by changing the rules for the Test Championships midway, making boards even more wary of such bombshells!

Challenge to selectors could cost Rohit the entire Australia tour

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has announced that neither batsman Rohit Sharma nor paceman Ishant Sharma will be available for the first two Test matches in Australia. About time Rohit reflected upon how things came to such a pass, especially since the five wise men of the BCCI selection kept making changes to the Indian squad till they boarded the chartered flight to Sydney.

Rohit seems to have been irked by several issues and least of them happen to be anything to his personal fitness or form. A shoo-in in both the 50- and 20-over formats, the opener was not picked in either squad due to his hamstring injury that forced him to miss several games in the Indian Premier League 2020 for his title-winning Mumbai franchise.

But no sooner were the Team India squads announced, Rohit was back on the field as if to cock-a-snook at the selection committee and its explanation for not considering the Mumbai batsman for the tour Down Under.

The move does not seem to have gone down well with the powers-that-be since last minute chopping and changing was done to all three squads, Rohit's name only figured in the Test outfit where his place in the final playing eleven can be at best be said to be tenuous.

On the flip side was the case of Bengal wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha, who sat out several key game for his Hyderabad franchise due to a severe groin strain but still found himself boarding the plane for Australia. 

There was always the back-up glove-man in Rishabh Pant, who incidentally must sit out the limited overs games but Sanju Samson was added as reserve keeper for the 20-over internationals as cover for vice-captain K L Rahul.

There is definitely more than meets the eye and rumblings of dissent are clear as Team India kick-off the action with the one-day internationals.

Further fuel was added to the fire by skipper Virat Kohli's decision to return home after the Adelaide for the birth of his first child. With Ajinkya Rahane has already been named vice-captain for the Test series but there need to be a deputy to him as well once he steps to take full charge, of which now there remains little doubt.

Rohit was reportedly offered the sop but he is said to have turned it down, not wiling to play second fiddle to Rahane.

The team management's suggestion to retain Shreyas Iyer could prove to be a further blow to Rohit chances of playing the last two Tests since his fortnight-long mandatory quarantine plus acclimatisation needs to be factored in before he can be available for national duty.

After all there is a doubt over the scheduled start of the 2021's first Grand Slam tennis event as well since players' demand for similar relaxation as the Indian cricketers was flatly turned down by the Victorian health authorities. The reason was that Team India had already been in a bio-bubble in the United Arab Emirates before taking the chartered, not commercial, flight to Australia.

Weekend deadline looms for Rohit, Ishant before Adelaide Test

Covid19 pandemic makes tough demands on people around the globe. So how can cricket be any different!

Rohit Sharma and Ishant Sharma are both engaged in a race against time to regain fitness and join Team India in Australia before the Adelaide Test which is scheduled for a December 17 start.

It's a tough timeline for all concerned.

Team India coach Ravi Shastri in a media interaction has categorically stated that November 26 is the last day that players must reach Australia in order to be considered for selection. That accounts for the mandatory 14-day quarantine that all visitors face Down Under and figure in India's second and last three-day practice game starting December 11.

With no commercial flights in operation between India and Australia yet, the players have no choice but to travel via the United Arab Emirates, adding a good eight hours to the journey.

Counting back further, to reach Australia by November 26, players must leave the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru by Tuesday since airlines are operating a severely curtailed schedule on the domestic circuit as well. 

That gives the duo barely two days to prove their fitness and gain the nod to join Team India soonest.

More likely a miss rather than a hit, since the squad already in Australia is hardly lacking in resources. 

The pace battery appears fit and raring to go with a full complement blending youth and experience with plenty of zip!

So is the Test batting line-up with Cheteshwar Pujara slotted at three, followed by skipper Virat Kohli, vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane at four and five. That leaves only the number six spot up for grabs since Mayank Agarwal and KL Rahul virtually walk away with the opening positions with Shubhman Gill and Prithvi Shaw looking on.

Plenty of work for Rohit, who is expected to bolster the Test middle order, may not be too keen on hitting the ground running since it could cost him dear if his performance fails to live up to expectations. 

Moreover, he is also in a possible leadership tussle as far as white-ball cricket is concerned and also a certainty for Team India in the limited overs formats. Unfortunate that he has had to miss all the six outings against the Australians. 

Wriddhiman Saha, the chosen number one Test wicket-keeper, has all but cemented his place for Adelaide by figuring in the intra-squad games over the past weekend. That's how keen Team India was for the stumper to be be part of plans that he accompanied the squad on the chartered fight from Dubai itself two days after the conclusion of the Indian Premier League 2020 even though the Bengal glove-man had failed to take to the field for his Hyderabad franchise in the knock-out games.

No such luxury for Rohit, or for that matter Ishant, and both were sent back home to NCA. Rohit did miss a few Mumbai games but was very much on the field to lead his side to back-to-back IPL titles but seemingly did not do enough to convince the five wise men of the selection committee.

As things stand, it appears that only once Kohli returns home after the Adelaide Test will Rohit become available for selection.

Sharp Messi reaction signals more trouble at Camp Nou

The Catalans are suffering and how! Barcelona are currently lying eighth the La Liga table, a full nine points behind the leaders with two games in hand.

Enough time to cover the gap in the Spanish football league, given the long season ahead. But the same cannot be said about their super-star striker Lionel Messi, whose sharp reactions during the media interaction following his return from international duty for Argentina signals that the player has anything but got over the transfer saga fiasco of the summer

Messi wanted out from the only club he has turned out for professionally but then Barcelona  president Josep Maria Bartomeu enforced clauses in the contract, later upheld by La Liga as well, to keep the Argentine at Camp Nou. 

One of the primary reasons that the striker was not willing to stay on at the Catalan club was his not so warm relationship with Bartomeu himself. Since neither man kept the hostility a secret, Bartomeu finally had to resign from the post he had held since 2014. 

Messi, meanwhile, has shown a fair bit annoyance with the team and present set-up, prompting a public rejoinder from the coach Ronald Koeman that all was well in the Barcelona dressing room.

The Argentine's reaction to his not so easy partnership with French forward Antoine Griezmann, who replaced Brazilian Neymar at Barcelona, has been the talk of town not just in Spain but the world over. 

After all, as things stand, Messi can leave Barcelona for free at the end of the current season. Obviously, plenty of top clubs across Europe would be ready to break their banks to get the star to sign on the dotted line.

It's hardly a secret that Messi wants to renew his partnership with former Barcelona player and coach Pep Guardiola, who has only last week extended his stay at Manchester City for another three years. The former English Premier League champions do have deep pockets and are an obvious destination for the unsettled Argentine forward.

Interim Barcelona president Carles Tusquets, who took over following Bartomeu's resignation, has his task cut out. And his options are pretty limited since Messi staying on at Camp Nou may not be one of them. Hence to make the best of a bad deal, Barcelona may yet make some money if they can agree to a deal with City and Guardiola during the mid-season transfer window.

Easier said than done since City owners are expected to not pay for someone they are going to get for free at season-end.

Messi and Barcelona both appear to have begun the countdown.

ICC hell-bent on making a mockery of Test Championships

The International Cricket Council seems to have been re-energised by the astounding success of the Indian Premier League 2020 that recently concluded in the United Arab Emirates, which by co-incidence also serves at the headquarter of the international body.

And immediately, the ICC got down to work on its own events, primarily the ICC Test Championships for men which is due to wrap up in June 2021. 

The Future Tour Programme was thrown in the shredder by the global Covid19 pandemic, hence the need to rethink big time!

Since the number of Test matches played by each of the nine countries, and with little chance of getting anywhere close to a level playing field in the intervening months before the Lord's finale, the already bizarre points system has been given yet another tweak to make it well nigh impossible to understand for the common fan.

The old system awarded a total of 120 points per series, irrespective of the number of games. So a two-Test series would carry a whopping 60 points per win but a five-Test contest would earn only 24 points for each victory. Similarly, the points awarded for draws and tied games too declined with the increase in the number of Tests in a series. 

Most surprisingly, home and away triumphs were treated at par!

It was almost a way of discouraging teams from organising long bilateral series. 

Now with the abrupt halt in international engagements, and not all countries in a position to resume sporting activities what with the continued restrictions on international travel, the ICC in its wisdom has decided to work out a percentage system of awarding points.

England played the maximum number of Test wins in the qualifying period, but neither their points tally, thanks to the five-Test Ashes, nor the win percentage for the eight wins in the 15 Tests could push them into the top two. Australia overtook India as the new number one, both teams having posted seven wins each even though the former has figured in 10 Tests spread over three series. India have, of course, played four series for a tally 360 points to Australia's 296.

ICC deciding to change the rules of the competition midstream gives the national boards a new headache to plan itineraries keeping the new system in mind when all they should be worried about is getting the players back on the field.

Lest we forget, the ICC Test championships have already had two false starts and it well nigh be the third, given the current circumstances. The game could have been better served by a more cautious approach and merely pushing the calendar back by a year could have solved plenty of problems.

But if the ICC must stick to its schedule, it could very well be a bumpy ride ahead because not all countries are even in a position to compete, let alone host Test match cricket.

Tokyo almost sure to miss the Olympic Games

It appears to be a wait in vain for the Japan Olympic Committee and the Tokyo city officials for the Olympic Games. The global pandemic due to the Covid19 virus looks all but certain to wipe off any chances of the Japanese capital city hosting the postponed 2020 games in July-August 2021.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach's solidarity visit to Tokyo seems to have only brought the doomsday scenario so much nearer!

Bach had first insisted that a Covid19 vaccine shot would be mandatory for participation in the Tokyo Olympics. But there followed the quick retraction saying "mandatory" was going a bit too far but instead appealed to athletes to get vaccinated as a "sign of respect" to fellow competitors as well as the hosts.

Easier said than done, since despite the loud pronouncements by various countries and their pharmaceutical companies, there is hardly a vaccine in sight. And even if there was one brought into the market, World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom has gone on record saying a vaccine may not be enough to end the global pandemic. That should be enough warning to make users extra cautious before getting pricked.

A best-case scenario emerging from the more reliable world of science is that no vaccine can possibly be launched before the second quarter of 2022, given the rigorous testing the chemical needs to be put through before being put out into the market.

That, in all likelihood, should be the death-knell for 2020 Tokyo Olympics, since it was made amply clear by both the local organising committee and the IOC that there would be no further deferments possible if the games missed the rescheduled July 23, 2021, start date.

The reason is not difficult to see. The 2024 Games in Paris will be round the corner and holding two quadrennial events close together may adversely affect the entire Olympic movement. 

Add to that the headache of a clash with the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, though penciled in for a November 21 kick-off, will eat heavily into the marketing budgets of the sponsors. FIFA has already delayed it Club World Cup in Qatar to February 1 - 11, 2021, instead of the original December schedule. The event is a traditional curtain-raiser for the FIFA World Cup and has been used the football world to test the facilities and readiness of the hosts.

Already the sports world is reeling without spectators in the stands, burning a huge hole in the collective pockets. Cricket Australia may be the first in the world to allow 25 percent of capacity for the Test series against India but the recent wave of fresh cases in some areas has put a huge question mark on the initiative.

All said and done, with no vaccine in sight just yet, the likelihood of Tokyo holding its second Olympic Games appears to be a non-starter. 

Circa 1964 was the last time Olympic Games were held in Tokyo and India won its last legitimate men's hockey gold medal under the leadership of Charanjit Singh. The 1980 Moscow games were marred by a boycott by USA and its allies leaving the field in all sports largely depleted!

IPL 2020 success gives BCCI many headaches for tour Down Under

There was hardly a surprise that the best team in the Indian Premier League 2020 waltzed away with the title in the desert sands of the United Arab Emirates. It was indeed a glorious performance by the Mumbai franchise to claim its fifth crown, making them only the second team after Chennai to mount a successful title defence.

Organising the event without a glitch in these troubled times is indeed a feather in the cap for the Board of Control for Cricket in India. Myriads of doubts were raised when the BCCI took the call to hold the 13th IPL in the UAE, right from the prohitive costs to poor ground conditions to feasibility of such an extended bio-bubble.

That the BCCI and the IPL governing council pulled it off is nothing short of commendable. Sky-high television viewing ratings are testimony to the fact how the sports-starved people lapped up the event.

IPL, though, has left a very different head-ache for BCCI and its selection committee, most importantly the leadership issue which simply refuses to die down.

Rohit Sharma successfully leading the Mumbai outfit in their final three games, notching a 50+ score to boot in the final, yet again raises questions about his non-inclusion in both the limited over squads. The Mumbai skipper has been added only to the Test squad, where his place in the playing eleven is far from certain, yet again defies common sense. Or is it that Rohit will be slotted in at number four in the final three Test matches after Virat Kohli returns to India for the birth of his first child? And don the captaincy mantle as well ahead of Ajinkya Rahane?

Most intriguing since Rohit is expected to be present in Australia right from the start of the tour so that he can complete the mandatory isolation requirements before joining the action.

Then there is the fact that the two highest Indian run-scorers - Ishan Kishan (516) and Surya Kumar Yadav (480) - of the winning franchise have failed to find a place on the chartered flight to Australia. Since there was a need to add a second wicket-keeper to the 50-over squad, may be young Kishan could have been preferred to Sanju Samson, who was there anyway for the 20-over internationals.

At 27, Yadav continues to await his turn, though the batting star won many a heart during the final by his timely sacrifice in favour of his captain who was batting with a half-century to his name.

Add to that the question of a replacement for the injured Varun Chakravarthy. Hyderabad's left-arm medium pacer T Natarajan was handed the ticket making him the fifth seam bowler in the squad with negligible chance of getting a look-in for either of the three T20s.

Ravichandran Ashwin, who is in the Test squad anyway, may have been the better option though young Punjab tweakers Ravi Bishnoi and Murugan Ashwin could not have been too far behind.

Kuldeep Yadav keeps his place in the 50-over squad despite being benched following a poor run in the five games for Kolkata. His lone wicket in the IPL 2020 would have hardly endeared him with the fans but the five wise men of BCCI thought quite differently.

That the selection committee is itself up for an overhaul is a different matter altogether. Terms of three of the Sunil Joshi-led panel has ended and BCCI has already called for fresh applications.

Nonetheless, BCCI has plenty to be pleased about, especially the unparalleled success of IPL 2020, which seems to have encouraged Cricket Australia to make the brave move of allowing a limited number of spectators for the India games.

In the final reckoning, all's well that ends well!

Rohit appears more peeved about vice-captaincy than place in squad

In almost a throwback to the 1980s when there was a game of virtual musical chairs between two legends over the leadership of the Indian cricket team, Rohit Sharma seems determined to cock-a-snook at the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The opener sprang a surprise by taking the field for his Mumbai franchise in the ongoing Indian Premier League in the United Arab Emirates in what was actually an inconsequential game for the side which was already assured of a top table finish.

His sojourn at the crease against Hyderabad did not last too long but he was fielding right through the opponents' batting onslaught as if to prove that his omission from the tour of Australia on medical grounds was a farce indeed.

And with Team India physio also doing duty for the Mumbai franchise in the IPL, it appears to be a calculated move by Rohit to score a point over the BCCI and the selection committee, who went ahead and named the vice-captains for all three formats behind skipper Virat Kohli.

Throwback to the 1980s when Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev were locked in an exactly similar battle for leadership. If Kapil was captain for one series, it had to be Sunny for the next. How else does one explain Kapil leading in the 1983 and 1987 World Cups and Gavaskar in the 1985 World Championship of Cricket in Australia. 

And, mind you, the captain's hat seemed to have little relation with success in 1983 and 1985 but more to keep the players divided along zonal lines so that BCCI could keep them on a tight leash.

North (Virat) versus West (Rohit) appears to be unfolding yet again.

The only difference this time round seems to be that BCCI has thrown its weight solidly behind the man at the helm. Not being named in the squad, Rohit has to first prove his fitness before he can even join the leadership battle. That is assuming that Team India may not fare too well during the forthcoming visit Down Under.

With no Rohit, the skipper need not be looking over his shoulder all the time to check if he has someone breathing down his neck in the leadership stakes. 

Rohit's decision to prove his fitness, or lack of it, in the final league encounter of the IPL seems to bolster the idea of a leadership conflict brewing in Team India. Perhaps, the Mumbai batsman would have been better advised to be patient and wait for his turn at helm rather than challenge the decision-makers and push for the slot.

BCCI president Sourav Ganguly has already gone on record saying Rohit is a key member of the squad and would be a natural selection if he is fully fit. That puts to rest all doubts about his place in the squad. 

Only the leadership battle remains ... and it doesn't look like going away any time soon.