India's dream run

Ever since Dhoni took over the mantle of captaincy, the Indian team is looking invincible. The team has lost some big names like Sourav Ganguly and Anil Kumble but team marches on without much affect. It has won convincingly against the England 5-0 in the home series. The team bowling line up is looking ominus with Zaheer and Ishant in pretty good form. And team has a tremendous bench strength with the players like munaf, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Rp Singh waiting in wings. The spin attack is headed by Harbhajan Singh along with him are the new comers like Mishra and chawla. Batting is never a problem for India, but still it has improved a lot with the players like Gambhir, Yuvraj Singh and Sehwag in their prime form, To add to that there is Sachin, the god of cricket still the most priced wicket of the opposition team adds more value to the team. And Dhoni currently ranked number one in the world ODI batting rankings coming at number six, what more does a team need. It is probably the best ever ODI team of India and team is enjoying a dream run, hope it continues for a very long time.

Sachin in 2007

The year would have been more memorable for sachin otherwise for the world cup. After poor performance in the world cup there where many questions raised over Sachin’s place in the team but he is not the kind of man who will break under pressure, it’s nothing new for him and he came with a bang, with the year full of runs and most importantly runs in emphatic fashion, though only a lone hundred in ODI in the year some of the innings he played in 2007 were scintillating. Especially the 99 at mohali and the 97 at Gwalior against Pakistan, where the batting of the highest quality is displayed, and there were some other innings too, like the one against the south Africa in Belfast were he scored 93 in which he batted with vintage class and dominance and The 94 at oval and the 99 at Bristol against the England were class is stamped on every shot he played. it would have been icing on the cake if they all had been centuries. Sachin missed seven centuries overall in that year. The only century for Sachin in ODI that year was against the West Indies in which he scored 100 of just 76 deliveries. In test matches it rather a different story as he scored two centuries in tests. Overall he scored over 2200 international runs in that year.

Form versus class

In cricket form and class are two things that are often talked about. Then what’s form and what’s class, form is nothing but the touch you are in, it is the way you have played the last few matches , it may either be good or bad but it will affect your batting in some way or the other. But the class defines the standard of your batting, your batting quality. Take for example there are many players who have scored tons of runs in one season and have perished in the next. So the longevity depends on the class. The players like Sachin and Lara have sustained there place in their respective teams is due the class which sets them apart from rest of their teammates they also had some poor seasons but they bounce back every time with a bang. Most of the Australians are form dependent rather than class, the one like Hayden is the best example he has no strong technique behind him. But has scored over eight thousand runs in test cricket mainly because the Australians play more than fifteen test matches a year and if a player is in good form he can plunder nearly three to four thousand runs in a short span of two to three years. But as the popular saying goes ‘form temporary and class is permanent’.

Sachin at Tussaud's

At last Tussuad's gets the honor to have Sachin’s wax statue in its museum. Sachin is the first Indian sports personality at Tussuad's. Sachin joins illustrious band of Indians at Tussauds namely Gandhi, Nehru, Amitabh bachan, Shah Rukh khan and Aishwarya Rai. Sachin has been invited by the Tussuad's and about 200 odd measurements have been taken so that the statue comes out perfectly. It costs about USD$ 235,000 to complete the statue and it would be unveiled on his birthday which falls on 24th April.