The first round of Vijay Hazare Trophy has started in India. This is the domestic 50-over competition, and will be participated by all the 38 first-class sides in India. There was an exciting match at KL Saini Ground in Jaipur between Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Maharashtra batted first and piled up 355/4 after 50 overs. However Jharkhand chased down the target with 2 overs to spare, with Virat Singh making 143 from 116 balls. In another close match, Kerala won their match against Saurashtra by 3 wickets (chasing a target of 186).

I had posted about this even before the start of the world cup. Australia always get to beast mode, during the knockout phase of major tournaments. Other teams lose their focus and energy as a result of wear and tear as the tournament progresses, but in case of Australia it is the opposite. Also, one thing that I noticed about Australia is that they do proper rotation of their players. They provide adequate rest for their main players and this help them to stay away from injuries and burnouts. Other teams such as India never implement such measures.

Two matches are scheduled for the second day of 2022–23 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier. In the first match, Kenya is taking on Nigeria and seems like they will get 2 points from this match. Nigeria could only make 121/7 from 20 overs, and in return Kenya seems to be on their way to a win with a score of 32/1 after 7 overs. Kenya won their first match, against Rwanda yesterday. In the second match, Tanzania will be playing against Zimbabwe. Another defeat today would mean that Zimbabwe will fail to qualify for the T20I World Cup.

You want explanation? LOL.. the explanation is that India got overconfident and failed to adjust to the conditions. On both occasions, it was Australia who won the toss. But in the first match, Australia chose to bat first. They got bowled out for just 199 runs, and India chased down the target with 6 wickets to spare. In the second match, Australia sent India to bat first after winning the toss. The outcome was similar. Chasing team won the match with 6 wickets to spare. In the first match, it was Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav who did the maximum damage, with Ravichandran Ashwin taking the wicket of Cameron Green. In the second match, the Australians were quite prepared, and they handled the spinners quite well. 

I am not sure whether Rahul Dravid was given 100% freedom in team selection. I was not very happy with the way Mohammed Shami was left out of the first couple of matches, and also the way they treated Ravichandran Ashwin. The current selection criteria hasn't worked well, as we have seen from the failure of the Indian team during world cup finals. I would suggest providing complete freedom to Dravid, at least for the next 12 months, and also some of the senior players (especially guys such as KL Rahul) needs to be rested and replaced with younger players.

Shadab and Nawaz didn't contributed much with the ball during the recently concluded ODI World Cup of 2023. What Pakistan need is to identify some of the younger spinners who are performing well in the domestic circuit. They don't need to immediately include them in the national squad, but there should be a medium-term plan by organizing a few A team tours and all. If they target 2-3 players, then I am sure that within the next 12 months they will get at least one quality player who can bowl well against top teams like Australia and England. They have ignored this issue for so long, so they act without any more delay.

The blame should fall on the team, as well as the management. The pitch at Ahmedabad was supportive of spin bowling and still Indian selectors refused to include Ravichandran Ashwin in the playing XI. Ashwin's inclusion would have strengthened their bowling as well as strengthened the lower order batting. For the final match, Kuldeep was the only full-time spinner and that was more like a big handicap for India. Jadeja was supposed to back him up, but he failed in doing that. Also, Indian lower order failed to make any significant contribution with the bat.

Brazil started their qualifiers with a spectacular 5-1 win over Bolivia at the Estádio Olímpico do Pará in Belém. And then, in the next match they struggled but ended up with a 1-0 win against Peru. After that things went rapidly downhill for them. During the third match, they conceded a 1-1 draw against one of the weakest teams in CONMEBOL (Venezuela). They were leading with a margin of 1-0 till the 85th minute, before Eduard Bello made it 1-1 to give Venezuela a precious point against Brazil. Horrorfest followed, with loses against Uruguay (0-2), Colombia (1-2) and Argentina (0-1).  

India do have sufficient depth in player pool. So they can experiment with the squad composition, even if some of the regular players are not available. Also, they have the home advantage and that will add an additional layer of security. On the other hand, Australians seems to have adjusted with the conditions, as they arrived in India more than two months ago. Nevertheless it will be a big challenge for them to face India under hostile conditions. Absence of Zampa will be yet another challenge, as they don't have too many experienced spinners with them.

Well.. I am not sure how this is interpreted as "punishing" the citizens of Russia. Unless Binance is going to seize crypto-holdings of their Russian users, I will not translate this move as any sort of "punishment". First of all, the Russian government is not very positive about the role of crypto-currency (especially since the local currency got devalued by 2-3x during the last decade or so). And secondly, there are enough local crypto-exchanges in Russia itself and the users can just migrate to any of these platforms from Binance.

This is how it works:

A rich person is having assets worth $50 billion. Out of that, he announces that he is "donating" $40 billion for charity (any resemblance to criminals such as Bill Gates is purely unintentional). Now he forms a "charity trust" with him and other relatives as the board members. $40 billion worth of cash and other assets such as stocks and bonds are moved to a bank account earmarked for this charity. Any income in the form of interest payments or dividends are tax-free, as the account is owned by the charitable trust.

Now comes the irony. Instead of purchasing luxury houses and yachts from his own account, the billionaire will just purchase them using the charitable trust. Instead of bribing politicians openly with his own money, he will do so with the bank account owned by the trust, in the form of "speaking charges". On top of that, he will write down a few million USD every month for himself in the form of salary.

It may not be proper to predict their test performance based on the ODI results. But then, these issues have been there for quite some time. Only occasion when Bangladesh performs well against top sides is when they have the undue advantage of playing at home on doctored tracks. When they don't have that advantage, they surrender meekly. The loss to Netherlands during ODI World Cup was a big shock to fans back home. At this point, only Liton Das is performing consistently. Others are inconsistent, and players like Shakib and Mahmudullah are approaching retirement age.

Many of the newly inducted players are facing difficulty in adjusting to the team structure and tactics. However, this should go away as they get more used to the national team composition. At this point, they don't have much room for maneuvering though. A few more losses and they may be out of contention for qualification for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The good news is that next round of CONMEBOL qualifiers are scheduled for September 2024. So they have almost a year to regroup and work on eliminating all the weaknesses. 

A few weeks back, Zimbabwe had toured Namibia for a 5-match T20I series. Namibia won that series 3-2. So the win for Namibia yesterday wasn't much of a surprise. Also, let's not forget the fact that the qualifier tournament is being hosted by Namibia. Therefore they have the home advantage as well. The next target for Zimbabwe should be to make sure that they qualify for the world cup. A failure to do so will trigger a chain reaction, which would put their full member status in question. And this time they had a full-strength squad, including players such as Craig Ervine, Sean Williams, Sikandar Raza and Blessing Muzarabani. 

Strange that India could not win the trophy despite their own players being named as the top run-scorer (Virat Kohli) and wicket-taker (Mohammed Shami). This means one out of two possibilities. Either their team mates didn't offered a lot of support, or these players were more focused on their personal milestones rather than the team victory. I can't really claim that the other players didn't offered any support, because many of them (Shreyas, Rohit.etc among the bowlers and Kuldeep, Bumrah.etc among the bowlers) performed up to the mark during crucial instances.

Two matches today for the 2022–23 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier. If there are no big surprises, Namibia should qualify for the world cup in 2024, after their win against Zimbabwe yesterday. 4 wins from their next 5 matches should guarantee a slot in the main tournament. Should not be too hard, given that remaining matches are against fellow associates - Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania. For Zimbabwe, it is going to be an uphill task after the defeat yesterday. Another defeat and they will be out of contention for world cup qualification.

From what I have heard, Messi was initially willing to consider the offer from Saudi Arabia. But his wife was vehemently against any such move and in the end he chose MLS over Saudi Professional League. Although the MLS contract guarantees him a fat paycheck, it is nowhere near lucrative as a potential SPL contract could have been. Messi had a chance of becoming a billionaire, and he just outright rejected that offer. Maybe he will regret his decision later in his life, but for now his focus is on MLS and on the CONMEBOL qualifiers.

No one is expecting Brazil to replace Argentina from the top position as far as FIFA ranking is concerned. But the bare minimum is to expect them to perform well against the smaller teams in CONMEBOL qualifiers. At this point, they are at the 6th place in the points table, even below teams such as Venezuela and Colombia. If they lose a few more matches, then there is a good chance that they may not even qualify for the 2026 edition of the FIFA World Cup. So far, out of the 6 matches they managed to win just two.

Mohammed Shami found himself left out of the playing XI a few times recently, but in the end he managed to storm in to the squad. In the first few matches of the world cup, India decided to go with the combination of Mohammed Siraj and Jasprit Bumrah, and there was no room to include Shami. But despite all that, he finished the tournament as the top wicket taker. I was actually disappointed with the performance from both Siraj and Bumrah. They took wickets against weak opponents, but crumbled while bowling under pressure situations.

I watched almost the entire match live on Fancode. Namibia completely dominated the match and at no point Zimbabwe gave an impression that they would be able to get 2 points from it. Even after the match, there was no big celebration although an associate nation had defeated a full member nation. In this match, Zimbabwe were the real underdogs. The ICC needs to take a decision on Zimbabwe, if they are losing very frequently against the associate nations. Providing them with 50x the funding when compared with associate nations doesn't make any sense.