Fun time is the Cricket Time

If they do become world number one, then team India will probably remember 2008 as the year when they began their quest for the number one title in the world.
They began the year in Australia, then immediately played South Africa at home. A couple of ODI tournaments including the Asia cup in mid year after which the horrible tour to Sri Lanka happened. Later, they hosted Australia to play the Border Gavaskar Trophy for the second time in ten months, followed by an ODI series whitewash over England. In between there were the two leagues, the Indian Premier League and the Indian Cricket League.
At the turn of the year, Australia were one up in the series, having won the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne. The New Year test at Sydney went down in the history books as one of unforgettable ones but for all the wrong reasons. A host of decisions from umpire Steve Bucknor went against the Indians and at the end of the game, they were left questioning the spirit with which the Aussies played the match. Grounded catches were claimed on more than one occasion and it all got out of hand as Andrew Symonds alleged that Harbhajan Singh had racially abused him.
The tour was in danger of being called off as Harbhajan Singh was banned by match referee Mike Proctor, but further investigations meant that the off spinner was let off and the tour continued. However stung by the happenings off the field, the Indian team brought about a stunning all round display at Perth, beating Australia by 72 runs; this was the home team’s first loss at this ground in more than a decade. The next Test saw them lagging behind Australia once more, only a Virender Sehwag ton, his first in more than fifteen months helped India draw the match, the result meaning the series had been surrendered 2-1.
MS Dhoni took over from Anil Kumble for the CB Series, which also featured Sri Lanka. The team played both Australia and Sri Lanka in four matches each in the league phase. While they beat Australia only once in four games, they won twice against their sub-continental neighbours; thus qualifying for the best of three finals. In the first match, chasing Australia’s 239 for 8, India rode on a Sachin Tendulkar century to win by six wickets. And the third match wasn’t needed as they won the second final as well. Tendulkar was once again the architect of the win, scoring 91 as India put on 258 in their fifty overs to beat the ODI world champions by nine runs in the end.
Surprisingly, Australia had reversed the tables on India in the lone T20 match before the CB Series, where they beat the T20 world champions by a huge nine wickets margin.
Immediately after the Australian tour, South Africa visited India for a three Test series and this was going to be a hard fought series, for the visitors were going unbeaten for six Test series on the run. And so it turned out that in the first match at Chennai, South Africa piled up 540 runs and the hosts were on the backfoot ever since. However, they were shown the light of the day by a second triple ton from Virender Sehwag who scored at an astonishing rate to get India in with a chance to get something out of the match. His 319 is only the second ever triple century by an Indian Test batsman, his very own 309 against Pakistan in 2004 being the first. Coupled with Rahul Dravid’s 111, India reached 627 in reply and were able to exert pressure on South Africa, who had Neil Mckenzie and his unbeaten 155 to thank for the draw.
The second Test saw a green top at Ahmedabad and like always the Indian batting just wilted under the sight of the same. Sachin Tendulkar pulled his hamstring and went missing for the last two tests as India crashed to 76 all out. The Proteas then scored nearly five hundred runs in their first try, thus winning the test by an innings and 90 runs to go one up in the series.
The third Test in Nagpur saw a dustbowl laid out for India to get even in the series and so they did. MS Dhoni led India for the first time in Test cricket as Anil Kumble missed out due to injury. Riding on 87 runs by Sourav Ganguly in the first innings, India registered a 60 run lead which helped them beat South Africa by 8 wickets and gain a 1-1 drawn series.
The Indian Premier League then took centre stage as the new tournament based on the T20 format enthralled one and all. The eight city based franchises did battle over the course of a month across the Indian subcontinent as they played for both cash and a diamond crusted gold trophy.
The tournament got off to a roaring start in Bangalore, as Brendon McCullum murdered the Royal Challengers bowling to score the highest individual T20 score in the world and leading his team Kolkata Knight Riders to a massive 140 run victory. The Knight Riders led by Sourav Ganguly however lost steam in the middle stages of the tournament and failed to make the cut for the semis, even after this gem of a start.
Accompanying them were Mumbai Indians who missed their captain Sachin Tendulkar for a major part of the tournament due to his enduring hamstring problems and the Bangalore Royal Challengers, led by Rahul Dravid were labeled a Test team in T20 attire, as they failed to get going after the mauling, literally and figuratively, in the first match.
The biggest disappointments of the tournament were, however, the Hyderabad based Deccan Chargers who had an assortment of the best players T20 cricket could offer. Andrew Symmonds, Adam Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs, Shahid Afridi, Scott Styris, VVS Laxman and Chaminda Vaas, all in the most expensive team of the IPL, yet they ended up losing twelve of their fourteen league matches to end up last in the league. Yet another dark spot on an otherwise brilliantly staged tournament came up when Harbhajan Singh allegedly slapped S. Sreesanth after an altercation following their match in Mohali as a result of which the young spinner was banned for ten matches of the IPL.
The Delhi DareDevils led by Virender Sehwag and Mohali based Kings XI Punjab led by Yuvraj Singh were the losing semifinalists. In the final, MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings lost to Shane Warne’s Rajasthan Royals, in a pulsating final. It was indeed a sight to see Australian, Indian, South African, Sri Lankan and Pakistan players in the same team, fighting for the same cause and then celebrating as well as commiserating at the same time.
The Indian team began the 2008-09 season with a couple of ODI tournaments. First the Kitply cup in Bangladesh where they began with an easy win over the hosts in the first game and then an immense victory over Pakistan, who were on a twelve match unbeaten run. But all this came to naught as India lost to their arch rivals in the final.
The sub-continent’s cricketing nations then descended on Pakistan to play yet another edition of the Asia cup. After wins over minnows Hong Kong and Pakistan in Group B, India made it to the Super Four stage. Here, they easily beat Bangladesh yet again but against Pakistan, they couldn’t quite repeat the performance of the group stage, losing by eight wickets. Yet, with a win over a weakened Sri Lankan team in their next match, they were still able to make the finals of the Asia Cup at the expense of the hosts. However, in the finals they succumbed to the guile of Ajantha Mendis who took six wickets to help Sri Lanka successfully defend their trophy.
India against Sri Lanka was to go on for a bit longer as the team arrived in the Emerald Isles for a Test and ODI series tour. Here they faced the double spin threat of Muttiah Muralitharan and Ajantha Mendis, and the famed Indian batting line up were rolled over like nine pins. Mendis took 26 wickets in the three Test series, which is a world record for a Test debutant, and with Murali scalping another 21, India lost the rubber 2-1 as only their openers, Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag had a memorable series.
They went down in the first game by a massive innings and 239 runs but staged a comeback in the second Test thanks to some gritty batting by the openers and some equally good bowling by pacemen Ishant Sharma and Zaheer Khan, winning by 170 runs. But a repeat in the last match proved too much with the middle order continuously not firing, and they lost the third Test by 8 wickets. The only consolation came in the ODI series where a change-in-guard under skipper Dhoni meant that the young Turks of Indian cricket were able to pull a rabbit out of the hat as they flayed Sri Lanka 4-1.
Australia arrived in India in October to play the Border Gavaskar Series for a second time in ten months. But there were many off field issues surrounding the Tests. The pressure had increased on the India’s ageing stars after the debacle in Sri Lanka and Sourav Ganguly duly announced that the series against Australia would be his last series indeed, in the wake of being kept out of Rest of India team for the Irani Trophy tie. The first Test at Bangalore was drawn. Ricky Ponting hit his 36th test ton laying to rest his dismal record in India but let the advantage slip as first Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh revived the first innings and then Sachin Tendulkar batted five hours in the second to save the game for India.
In the second Test at Mohali, Sourav Ganguly hit his 16th test century in his farewell series and Sachin Tendulkar crossed 12000 test runs enroute to 88 in the first innings as India scored 469 and 314 in their two innings. They eventually beat Australia by 320 runs as debutant leg spinner Amit Mishra, playing in place of the injured Anil Kumble, took seven wickets.
The third Test in Delhi was drawn inspite of double centuries from Gautam Gambhir and VVS Laxman as India piled up continued to pile on the runs against a clueless Aussie attack. But a flat pitch meant that the visitors were able to crawl back into the match which will forever be known as the game where Anil Kumble took an abrupt retirement from international cricket, his decision influenced by a hand injury which needed eleven stitches.
MS Dhoni led India in the final match at Nagpur as full time captain and recorded his third win in three matches as skipper. Sachin Tendulkar’s 40th Test ton set the stage for an Indian win as Ganguly was out fifteen runs short of a century in his last Test. He then went on to score a duck in the second innings which was also his last innings in international cricket. Meanwhile, offie Jason Krezja made a dream debut in this match for Australia as he snapped twelve wickets in the match, including a first innings 8 for 215 but it couldn’t prevent an Australian loss by 172 runs, the series surrendered 2-0.
England were the next victims of a high flying Indian team as they were white washed 5-0 in the ODI series beginning immediately after the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Yuvraj Singh hit back-to-back blistering centuries in the first two matches and also took a handful of wickets as England surrendered an early lead. In doing so, the south paw laid claim to the spot made vacant by Ganguly in the Test team’s middle order. Ever since then, England were playing catch up as first the Duckworth-Lewis system and then rain plus a host of factors such as bad light lost them three more matches. The last two matches of the seven match series were called off as the English team went home after the Mumbai attacks, but returned to play the test series.
Andrew Strauss hit two centuries in two innings to give England the upper hand in the first Test at Chennai, but they were poor in the last two sessions of the fourth day when India came from behind and wrested the initiative from them. Sehwag scored a tremendous half century to set up the Indian win and then Sachin Tendulkar steered the Indian home with his 41st test ton to take a 1-0 series lead, Yuvraj Singh keeping him company till the end with a gutsy half century.
The second Test at Mohali was always headed for a draw due to the mornings’ foggy conditions in North Indian winters but if any one came out with a win from this match, then it was Rahul Dravid. The Wall had been facing a lot of flak off late for his poor run of scores and this was going to be a last chance for him. But he didn’t disappoint as in the company of Gambhir, he ground the English attack into the ground. He was out for a duck in the second innings though, even as Gambhir missed his second ton of the match by just a whisker. Kevin Pieterson provided the pyrotechnics in the match as he smashed an entertaining ton when England batted.
Last but not the least, there was also the Indian Cricket League, which played out two seasons in the same year, one in February-March and the other in October-November. The Hyderabad Heroes beat the Lahore Badshahs in the best-of-three finals in the T20s challenge, before ICL India upset both ICL Pakistan and ICL World to lift the ICL World T20 trophy.
The second season saw a new team Dhaka Warriors added to their lists. The Lahore Badshahs and Hyderabad Heroes met in the finals once again, but this time Imran Nazir’s brilliant century in the second final sealed the win for the Lahore team. The ICL World series was called off midway because of the Mumbai attacks as an eventful 2008 came to an end for Indian cricket.

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