December | 2011 | Pharmacist-Who

Did India not get the lead in the third day due to Night-Watchman? Was one end of wicket held up and runs dried up?

BBC sports mentions; the night-watchman is a bowler who has a decent-defensive technique. So our Sharma-ji defense is sound. Let us see… In 41 matches he has faced 1303 balls till now, at strike rate of 29.39. This is almost similar to his first class stats. An argument been given that the night-watchman should be not only have decent defensive technique but also have an ability to make runs or rotate the strike.

Some records of night-watchman (who were bowlers)

1962: Pakistani Nasim-ul-Ghani is the first night-watchman to hit a ton, scoring 101 against England at Lord’s in 1962.
1977: Australia’s Tony Mann was the second when he scored 108 against India at Perth in 1977.
2006: Australia’s Jason Gillespie joined the exclusive group when he notched his maiden Test century (201*) against Bangladesh in Chittagong (which ironically was his last test match for his country)
1999: England fast bowler Alex Tudor almost reached three figures against New Zealand in 1999, getting out at 99
Others : Syed Kirmani, Mark Boucher

But is using a night watch-man, a good idea? According to a study done it is not

Teams Using Night-watchman:
	Wkts	Scored Higher than Expected	Scored Lower than Expected
	1	12	22
	2	5	33
	3	12	23
	Totals	29	78

Six other cases were too close to call. The graphical representation for the study:

The study proves that the night-watchman tactic is a failure. The rate of failure is twice more than a success.

So maybe next time we do not send in a night watchman or send someone like Ashwin up the order. An old anecdote when West-Indies was playing against Australia (I think), to protect Brian Lara, a night-watchman was sent. He got out, then another was sent he also got out. Finally Lara came out and survived the day.

Tomorrows game…wow going to wake up in 4 hours now…and see if we can break a taboo. And Dada, great insights 🙂

And I could not help sharing the following photo. Our own MMS, doing a night-watchman role for our young Prince 😉 (No pun intended Mr. Kapil S)

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/rules_and_equipment/4183598.stm
http://www.theunrealtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/manmohan-nightwatchman.jpg
http://www.sportstats.com.au/nightwatchman.html
www.cricinfo.com

I woke up today morning at 4.55, no flight to catch, no scary nightmare and no exams (whoof). The eye auto-opened like the old days, it was the 1st day of the Boxing Day match. Fact is I was looking forward to this game much more then the world cup final (something happened that day which killed my soul… but that story is for another day).

Coming back to boxing day….the first thing I did was checked Twitter, and man or man, whole bunch of janta was alive and kicking. And then I saw the first scene… ZAKS was back and the first thing came to my mind WTF. What the hell happened to his hair…. One tweets shouted out it Uday Chopra running (Uday who?). Well at-least the hair on the head not like… ahem – Anil Kapoor ji, the original Jhakas! Someone even suggested it looked like Ranjikanth – Sivaji the boss hairstyle. Ohhh….

It not the first time Zaks experimented with his hairstyle, see some of the images below.

Some tweets were also putting bets on who will break down fast –SharmaJI or Zaks. Hope they don’t, otherwise it will return of the SHREEASHANTI (hey did you all see the video in which Dhoni calls for SHREEASHANTI girlfriend. Well if not check my FB page link here for the video http://on.fb.me/rQoxH3

The bowler who stood out for me was Umesh Yadav. I think it won’t be far when India will be shouting, ‘Hamera Yadav Kaise Ho….Umesh Yadav Jaise Ho’. He got the break-through just about twitter janta (and myself) was going to his the bunk again. Just before the wicket I tweeted back to a another tweeter… why no kolawicket, why no kolawicket di, and she gave me back a smiley (would have preferred the wink)

And then India did it again, a debutant and a struggler came with a century stand. I don’t mind the debutant moving ahead, but punter… we should have got him. No Mercy for him!!!!

We should have got the last four wickets. There was defensive field positioning for Siddle also like he is a riddle. Maybe Dhoni has something up is sleeve, like the bowlers bursting tomorrow and making all out for 299. Lets see.

India on the whole performed good as normally we are bad starters, especially on foreign tours. Fingers crossed as in England we did not even start 😦 , hope it does not happen here DRS or no DRS. In fact I think either we accept DRS as a test playing nation, or no test playing nation goes along with it. What goes around comes and there are 19 days of game still left in the series.

The game is like a boxing match, the first round was over today and both teams looked tentative and defensive. It was much ado about nothing for now. But, why do I get a feeling that tomorrow the wicket will quicken and start bouncing more!

Chalo…goodnight Bombers!!! Sehwag show tomorrow. Hope it begins by 7 am 🙂

Sources:
http://www.thatscricket.com/news/2011/12/26/zaheer-good-show-hair-do-captures-all-attention-aus.html http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia-v-india-2011/content/current/story/546939.html http://www.8pmnews.com/wp-content/uploads/cache/57488_BnHover.jpg http://thecricketcouch.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/zaheer.jpg