Review of International Cricket - February 2003 - Sanjay Manjrekar

It was a busy cricketing month, with the international cricket calendar ensuring that seven of the ten Test-playing nations were engaged in tussles immediately before the World Cup.

The English were able to conclude the Ashes series on a happy note with a win in the final Test at Sydney. While there is no doubt that it was a comprehensive win, one hopes that the English do not get unduly obsessed with it and start glorifying their team to the skies. It was, after all, a win achieved after four crushing losses, and that is something that the English cricketers, supporters and most importantly, their writers need to keep in mind before dishing out the superlatives.

The Sri Lankans failed to make it to the finals of the VB series despite their skipper Sanath Jayasuriya's brilliance, but they will console themselves with the fact that their premier player seems to have regained his touch on the eve of the World Cup. Jayasuriya's opening partner Marvan Atapattu also looked in fine nick, and that is good news for the 1996 champions. When the World Cup gets underway, all of Sri Lanka will hope that their opening pair will do in South Africa what their openers Jayasuriya and Kaluwitharna did on the sub-continent in 1996!

While Jayasuriya and Atapattu and their English counterparts Marcus Trescothick and Nick Knight gave much joy to their respective compatriots during the course of the VB series, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh did the same for India in the one-day series in New Zealand. So much has already been written and said about India's performances against the Black Caps, most of it negative, but there were some positive features of the tour, like the batting of the two North Indian stars and the excellent bowling of Zaheer Khan and Javagal Srinath. It is great from India's point of view that their two leading speedsters are at the peak of their confidence as they go into the World Cup. Srinath in particular will be pulling out all the stops to conclude his international career on a high note.

A man who like Srinath will be playing in a World Cup for the last time is the Australian maestro Shane Warne. His team was unstoppable in the VB series, winning nine out of their ten matches. In South Africa, the winner of the Man of the Match awards in the semi-final and final of the 1999 World Cup will be assisted by the likes of Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee in an endeavor to keep their side's hold on the trophy intact. While Warne will seek to consolidate his well-deserved place in the World Cup Hall of Fame, another player, the South African Herschelle Gibbs, will be going flat out to exorcise his dreadful memories of the previous edition. His innings of 228 in the second Test against Pakistan was one of many outstanding knocks played by him in the last few months. On home turf and at the top of the order, he will be South Africa's man to watch out for, post-9th Feb.

But the undisputed cricketing event of the month was the 7th International CEAT Cricket Rating Awards Ceremony for the year 2001-02, held at Mumbai's Police Gymkhana Grounds on the 28th of January. A mammoth crowd that comprised the 'classes' and all-important 'masses' witnessed a spectacular musical extravaganza that brought together Cricket and Cinema, India's two greatest passions, on the same platform. Current and former cricketers teamed up with leading lights from the entertainment world to raise a toast to the game of Cricket. The highlight of the function was the presentation of the CEAT Cricket Rating International Cricketer of the Year Award to Sri Lankan supremo Muttiah Muralitharan, who became the first back-to-back winner of the award since the inception of the Rating in 1995.

Date : 6th February 2003