Some pride left to salvage at The Oval

The euphoria that swept through the cricket loving minds of the nation after India’s historic win at Lord’s has changed to grave disappointment after terrible losses at Southampton and Manchester. Team England was going through a very lean phase when India reached that country to play a very rare 5 test series. Their captain Alistair Cook, once a prolific batsman, was staring down the barrel. The ominous bowling duo of James Anderson and Stuart Broad were far from their best. Retirement of Graeme Swann left the team high and dry without a quality spinner. Mr. Dependable of the English team, Ian Bell was almost looking like he forgot how to play long innings in a test match. Matt Prior, the daring keeper-batsman was not in his original self either. However at Southampton, everything changed for England and there was a remarkable revival, which saw Cook and Bell getting back their form, Anderson and Broad getting back to their best, part-timer Moeen Ali effectively taking the place left vacant by Swann of an attacking spinner, Jos Buttler, who replaced Prior, batting with great purpose and intention and Gary Ballance continuing with his supreme form, some calling it the “form of his life time.”

In the meantime from the pinnacle of pride at Lord’s, India stooped down to a nadir of ignominy at Old Trafford. If the injury to the hero of Lord’s Ishant Sharma was not enough of a blow to the Indians, they were humiliated in the Anderson-Jadeja row. When it was prudent to report the incident to ICC, India and its captain MS Dhoni took the issue to ludicrous levels even after the judge made the decision that neither Anderson nor Jadeja was guilty in the incident. By taking the issue too far, Dhoni was only distracting himself and his team from their real focus. The incident should have reached its closure once the judge had made the decision and India and its young players, most of them playing their first test series in England, should have re-focussed their attention to the test match.

Other than Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, and to some extend captain Dhoni, no other player in the Indian squad seems to have got things right in England till now. Of course there were some flashes of brilliance from Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane at Trent Bridge and Lord’s, but they too seem to have lost the touch as they reached Southampton and then Manchester. Comeback man Gautam Gambhir didn’t fire in his comeback game at Old Trafford and was dismissed cheaply in both innings. His penchant for fishing deliveries landing around off stump and swinging away seems to be intact. Cheteshwar Pujara, the worthy successor of the great Rahul Dravid, seems all at sea in England. The technically sound Saurashtrian has hit a lean patch and is finding unwonted ways of getting out, not to mention the many wrong decisions that went against him. Virat Kohli, inarguably the best batsman in the present Indian line-up, finds balls in that corridor of uncertainty too hot to handle. By now his inability to come out of that technical flaw of edging balls outside off stump would be troubling him big time.

If there is one Indian batsman who has been consistent in the whole series then that is MS Dhoni. Though the Indian captain is not known for his batting prowess against a moving red cherry, he made some useful contributions in the middle order. However his wicket keeping in the series leaves much to be desired. Many an outside edge has escaped between him and the first slip, mostly because of his failure to go for the catches by diving to his right.

Except for his quick fire half century at Lord’s, Ravindra Jadeja has been an abject failure in the series. He may have many triple centuries in domestic cricket, but he is inchoate while playing a moving ball in conditions as in England. His slow left arm bowling can at best be described as average. Ravi Ashwin, the more experienced among the two spinners, bowled just 14 overs in the Manchester test match. Dhoni doesn’t have a lot of confidence in him – the reason why he was warming the benches in the first three matches. Even when he is asked to bowl, Dhoni puts defensive field for him and asks him to bowl a defensive line. Pankaj Singh, a late bloomer in Indian cricket, lacks the incisiveness required at the higher levels of cricket and hence toiled hard for wickets. Only comfort being Varun Aaron – with his pace, he appears to be on the track, at least for now.

May be it is unwise for us to criticise this team so early for their lack of results. May be it is because we expected a lot more from this young team. It is not always easy to fill in the shoes of the stalwarts like Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag and Ganguly, the fabulous five of Indian cricket. It is not easy either to match the quality of Kumble, Harbhajan and Zaheer. Those who were pretty vocal for the forceful removal of the aforementioned greats, to replace them with the youngsters, should show more patience.

The Oval beckons India to get their act together and salvage the pride and the test series. 15 August is a remarkable day for an Indian team to start a fight to win a test match against the English. The freedom fighters of this great nation had fought for regaining the pride of the nation and its inhabitants; Dhoni and Co. would also be fighting on a different pitch tomorrow almost for the same purpose – to regain some lost pride.

(This piece first appeared in the cricket website Cric News Guru. You can find that original article under the heading OPINION: Some pride left to salvage at The Oval from that website.)

Our World Must Act to End Israel’s Genocide in Gaza

There often come occasions in our personal lives and in the lifetime of a nation when the silence we observe becomes a grave crime that we commit to the world and to the humanity at large. Israel’s unabashed and outrageous killing of innocents in Gaza, including God’s children, is in all senses a genocide which must be condemned in the strongest of terms. If we remain silent to this gravely atrocious act, we would be becoming partners in this crime against humanity. It is a historical irony that the Jews, who have been the victims of one of the deadliest genocide in the history of mankind, are the perpetrators of this heinous massacre in Gaza. 

It is now fairly obvious that Israel has embarked on an all out war on the Palestinians in the Gaza strip. Unlike in the past, when armed attacks used to happen only for 3-4 days, it seems that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have arrived with a specific plan to exterminate the Palestinians in the Gaza strip for once and for all. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that even after demolishing the secret tunnels in Gaza Israel will not stop the attack on Gaza. Many commentators are of the opinion that Israel is attacking Gaza with an intention that there should not be any future generations of Palestinians in Gaza and that is why they are targeting places where children are kept. Such a war that blatantly target children and kill them intentionally has never been fought in the face of this planet. In any conventional wisdom Israel is committing a war crime that needs strong condemnation and strict action against those who calls for and approves such a war.

Before continuing this writer must make this clear that he is no supporter of Hamas, the terrorist organisation in Palestine. However it is true that the Palestinians in the Gaza strip trust Hamas as the only organisation that is capable of standing up to the terror of Israel. The pretext on which Israel started the present attack in Gaza was that Hamas killed three Israeli youngsters. But now they claim that those youngsters may not have been killed by Hamas but some other terror outfit unconnected to Hamas. When the reason behind the start of the attack has ceased to exist as a reason, no excuses remain for the Israelis to continue with their armed bombardment of Gaza. But Netanyahu has made it extremely clear that the IDF is not even thinking about stopping the attack on Gaza civilians. The Israelis claim that they are targeting Hamas terrorists and not ordinary citizens. But the bombardment on civilian areas of Gaza including schools and hospitals shows that Israel is targeting ordinary citizens. Israel also claims that Hamas uses children as human shields against Israeli attack. However even that claim appears to be hollow as human shields are normally used against those countries that follow international conventions during times of war and not on a country like Israel that has no qualms in violating those conventions unashamedly.

Israel also often comes up with the argument that they are only retaliating to the attacks on their civilians by Hamas terrorists and say it is their responsibility to save its citizens from the deadly attacks by Hamas. However the truth remains that in comparison to the number of Palestinians killed by Israel, the number of Israelis killed by Hamas is incredibly low. The loss of human lives in both places is quite disproportionate. Mobile defence system of Israel known as the “Iron Dome” intercepts and destroys most of the short range missiles and artillery shells fired to Israel from the Gaza strips. Hence the loss of human life is quite less in Israel even if the Hamas terrorists in the Gaza fire missiles. For many years Israel has been putting blockade on Gaza strip and the Palestinians in Gaza live in what many human rights organisations call an “open-air prison.” They are not allowed to move freely or gain employment and hence they have an unemployment rate as high as 48%. 

If this writer says that it is high time international community take effective steps to curb the genocide of Israel, it would be an understatement. Hundreds of children have been killed and many more have been maimed and wounded. The sight of bodies of dead children lying strewn in many parts of Gaza is terrible to behold. When the circumstances are so grave it is disgraceful to see the world standing helpless to stop this genocide. The United Nations appears toothless, “world police” United States is hand-in-glove with Israel, other Arab countries neglectful as they think Israel is far better than Hamas and the one time leader in non-aligned movement, India shamelessly siding with Israel and US, saying both Palestine and Israel are equal partners of the nation. In such a situation, the Palestinians remain helpless amidst dreadful Israeli bombardment.  If the attack continues like this for some more days we should get ready to see an absolute extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza and the place would become their graveyard.

During his high profile election campaign, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used to speak about his intentions of making India a supreme nation in the eyes of the world. However it must be said that he has squandered a golden opportunity to make India supreme by not taking a moral high ground position in the case of Gaza attacks. Like many other of his campaign promises this one has also came out to be a hollow one. Added to this is the position taken by his main constituency, the far right Hindutva groups in India. There have been many pro-Israeli statements coming out from the Hindutva group. Their social media activists are at the forefront of producing such statement. The Hindutva army of social media activists, who were the a real force behind Modi’s election campaign, who are now jobless after Modi became PM, are utilising a good part of their time to promote and generate pro-Israeli arguments. When no right thinking person can endorse the abject cruelty committed by Israel on hapless citizens of Gaza, one wonders what is the logic behind the support given by these Hindutva groups to Israel. The only reason appears to be that the victims are Muslims. However this is a time to think beyond such divisive factors of religion and ethnicity and to stand together for the rights of humanity.

When the nations of the world have decided to be mute spectators, it is the responsibility of all right thinking individuals of all countries of the world to speak out openly against the gruesome killing of innocents by Israel and to show disgust on the moral turpitude of the nations of the world. If ever there was a time to show support to the people of Gaza, it is now. It is there fight for existence, a fight for their human rights. And this writer stands in support of Gaza and its citizens, especially the children, the embodiment of innocence.

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