In btw Omer, I never thought that you have any anti-indian bias, I know how big a fan you are of Sehwag.

I am in a hurry today so will write in detail in the new blog latersss.

Basit Ali has given a statement that Yousuf and Butt should be sacked from the ODI team.

Ponting, Smith, Sehwag– these guys don’t care about runs and milestones, what they care about is the team winning and play for that. By doing that, it can happen that they will make less runs, but of better quality for the team. Misbah can choose to remain not out as much as he wants and inflate his averages, but I would never consider the runs he makes as good as the runs that Umar Akmal or Fawad Alam make when they play for the team, even if they end up having much less runs or averages.

No need to apologise, I told you when you came on this blog that you have a nice heart and you’re a nice guy. I know you are patriotic- many of us are. The good thing is you apologised, which shows character.

This is not my criticism towards you, but towards people generally. I don’t understand how “personality” matters when assessing how good a player is. Shoaib Akhtar was a great bowler when in rhythm, but he is never fit which is why he is pathetic. Even if Tendulkar was arrogant like Akhtar, I would still rate him as high. That is because, in assessing quality I don’t take into account my natural biases. What I am trying to say is that, Dravid is one of my favourite players partially because he is a gentleman and a very decent guy. Tendulkar is not amongst my favourite players, but he is a genius and the best batsman of all time. So that is the difference; personally I don’t like Tendulkar, but I understand his greatness.

I don’t like Wasim Akram personally, but I understand how great a bowler he was (in fact I dislike Wasim Akram very much). I don’t like Miandad or Inzamam personally, but they were great players- Miandad, slightly better. On the other hand, personally I like Shahid Afridi because of his straightforwardness, but I don’t consider him that great a player. Some of it is his own doing because of his refusal to play Tests.

According to Mohd Yousof, the pitches in NZ will support pace bowlers, therefore he has called an “experienced” batsman like Misbah. But Misbah’s biggest weakness is pace bowling, he is a very good player of spin bowling, but as soon as the ball gets too fast or starts swinging, he becomes a very, very average player. So, I don’t know how Mohd Yousof can say that they are calling a player like Misbah because of the pitches and conditions in NZ, when the only team that Misbah has been able to play decent against is India, and that is because India rely more on spin bowling rather than pace bowling.

Yaar Ghambir and Dravid no comparison so far. If you notice, Dravid has won many, many matches for India. Its like comparing Sohail tanvir to Akram, it is premature in every which way, and many players can start well and then fade away.

Anyway, I hope you don’t think there is anti-Indian bias here, which is why I am discussing just sports and not politics anymore.
In fact if you notice, my favorite batsmen in world cricket are mostly Indian along with Ponting and Smith. Mohd Yousof, though a great player, like Tendulkar just thinks about runs, and doesn’t take a stand for the team, he doesn’t win too many matches. In the case of both I understand that they have very modest personalities, but, at the same time, so do players like Dravid, Sehwag, and Laxman, and they play for the team.

Misbah’s Test record is pathetic, just check his performance when not playing against India. Why is he being called back into the team?