Cricket fever ....

While March madness continues with the mighty Duke BlueDevils falling today, cricket fever has raged over the subcontinent and the diasporia across the world, especially with the win over Pakistan last week. And to answer Parag - I certainly did not forget about it, merely been lazy at times to write about it and very busy at others. While the third test is underway right now, with India trying to achieve the first task of avoiding a follow-on, here are some very interesesting facts [Thanks to Ninad Joshi aka Nandya for providing these statistics]

To quote Nandya:

prior to the Bangalore test, an amazing 15 of Inzamam's 20 test centuries have resulted in wins for Pakistan? (Of course only 5 of them came on away locations but nonetheless). It will be interesting to see if the trend continues at Bangalore. While we acknowledge Rahul Dravid as the best Test batsman of India of this decade (and perhaps one of the 3 best in the world for the same period), it is interesting to note that in the past 4 years, India has NOT lost a single match when Dravid has scored a ton. His last 12 test centuries have resulted in an amazing 9 wins and 3 draws for India.

From a career point of view, however, Inzamam surpasses Dravid in the success factor. Prior to the Bangalore test both had 20 test centuries, but Inzamam saw glory in 15 of his 20 hundreds while only 10 of Dravid's 20 centuries gave India the win. However dravid excels in the fact that just 1 (!!) of his 20 centuries actually failed to prevent defeat for India.... I doubt if there is a more successful batsman today whose 'efforts-gone-waste' factor is so less. It would be fn to see Hayden and Ponting's records from that angle. Tendulkar in the same period has scored the exact same number of centuries as Dravid (12), of which 7 came in wins, 4 in draws and one in defeat..... fairly good performance, though not as 'result oriented' as Dravid's !