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Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Vaseline and Batsman Recalls

Two off-field incidents made news in the second test between India and England - one obviously was the decision by MS Dhoni to recall Ian Bell after he was run out by the Indian team in the second innings. This led to a huge discussion all around the world whether it was right or not. The Indian ex-players also joined the noise-bytes made over the decision - Anil Kumble and GR Viswanath being two ex-captains from the state of Karnataka who praised Dhoni's decision. Nobody spoke about Viswanath's decision to recall Bob Taylor in the Golden Jubilee test between India and England - a pity that such a decision was not given the right advertisement.

The other incident was about the tweet given by ex-English captain Michael Vaughan. Vaughan suggested that VVS Laxman might have used Vaseline to cheat the HotSpot machine. Obviously, this led to players like Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar to voice strong opinions on Vaughan - in fact, Sunny Bhai even went to the extent of asking VVS to consult his lawyers!! Vaseline too had an earlier connection between India and England test matches - ask John Lever about it. Tony Greig gives a good spin over the incident but this only goes to prove that the English media has very short memory about incidents that do not show their team in a poor situation.

One common thread between these two incidents and the second test match was that England won the matches concerned!

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