The Final Act

ACL 3 comes to a close, today. The matches, the clandestine build up, the passions, the posturing, the covert meetings and the unorthodox influencing and not to forget some good cricket interspersed with some hilarious cricket– all stops today. Today is the day to decide the winner, and whoever that might be it will be well deserved.

Leading up to this we should have had match analysis from last round and predict the blogger contest. For the only completed match in the last round Ravens were victorious - their bowling bolstered by Chota Shane and helped by some not so strategic batting by Raptors. The good thing is that we won’t have to bear the eye – sore jersey today. Predict the blogger, on second thoughts, was quite ridiculous. Why would I want you guys to predict my identity? I am what I am – the Oracle similar from ACL1. Before we close this as well a couple of quick announcements:

a.       Craydit in a press conference yesterday which was attended only by Sanskaar TV’s junior intern he announced his retirement from all forms of cricket – playing and non playing roles. This came a few years, and few cricketing thrashings, too late but it is to be welcomed. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours and hope that he continues to honor his retirement.

b.      Lalit Modi has gone big this time – he has been able to arrange all – food, clothing and sizable leadership presence for this final day. This leads us to believe he might be planning to retire from – wait for it – all FFF tournaments spread over two months and involving more than 80 people. We wish him all the best for the future tournaments and thank him for the wildly successful, transparent, energizing and invigorating tournament.

With that time has come to say goodbye! I enjoyed your company and thank you for reading this ridiculous blog. It was all for fun and any insults, real or imagined, was by superficial design. With that, let’s cheer our winners in the ACL after final party and after that stop reading this and start working. Until we meet.. 

Predictions 4.0

Final round of league matches. The big question for today is whether Raptors can make it to the finals by out playing Ravens. And that is the first match to be played today.

A. Raptors vs. Ravens: If Raptors lose it is game over for them and the rest of the matches bear little significance. However, if they win Ravens would have to win the last match in the league stage, against Initimidators, to qualify on NRR. Not surprisingly I am rooting for a Raptors victory. Raptors have been consistently inconsistent during the tournament. Their performance could be anywhere between appalling to good. Their goal in this match could be to avoid blunders rather than play brilliantly. Ravens, on the other hand, have been largely under-performing. They are sorely missing the services of Aksar and Chota Shane. Their weak point could be the bowling especially when the other team has a few good hitters. For this match I would give Raptors a slight chance of winning because of the momentum and slightly better batting.

B. Vandals vs. Intimidators: Two of the better teams playing against each other. I would give Intimidators a slight edge ahead of Vandals as they would want to wipe off their last defeat. Vandals are already through and are a very good side, and watch out for them during the knock outs. This might be a preview of the final before the final as well.

C. Supernova vs.Challengers: Supernova should easily win this unless they decide to rest the team by resting Hey Ram. They would not want to carry the thought that Hey Ram has clicked for two consecutive matches to the knockouts. Nevertheless, I am sure they are not afraid of the law of averages and will easily win this contest.

D. Ravens vs. Intimidators: Intimidators should win this one and if the predictions are correct Ravens will be out of the tournament. As it has been said, they are not playing to the potential and are a missing a couple of good players. However, if they do make it by defeating Intimidators they would be - as they say - back with a bang. I hope that happens as there is so much 'friendly' banter when they play and makes for excellent viewing. For the prediction though, Intimidators will win.

All right! All set for the matches. Enjoy the last round as I am sure you will do and we will come back next week with match analysis and who is the blogger contest. Exciting prizes to be won there.

Cheers!

Freak Friday - what the hell happened?

Using the word "dissapointing" to describe the predictions mismatch for last friday's matches would be the most sympathetic way to put it. It was humbling. Nevertheless, I will focus more on the three games where predictions went astray.

A. Supernova vs. Raptors: This was on expected lines. Raptors crumbling against Hey Ram. End.

B. Vandals vs. Ravens: Hmm. There was a possibility of Vandals winning this but the surprising aspect was  how dominating they were in the victory. The oldies for Ravens - Kallizabaan and Another Bun (not with the bat though) did step up from their last performances. However, as a team they did not have enough decent performances going around. They were restricted to a low score and they were absolutely listless in their bowling as the openers of Vandals completed the fifty partnership. Vandals winning without Vindaloo makes them strong contenders during playoffs.

C. Challengers vs. Raptors: Not sure what happened here. I always believed Challengers were a decent team whose results were reflective of their leadership needing improvement in "Drives for Results" and "Strategizes" LE. It would be true for Raptors as well, though. Does the performance of Raptors signify that they are coming together at the fag end of the tournament? Can we expect anything more from them or was it just the case of one dispirited team pushing themselves over another equally dispirited team? I would love to hear what you think and why they won. Seriously, I think it was just a fluke.

D. Supernova vs. Intimidators: Clearly, one team took sportsmanship into this game and the other team left it behind. As clearly as that if not more clearly, one team own. It was always going to be tough for Intimidators once Supernova decided to play with 13 players instead of 11. It was always going to be tough for Initimidators when they had one important player (BR Hills) not playing in this game. It was always going to tough once Hey Ram decided to bring his A game to the table. My prediction going wrong is not so surprising , is it?

That's it for post match analysis for this week. Obviously, I will look to your comments for this round. I have my opinions but now am eager to see what you guys think. Till Predictions 4.0 then. See ya!

Predictions 3.0

The third round. Probably the decisive day when the lineup for the knock out stages is determined. Can Raptors budge themselves from zero wins and make an attempt for the knock out stages? Can Challengers open their tally or would they forever remain challenged? Will Vandals and Intimidators be able to keep the winning streak by the end of the day? An exciting day ahead of us, and we will get to predictions but before that some secrets from the power aisles of ACL.

a. Lalit Modi sent a memo last week to retrospectively ban any player who was dancing after the completion of any match on grounds of indecent behavior (if you don't know about what happened read the last blog). It was only withdrawn after people brought to his notice Psycat did something after the ACL 1 finals which was at best categorized as dancing.

b. Gladrags has been trying to make deals with teams owners/players. Recently he has entered into negotiations to "borrow" players from Challengers who will most probably be knocked out today. The deal is likely to get stuck because of two reasons. One, Craydit is trying to sell his entire team rather than loaning players and even Gladrags can sense  that it is not going to be helpful for him. Second, Lalit Modi has passed an immediate executive order to disallow any transfers before the end of the season. Now at least you got to agree with some decisions of Lalit Modi.

c. In the last round the umpires made some embarrassing errors that made the self styled ACL executive committee (basically Lalit Modi + anybody else committee) take a hard look at the selection of umpires. It is the premise that umpires are chosen from a 'focus' group. It is not unclear that the "embarrassing decisions" seem to favor certain team/teams. So, this time around you might see surprising new umpires. How surprising the decisions will be?

d. Einstein and Craydit skipped the last round of matches for a 'knowledge' hangout at some swanky place.  It is understandable to see Craydit missing matches. You might also empathize with with. For Einstein though it does not cut after his thoughtful contributions to the team - a. Making sure that the team wears the most disturbing color of jersey with the weirdest logo possible, b. Delegating Sumi with overall responsibilities without Sumi knowing about it, c. Making sure they do not have a assigned captain and last but not the least, d. Making players sit through Basanti's sessions on "How text mining can help you improve your game - A panel discussion with Basanti, Einstein and Chadra Sir"? The rumor is that attendees still don't know what game they were talking about. Seriously?!

e. Black Label, it seems, is busy writing/preparing (by delegating this to, the ever enthusiastic, hired by anyone for anything, Un.H) for the Intimidators victory speech after the finals. Clearly he has out done the blogger and predicted not only this round, the line-ups for the knockouts but an Intimidators victory. Little does he know that the initial successes of the team have been based on one players' effort and some dispirited, clueless oppositions. Not only that he has also been attracting too much attention to his team which is making the clearly better teams train their guns on Intimidators. Not very strategic, don't you think?

f. News is that Vindaloo will not be playing any further for Vandals. This is the last message which he posted to all his team-mates: "Friends- we did it! I cannot thank enough for all that contributions that I made during the matches (blogger add: which was mostly shouting incomprehensibly at anything) but I would also like to call out the enthusiasm with which you heeded to my pin - point strategies. It was really good. Supernova is down and dusted and I am over and out". The rumor is that excited by his dancing skills, he has gone to learn more from the Cheerleaders of Pune Warriors. The question is that - what does he plan to do after learning traditional Indian dance form??

As you see, some very interesting updates that no one is trying to provide you. Now to predictions:

1 Supernova vs. Raptors: It will be Supernova's match to lose and Raptors match to win. Both are evenly matched with rubbish players bolstered by one/two/half good players. What Raptors desperately lack though is strategy and match guidance.As they say, a herd of Lions led by a donkey is easily defeated by a herd of donkeys led by a Lion. In Raptor's case the lead person is still a WIP. Hey Ram's strategy and Lalit Modi's encouragement (he should start being more vocal though) should guide Supernova through.

2. Vandals vs. Ravens: Vandals are clearly the superior side. Good batting and bowling options are available. Ravens are limited in their resources but fiesty in their approach. The other thing with Vandals is that the pressure of winning is gone and there are no clear leaders after Vindaloo. If Vandals come through this test they should be considered an extremely good competitor in the final round. For Ravens the older pros, Another Bun and Kalizabban have to start performing. I would predict Vandals getting edged out by Ravens in a close contest.

3. Challengers vs. Raptors: Aah, the battle of the minnows. Raptors most likely would be playing this after getting defeated in the first match. They also do not have many match fit players. This would be the best opportunity for Challengers to register their first win. Byra missed out the last match and Nanu was in decent form. If Challengers are able to get their bowling act together, which I feel they will, they will win this one.

4. Supernova vs. Intimidators: Tough one to predict. Damru and BR Hills are doing well for Challengers. The team's confidence is high and they have players who can field. Supernova should be coming off a win from their earlier match and they would be raring to go. It should be a good contest if Hey Ram does not fail for Supernova. I will predict an Intimidators win owing to the momentum and better depth in their side.

All set then. As always thanks for reading the blog (but says a lot about how jobless you all are to be honest) , and join back next week for post match recaps!

Cheers! 

Almost there!

Three out of four is decent. Any respectable statistician would say that this was very robust though it was not something to excite. Agreed. But in an cricket league where all kinds of "influencing without authority" happens this was pretty good. But, before we get into that part let's look at the matches:

a. Vandals vs. Challengers: Vandals is a team of over confident batsmen. Each batsman behaves like a Virat Kohli and bats like a Rohit Sharma. Almost constantly failing themselves. Anyways, they made an average score. As was expected Challengers botched it up. To say that Nanu scored the highest runs for Challengers speaks volumes about their line-up. A couple of key Challengers' players - played rash shots and got out. And when the depth in batting is limited to the couple of players, it is never a good strategy for them to get out before 10 overs are up or winning the match. Alas!

b. Intimidators vs. Raptors: Initimidators, as the misguided Akash Chopra would say, is a team of smart buys. It sounds hollow when you say it midway through the tournament. But I will still go ahead and say Damru was a smart buy. He is not one who attracted the top bids but is now the leading run scorer and leading wicket taker after two matches. Intimidators again made a high score and Raptors had to play well to win it. All that they could do was to lose almost all the wickets and score only two-thirds of the target. Betaal scored the highest but he is the kind of guy who can help you in the act, but cannot do the act himself. Takla and See-na had to be there but that did not happen.

c. Challengers vs. Ravens: It was surprising to see they turn up for the match. It was even more surprising to see them bowl well. However, as it is with Challengers, it was not surprising to see them lose. Ravens were generous in gifting away their wickets led by their captain Another Bun. However, their bowling was as good as it gets. Straight wicket to wicket bowling with good all round sledging and intimidation. Nanu was again the highest scorer for Challengers which is not a good sign at all.

d. Supernova vs. Vandals: It is easy to analyze the performance of a team when the team is represented by one player. The reasons for Supernova's loss, hence, are A. Hey Ram got out quickly. In a team where batting depth is limited to himself, it was never going to be a smart move. B. During Supernova's bowling he put a lot of pressure. But it was directed on his own players rather than the opposition. Chasing a low score Vandals batting imploded in style with Kalki, Vindaloo, Dushman and Shikari Shamboo getting out before five overs were complete. However, the 'hired' batsman (did anyone hear about him) Halanth alongwith Ghav got them out of trouble. Vindaloo, people say, let out a cry and started doing a gangnam jig as soon as they won.

Okay, so this was the breakdown of the matches for you. I should be back with Round 3 predictions and some news on Friday. Until then, take care and stay tuned!