For a Batsmen, that’s not good.
For the 2nd best batsmen in the team, its ridiculous.
For a captain, Unacceptable.
Those are Mahela’s stats.
Out of those 10 matches, 2 have been against India, the other 8 against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
It includes a run of 3 ducks on the trot, all against Zimbabwe.
His last 4 innings include two golden ducks.
What does that spell – a form fucking slump.
So what gives?
Pitches ? Although Zimbabwe was tough, it was hardly seamers in England or bounce in Australia.
Bowlers? Barring Mortaza and Sakib, the rest were not even international standard.
Every batsmen has a chink in their armour. For Ponting its the rising delivery outside off, For Tendulkar its the ball that moves back in late.
For Mahela its the ball that flies 2 feet outside his off stump. This is a gaping technical flaw that seems to come and go in Mahela’s career.
For a few months, when he puts it away, and leaves those balls he looks sublime. No one knows how it happens, but it comes back just as easily as it seems to go away. When it does, you score 75 runs in 10 games.
In nearly 300 games he has only 10 centuries. They all tell a story.
What is strange is that he is better at leaving those balls in tests and in ODIs, maybe he feels he needs to get going from the off, but SL will be better served the longer he bats than how fast he scores those runs.
There is only one solution – the nets.
At this point Ricky Ponting’s gentle trundlers could get Mahela out.
The problem for Mahela is that India and Pakistan have fast bowlers a kazillion times better than Ricky.
we were having this discussion the other day after that crazy final. what all of us seemed to agree on was that mahela and sanga really don’t seem to be arsed against bullshit teams. and while that may be annoying, it is a hell of a lot better than batsmen whose entire laurels are built on plundering the minnows and scoring the odd century on the dead tracks at home.
then again, for my argument to hold, we would have to assume that playing pakistan in karachi is also a minnow scenario for jayawerdene, and even i am not going to be that unfair.
finally, you guys (or is it one person) have been dishing out some quality blogs of late. great work…
Damith, look at it this way, if not for the last two no-shows, the last two blogs wouldn’t have happened.
A new profession for Mahela : go fishing against minnows….may be he wud get form or 2…….
but neways he says a lot and performs nothing…..i was shocked to read him say that he is in form!!
do you guys need a non performing captain ? i guess he needs to be shown the door as was Arjuna!!
Khatmal- Cheers, I dont care if Mahela scores no runs against the minnows and manages something against the good teams. Right now neither is happening
and it is just me 🙂
NC> You make a good point 🙂
Sam> Slow down the hate mobile !
perhaps mahela couldn’t believe that he is still playing in pak rather than ipl…he will recover by 4th odi…which is not gonna happen ;-))
SP
Mahela has never justified his potential in ODIs. The 2007 WC was the closest he got but failed to move on from that or even to maintain the same standard.
Mahela’s record in ODI is mediocre at best
Avg 32, SR 76 and 10 hundreds
Sangakkara also should be doing better
Avg 35, SR 73 and 10 hundreds
they compare unfavourably with
Aravinda De Silva
Avg 35, SR 81 and 11 hundreds
Arjuna Ranatunga
Avg 36, SR 78, 4 hundreds
and are pathetic when compared to
Ricky Ponting
Avg 43, SR 80, 26 hundreds
Mohamed Yusuf
Avg 43, SR 75, 15 hundreds
Jacques Kallis
Avg 45, SR 71, 16 hundreds
even a limited player like Jonty Rhodes managed to average 35 at SR 80.
I have not included any of Sachin, Sanath, Shewag, Ganguly, Glichrist because they were predominantly openers.