It was quite an eventful day (DLF Cup - Ind Vs Aus, Game 6) for the umpires today at the Kinrara Oval. There were some very good decisions (and reversions) and also some really ordinary mistakes on display. Here is a brief analysis of all those action sequneces.

Scene 1: Australia 99/5, second ball of the 26th over
Action: Hussey turns an innocuous Harbhajan delivery to the vacant area on the leg side. Batsmen complete the first run and then attempt a suicidal second. Haddin is well short of the crease when Bhajji whips the bails off. Umpire Benson rules the batsman OUT and Haddin starts walking to the pavilion. But some secondary instinct tells Benson to refer the decision to the third umpire and the replays suggest that Harbhajan might not have whipped the bails cleanly with the ball in hand. Haddin gets a call back and he ends up making the Indians pay dearly.
Comments: In the context of the match, this was a big moment. If not for Haddin’s knock and his partnership with Hogg, Australia would have struggled to reach 170-180. But what Benson did was absolutely the right thing to do. Umpires should not hesitate to doubt their own decisions.

We absolutely loved Mike Atherton. Not for his grit and determination, which is why you’re supposed to like Mike Atherton. We just liked him in that unquestioning way when you adopt a player as a youth. One of dad’s mates once knew someone who played two games with him and helped him with his forward defensive or something. That was enough. He was our guy from then on.

Early on in his Test career, Mike was far from the blocker of later days. He was sensible, but his back problems weren’t too severe and he was a lot freer scoring. His average was well over 40. As his condition deteriorated (ankylosing spondylitits) his average dropped. We used to desperately hope that Mike would get some not-outs so that his average would rise over 40 again, because we’re a colossal dork.

Given the current situation following West Indies’ superb win against Australia yesterday, the various possibilities for India & Australia to join them in the final have been drawn up.

It doesn’t make for good reading if you support the Indian team. Needing to beat West Indies and Australia is going to be mighty tough! What Indian supporters will hope for is that their games are unaffected by rain. But given the forecast talks about 50-60% chances of rain, it looks like nature is set to pour cold water on these dreams, pun intended!

Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s name is a glaring ommission from the list below. He scored 1170 runs at an average of 55.71 and also accounted for 40 dismissals as a keeper during this period. Those figures are much better than that of his Australian counterpart, who somehow managed to make it to the list.

With 58 wickets at just about 22 apiece, Irfan Pathan was the best bowler of the year (It is a pity that he is not the first-choice bowler in the current Indian lineup). Given the number of matches that Sri Lanka got to play, it isn’t surprising to see Sangakkara head the batting aggregates column. My ODI player of the year would be Yuvraj Singh for just the sheer number of individual match-winning innings that he played this year.

Ricky Ponting scored 2700+ international runs while Muralitharan picked up more than 150 international wickets. The winner has to be one of those two. I would pick Ricky.

How many of you want to pick Monty?