Sachin and Dhoni commands base price of Rs 1.84 cr at IPL’s January auction

The bidding price will start at Rs 1.84 crores for Sachin and MS Dhoni for this IPL season 4 IPL player auction. Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh will also included in the same band price for this auction.

The BCCI released some set of price bands for the players and send a list to all state associations for their notifications.

Nearly 62 Indian Cricketers will be geared up for this IPL Fourth Edition auction to be held on January 2011. Indian Team Captain, Dhoni and Master Blaster Sachin are valued at Rs 1.84 crores for this season.

The second bracket is that of Rs 1.3 crore where Twenty20 specialist Yusuf Pathan finds a place alongside speedster Zaheer Khan and the talented Suresh Raina.

And mostly, Sachin and MS Dhoni will be retained by their respective franchisees Mumbai Indians and Super Kings respectively for the next IPL season. Former Captain Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman have been priced at the rate of Rs 92 lakh.

Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Robin Uthappa, Praveen Kumar, Irfan Pathan are also placed in the 92 lakh band. The fourth bracket is of Rs 46 lakh and the fifth and final bracket is of Rs 23 lakh. The other players Wridhamaan Saha, Murali Vijay, etc will come under fourth and fifth bracket, sources said.

India stays top in ICC test rankings

After defeating the Srilanka in the third test match of the series Micromax Cup held in Srilanka, the Indian cricket team continues to be in top position in ICC test ranking.

In the three test matches against Srilanka, the host team managed to won the first match and second match, though there were many centuries, end up in a draw. India want to win the third match in order to level the series against Srilanka. Many injuries have already affected the Indian cricket team and this made India to be on the weeker side.

However, the India managed in third test to win the match and made the series draw by 1-1. VVS Laxman showed his brilliant performance on the field in the second innings of 3rd test and paved the way for victory for India.

Sehwag, who showed his fantastic performance in 1st innings and also he joined in the 7000 run mark bandwagon in this match.

Sachin, the master of records have once again proved his buoyancy on the field by winning the title of most capped player in test matches.

At last Dhoni, who proved his excellency in his captaincy and brings Indian cricket team back to Victorious path.

India, all the best for World Cup 2011.

Indian team squad for Srilanka Tour

Indian cricket team selectors have selected the 16 men squad for the next month Srilanka tour for the test match. Yuvraj Singh have been included in the 16 men squad, thanks for the selectors. Yuvaraj Singh was dropped from the team squad of Asia Cup because of his poor performance shown in Caribbean land and in Twenty20 World Cup.

Ace batsmen Rahul Dravid also comes back after he missed the test series against South Africa. As usual Sachin will be back in his position and VVS laxman on his way back to test match. Wicketkeeper-batsman Wriddhiman Saha have been included in the team at the expense of Dinesh Karthik.

Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth will handle the area of pace bowling while spin will be handled by Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra.

The first test will be played in Galle from July 18. The second and third tests will be played from July 26-30 and Aug. 3-7 in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo.

Squad: MS Dhoni (wk & capt.), Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag (vice-capt.), Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, M Vijay, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Ishant Sharma, Sreesanth, Amit Mishra, Pragyan Ojha, Wriddhiman Saha (wk)

India win Asia Cup beating Srilanka

India won the Asia cup 2010 by crushing Srilanka for a mammoth score defeat of 81 runs. India lifted this Asia cup after the much long period of 15 years. Yes, 15 years back, India bagged the Asia cup held at Sharjah in 1995.

Srilanka being in good form, made India restrict to 268 for 6 wickets in 50 overs. Off this, Dinesh Karthik, the batsman who replaces Virendhar Sehwag as Sehwag was injured, have made a brillant strike and took 66 runs off 84 runs. Skipper Dhoni scored 38 off 52 balls and Rohit Sharma later came up with vital knocks helps India to put a competitive score. Rohit scored a decent 41 runs.

Defending 268 runs, the home team entered the field with lot of confidence as they were already beaten India in the previous league match of Asia Cup. But Indian seam bowlers crushed their confidence and at one stage, the Srilankan Score was 51 runs for five wickets. Off this Zaheer Khan bagged two wickets, Praveen took 1 wicket. Nehra, one among his best performance, bagged 4 wickets which was crucial wickets for India.

Man of the match award was given to Dinesh Karthik for his wonderful performace on the field. India can have this Asia Cup win as their warm up for the forth coming World cup 2011.

Hats off India!!!

Muttiah Muralidharan Favors MS Dhoni

Srilankan ace spinner Muttiah Muralidharan shows his support towards MS Dhoni as recently he was under fire for the worst captaincy in the T20 world cup 2010. The early exit from the T20 world cup and the continued silly statements from Dhoni put him in trouble in the cricket arena.

Besides this trouble, Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralidharan told that Mahendra Singh Dhoni remains one of the best skippers in international cricket and it is not worthy that the captain should be criticized on the basis of just one bad tournament.

The world’s highest wicket-taker in Tests and ODIs, Muttiah played under the captaincy of Dhoni in Indian Premier League for the side Chennai Super Kings. During IPL, Muttiah was surprised by the captaincy attitude that Dhoni has showed during the IPL matches. Dhoni's captaincy should not be mislead on the basis of India’s early ouster from the showpiece event in the Caribbean.

"Dhoni is one of the best cricket captains I have seen. How can one doubt his captaincy when he recently won the IPL trophy for his team Chennai Super Kings," Muralitharan told mediapersons here.

Besises this, Muralidharan will quit cricket after the 2011 ODI World Cup in the subcontinent and the 38-year-old veteran of 132 Tests and 334 one-dayers said he wanted to sign off on a high.

India Wins match against South Africa by One run

South Africa's thrilling and fantastic play made the Indians kept under threat of losing the first ODI held at Jaipur. Thought the match was on the side of Indians, 65 run ninth wicket partership between Waynell parnell(49 off 47 balls) and Dale steyn(35 off 19 balls) became the turning point of the match but Indian skipper somehow managed and bring his team eked out a nail bitting one-run victory. India lead by 1-0 up in the three match series.

South Africa chases a difficulty but achievable score of 299 but they were all out for 297 when Dhoni caught the ball from the fielder Sreesanth and made Parnell run out in the last ball of the innings.

Captain Dhoni made a right decision by choosing Parveen Kumar. The last over was very crucial.Parveen Kumar managed to keep South Africans under control in the last over. He also managed to get one wicket. With just three runs needed from a ball to win the match, it was the final run-out of Parnell by Dhoni that at last gave India the thrilling 1-wicket victory.

Ravindra Jadeja who made a spectacular performance in the match was given the man of the match title.

India retain No. 1 rankings, assured of ICC prize money

The dramatic win in the last minutes of the second test against Proteas, Indians retained their number one spot again in the ICC test cricket rankings. India made the series draw against the South Africa after winning the thrilling test held at Kolkata. South Africa defeat India in its first test held at Nagpur.

India after the thrilling moments at Kolkata test, won by an Innings and 57 runs that was the one of the big margin in the field of test matches. This winning bring ends to the test as the visitors got within touching distance of forcing a draw, losing the last wicket with only 13 minutes of play remaining. After winning this spectacular match on Thursday, India once again retained their number one status on ICC test cricket rankings, which also entitles them to USD 175000 given to the team that was number one on the chart at the yearly cut off date of April 1.

Dhoni's men ended Australia's seven year run of number one spot at the annual cut off date.
Moreover India reached the top spot after they won the match against Sri lanka by 2-0 in the home series in December last year.

DHONI TURNS 28

Mahendra Singh Dhoni has turned 28 today.He has been the motivator of indian cricket,under his captaincy team india have won a lot of trophys and have brought fame to the country.MS Dhoni has been a very effective captain and has never hesitated to try out things on the field.He is very cool on the field and his decisions speak on the field.Dhoni failed to open his account on his debut but he came back strongly with a 148 against pakistan in his ODI.Dhoni's wicket keeping skill also improved a lot with 13 catches and 4 stumpings in the west indian tour.

MS Dhoni attained the Number 1 position in the ICC ODI rankings in April 2006.Dhoni was the one who became the second captain after Kapil dev to win a world cup.Under his captaincy India went on to beat Australia in Australia,Then win the bilateral ODI series in Sri Lanka, India defeated Australia in India for the 2008 Border-Gavaskar Trophy.The generous MS Dhoni bid a grand farewell to Sourav Ganguly by handing captaincy during his last test against australia in nagpur.Lets wish him on his birthday to continue his good deeds for indian cricket and bring more and more victories for the country.Long live Dhoni.