Scorecard changes and battle royale

Following the post-mortem of the second Test match between India and Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground the Cricket Statisticians Inc. (CSI) have decided to ring in a few changes to the scorecard. Now instead of just reading out team scores like 209 for 4, we'll be reading out individual scores in that manner. For instance Symonds' innings will go down in record books as 162 for 3, Hussey's as 145 for 2, Tendulkar 154 for one and Ponting 55 for one. This they say is necessary as they think this will be more revealing about the standards of umpiring in the match and would help in making sure the umpires involved are forced to take this to their graves. However, CSI has decided against it having any effects on averages as they feel this will be unfair on the modern day batsmen as the olden generations are likely to go unaffected due to lack of necessary documentation to apply the new rules to them. However, CSI has said that talks are on to try and fit in an additional column "Wickets Denied" to give some of the due credit to the aggrieved bowlers. Also on the anvil is the possibilty of using half an asterix to indicate when a batsman has been ruled out unfairly.

Another report coming in is about how the best of pals in the Indian team and partners in many run chases seem to be not in talking terms after altercations over who would partner Deepika Padukone. Of late both of them don't seem as chirpy on the cricket field seeming to indicate that they would rather focus their energies on settling this off field issue. It has taken on such draconic proportions that both Yuvraj and Dhoni, keen to spend as much time with Deepika are ensuring they don't stay on the crease for too long and give the least bit of advantage to the other. One only hopes that with Indian batting struggling Deepika tells them she'll prefer the one who performs better on the field. That would be the perfect script for the revival of their batting form.