As the other sports forums seem to have taken old to some respect, well here is a cricket forum. NOTE: This forum will be heavily moderated and can be revoked at any time is discussions go out of hand.
Bhushan, I don't think anyone has blamed the pitch.
There was some rumbling in the press that the pitch was tailored for the visitors rather than the hosts. There is nothing wrong with India playing on spinner-friendly pitches, and all cricket playing nations do the same to favor the host team. However, the Indian batsmen are no longer afraid of the pace bowling and have performed well in Australia and Pakistan recently.
If the Indian tail-enders could score runs freely against the pace and spin attack of the Australian team then the batsmen have no excuse. What is more pathetic is the wrong selection of shots by most of the Indian batsmen in addition to their lack of form. India has been outplayed in two out of three test matches mainly because of the batsmen.
I think the turning point in the series was the run-out of Ganguly in the second innings of the Bangalore test. I watched the replay on TV, and here's Wisden's description of how it happened:
"It got even worse when a horrendous misunderstanding led to Sourav Ganguly being run out. He pushed one to short midwicket, and took off for a single immediately, only to see Rahul Dravid stop after a couple of strides. Ganguly was stranded halfway down the pitch, and didn't even bother to look back as Adam Gilchrist uprooted the off stump with great glee."
Before seeing the highlights on TV, my instinct was to blame Ganguly for this -- as he is a notoriously bad runner between the wickets and has been run out all too often. In fact, he effectively blamed himself too. But this particular run-out was entirely Dravid's fault (as Dean Jones, the commentator, also pointed out). When the ball is played in front of the wicket, the unwritten rule in cricket (that every beginner is taught) is that it is the batsman's call (only when the ball is behind the batsman's wicket is it the non-striker's call). So it was Ganguly's call, and Dravid should have immediately shouted "no" if he didn't want to respond to the batsman's call; instead, he was "ball-watching" (to use Jones' phrase) and made a late (and against-the-unwritten-rule) call that ended Ganguly's innings. In the first innings, Ganguly had come in early and steadied the ship with a fine innings of 45, and he was looking good in the second innings too. Once you fail (and are under pressure), you are never quite the same batsman (as is so true of Laxman in recent months). Ganguly was a wreck of a batsman in Chennai -- albeit on an overcast day on which the Aussie pacers were getting inordinate amounts of reverse-swing.
The other major turning point in Bangalore was Billy Bowden's shockingly bad decision that went against Sehwag. As Gilchrist was quick to point out, he got a bad decision in Calcutta in 2001 (which set the ball rolling on Harbhajan's hat-trick). These things happen, and do change the course of test series quite dramatically. But this time, we definitely got the short end of the stick (especially in Bangalore). In Nagpur, despite the pitch, there were no redeeming features in India's performance.
So the selectors have bitten the bullet, and dropped Patel, Chopra and Agarkar. Unfortunately, Yuvraj too has been dropped -- quite unfairly, as he was pitch-forked into opening, when he deserves a place in the middle-order. Laxman has been retained, although his name was last but one on the list -- an indication that he is not an automatic selection in the XI.
Here's the team:
Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Dinesh Karthik, Mohammad Kaif, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Murali Kartik, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, SS Paul, V V S Laxman and Dheeraj Jadhav.
Ganguly's name is not there. He has been told to prove his fitness by tomorrow if he is to join the team as captain (the same thing should have applied to Sachin over the past two months!). Intriguingly, no alternative captain has been officially named yet (or so it appears from this list).
What I like about the new selections is that they are precisely the players who performed best on the last India A tour (and the last couple of India A tours in the cases of Gambhir and Paul). Dheeraj Jadhav was the surprise selection on the last India A tour, but was a genuine success -- although Gambhir was even more so. There are three specialist openers in the squad now (Sehwag, Gambhir and Jadhav), a specialist keeper (Karthik) who can bat (although I think Bihar's Dhoni was a shade unlucky to miss out on selection). Frankly I would have preferred Wasim Jaffar over Jadhav as the third opening choice, because Jadhav and Gambhir are both attacking batsmen (the former even more so than Sehwag in domestic cricket!) and Jaffer would have been the more orthodox option.
But this is just the right sort of team for a test in which India has the freedom to experiment, now that the series is lost. I doubt Paul and Jadhav will play (and Laxman could well sit it out too if Ganguly is available); the final slot in the XI is likely to be a toss-up between Nehra and Murali Kartik.
Red_Indian wrote:The way the indians have been batting it might make sense to bring in someone else to keep and play Parthiv purely as a batsman in the next test :
Since Nayang Mongia there has not really been an Indian keeper who can bat and surprisingly most indians have the feeling that good keepers cannot bat ... this stuns me as at 1 ponit mongiya was only chosen because he can bat and keep while others could only bat or keep .... if we aim so low we will never have a Gilchrist
I would blame the Pitch.. First of all this Indian team was in horrendous form.. They needed a pitch where they could build some confidence...
So if it was a flat deck, where batsman has to run himself out / fall on stumps to get out , so be it. .. We have an advantage of the home track and we should utilize it.. So that was a big mistake we made..
Further as to your argument that we played the bowlers well in Australia, we should not forget that we didn't face Mcgrath in that series.
If any of you counter saying " Indian team would have failed even on this flat pitch", then I have no answer except that we should have tried. Even now, we should play on a flat track and at least make sure our batsman has some run under their belt before their next series....
As to picking Dinesh Karthik, his keeping in the champions trophy was not consistent. He took some sharp catches, but his work behind the stumps was not all that tidy (letting lot of byes)... Further the rope for him is going to be relatively short, the first time he misses a chance, he is going to be out of the team.. Either Indian management should say "Mongia is not picked, becoz of so and so reason " or they should pick Mongia at least until parthiv or somebody else can prove themself that they are gr8 behind the stumps...
I think wicket-keeping is a specialised skill that develops over many years of play. We should not discard all former 'keepers: if MSK Prasad, Deep Dasgupta and Ajay Ratra have improved (and most indications are that they have all worked on their 'keeping skills), they should be considered before youngsters like Karthik and Dhoni. Both these guys made their reputations because of their batting, and the pros (especially Kirmani) have said that Karthik (especially) and Dhoni are pretty poor 'keepers! But Budhi Kunderan (who kept for India in the 1960s) had horrendous technique too, but did reasonably well (India beat England in a series for the first time, in 1961-62, when Kunderan was the 'keeper).
vkd_1717 wrote:Since Nayang Mongia there has not really been an Indian keeper who can bat and surprisingly most indians have the feeling that good keepers cannot bat ... this stuns me as at 1 ponit mongiya was only chosen because he can bat and keep while others could only bat or keep .... if we aim so low we will never have a Gilchrist
Hey Kumar nice to see you blame someone other than the players themselves!! Just kidding
I agree with you what you said - about the pitch as well as the keepers - I am no longer in favour of having youngsters with loads of "potential" as keepers - we need a old head, especially when keeping to the likes of Kumble at home.
We need good wicketkeeper experiance or non experiance doesn't matter ... A good wicketkeeper can judge ball of any great spinner with couple of matches experiance with that bowler ... Now we should try youngster to increase our bench strength, which lacks against Aussies .. And we r having great opportunity to do that ... Tomorrow's dead rubber against Aussies and then Bangladesh tour after SA tour ... lots of youngster r knocking doors of senior team ... Indiatimes give some list of it ...
If we don't give chance to these youngster then how we r going to make bench strength ... And with Aussies we already paid for non availability of quality bench stength ... Record should not put player into the team, instead his current performance/form should taken into consideration.
Virendra Sehwag always tell his desire of playing in middle order, so we should move him to there to strengthen it ... Tendulkar is out of match practice, so he should play first few first class matches and then come into team ... Laxman is playing with no feet movements ... He should not allow to play with his current form ... But we don't have any other batsman in current team, then we have to play any one of tendlya or laxman.
But our think tank go with old ghisapita formula ... Selecting team on old records ...
The selectors should have taken Jaydeep's advice, because our batting line-up is now making Bangladesh look good. To be all out for a meagre 104 is utterly pathetic -- or rather bathetic, since we've gone from the sublime (at the start of the year) to the ridiculous (in the past two matches).
I agree that Sachin should not have played with so little match practice, and Laxman is looking sadder and more inept by the day (shades of Mohinder Amarnath in 1983-84, when he scored that inexplicable string of 6 ducks in 7 innings against the Windies after being the dominant player on the previous tours of Pakistan and the West Indies, and starring in the World Cup win). We missed a great opportunity to blood a new set of youngsters. There was little more to lose in this match, and we could have experimented.
We managed to get them out in 203 ... But 99 runs lead is huge one, when we see falling 18 wickets in a day for just 285 runs ... I m doubt if we call this wicket as sporting wickets ... We started Harbhajan as Zaheer's partner ... But then in our second inning Aussies start Hauritz (just 3 overs had to bowled before stump and ball was turning all over the ground) in our second inning .. we r 5/0 and 94 runs behind with 10 wickets in hand ... but it was raining wickets all day and if the pattern continues this could be over by day three ...
Yes, the pitch has turned out to be a veritable minefield. Technique will be the key, so Dravid and Tendulkar will face their ultimate test (as indeed will Kaif). Sehwag and Laxman of course depend on more than a slice of luck (especially at the start of their innings), and only if Lady Luck smiles of them can we expect some fireworks from them. It has been a strangely unsatisfactory series, especially from an Indian point of view!
India's batting has been the big letdown of this series, but the fielding has been even worse.
Today, Harbhajan Singh went wicketless despite bowling beautifully. He was hopelessly let down by the fielders, especially Sehwag (who dropped two regulation catches in the deep), Gambhir and even Kaif. Apart from that, he had a plumb lbw decision go against him (and in favour of Hayden). To offset the latter, Katich was probably not out today (Kartik got lucky there, when Katich was given out caught at short-leg when his bat hadn't touched the ball!). Kartik bowled well today though, and was also unlucky to have a few catches dropped off his bowling (by Sehwag and Gambhir!).
Why are the Indians complaining about the pitch? India has better spinners than the Australians and the Indian batsmen can face the spin bowling better than the pace attack. India went with only one pace bowler because the pitch was going to favor the spinners, and it is doing exactly the same.
India must exploit the home field advantage in cricket and make spinner friendly pitches for all test matches. Don't England, Australia and New Zealand prepare pitches to favor their team? Remember the disastrous trip to New Zealand by the Indian team prior to the last World Cup when the Kiwis prepared horrible pitches and Indian players looked like school kids but showed their prowess by nearly winning the World Cup in South Africa?
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