West Indies in India, 2018

[sameerph]

How we are playing such a long tail ?Overconfidence in top 3 ? Because 4, 5 and 6 are also not contributing anything.

[Omkara]

Lot of favouritism in the team.

[ankit1407]

The batting lineup has been a joke for a long long time now , just that our top 3 kept covering the inefficiencies.. Hopefully this proves that Dhoni needs to go and despite of love Kohli has for Rayudu ,he is not your #4..play 6 batsman and an alrounder ( Pandya / K Pandya / Jadhav)

[Omkara]

Dear Dhoni, you made Ganguly retire from cricket when he was playing way better cricket than what you are playing now. Time to go.

[kaustav]

Dear Dhoni, you made Ganguly retire from cricket when he was playing way better cricket than what you are playing now. Time to go.

Sometimes hard truth should not be spoken out loud my dear Omkara

[prasen9]

Rayudu may not be our #4, but the knock on him is his strike rate. Today, we did not lose because of strike rate. We lost because batsmen could not stay at the wicket. Having both Pant and Dhoni in the team perhaps weakens the team. Pant does not know how to construct a ODI innings yet. For the next match, I would want Kedar in place of Dhoni. And, I would want Bhuvi to figure out a way to take wickets!

[Sin Hombre]

Rayadu is also suspect against the pacers. We will see it proven if he plays in Aus and NZ later.

Agree about Kedar replacing Dhoni for the next 2 matches.

I am not a fan of selecting Jadeja but we can't go with Bhuvi at 7 either.


The main positive from this match was that I saw Dhoni frustrated for the first time after his dismissal. Seems like he is aware we are coming close to the end.

[prasen9]

What happened to trying that TN chap? Vijay Shankar or something like that? That way, we do not have to play Khaleel and can replace Jadeja with a batsman more. So, Rohit, Dhawan, Kohli, Rayudu, Kedar, Pant, Shankar, Bhuvi, Kuldeep, Chahal, Bumrah. As we saw today, the tail is too long. Since Shankar is not there, I would get Jadeja in that slot.

Khaleel is not ready, imho. We can give him some games to invest in him. But, I do not think he will be ready by the WC. We should just bank on Shami being the backup.

[Sin Hombre]

Agree about Khaleel. Ths late in the cycle, our best bet is getting Shami back in some kind of form.

Vijay Shankar continues to perform decently without being spectacular in the domestics but has fallen off the selection radar completely. It is Hardik or bust as far as the pace a/r spot goes.

We really needed to have invested in Krunal, Vihari and see if any of them could play the Raina role and be the 6th bowling option without extending the tail,

[prasen9]

Jadeja for some reason is too defensive in ODIs and does not take wickets, a la Bhuvi. We need wicket-taking bowlers in the middle overs in today's game.

Rayudu may well not be the answer on pacy pitches but we will see.

[prasen9]

Or since it is in England, try to get a swing bowler going. Like Dhawal Kulkarni or Binny. Do we not have any pacer who can bowl swing and keep it wicket to wicket even if their pace is not much? Heck, Ganguly's dibbly-dobblies used to be devastating in England? For the WC though, they may make flat batting wickets and things may be different now than a decade ago ...

[Atithee]

I have said it before and I’ll say it again. No bowler should be selected if they cannot extend the tail while batting. Time and again, it is being proven over and over. And we are the absolute worst. It hurts us both ways—we give away too many runs to the lower order and we cannot squeeze any life from our lower order. That’s where Ashwin has been useful at least in tests. Bumrah is perhaps the only indian bowler who should be chosen on his bowling alone but the way even he gets out while batting is shameful.

[indiansportsfan]

I think just the simple substitution of Dhoni by Jadhav for the next match will improve the lineup quite a bit. We get someone who not only can bowl a few overs, but also who can hit some. Also I had been speaking against Rayudu for quite a while, for some reason, quite a few people were in love with him. We should bring Iyer in his place for the next set of ODIs, there's still time to try him out; Shubman Gill may be too late. A middle order lineup of Iyer, Pant, Jadhav and Pandya does not seem too bad.

[Sin Hombre]

ISF, I agree that replacing Dhoni with Jadhav and Bhuvi/Khaleel with Pandya will ensure that we have a xi which will beat Windies 4/5 times in both India and England.

But that's not the end goal. Will it beat England and full-strength Oz (with Warner and Smith back) next year? I doubt it with still so many question marks.


What is likely for the next match given our asinine (or spineless) team management is Kedar replacing Pant and Jadeja replacing Chahal/Khaleel for the next match.

[Sin Hombre]

atithee, a team of 6 Kohlis, 2 Kuldeeps and 3 Bumrahs will win 90% of ODI matches in every condition.

The issue is more that we have too many players who are one functional and not even good at that.

All of our current bowlers are worse ODI batsmen that the likes of Srinath, Zaheer, Bhajji but what is probably even more shocking to me is that none of the current Indian batsmen can bowl. Previously, every one of Sachin, Sehwag, Yuvi, Raina, Ganguly could turn their arm and play the role of 5/6th bowlers. Gambhir was the only one who could not. This meant we could play 4 specialist bowlers most of the time.

And it is not just the current xi regulars who can't bowl but also the failed experiments like Pandey, Rahane; nor the young guns like Gill, Shaw and neither do the inbetweeners like Iyer. The only ones who do are the Pandya brothers and Kedar and to some extent Vihari.

What's going on with our coaching?