India in England, summer of 2021

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Team Management does "Karun Nair" with Deepak Hooda. No difference between Ishan Kishan & Pant despite opening, approach is quite similar. SKY again throws it away, never seen him carrying the innings when team is under trouble, he is similar to others who exploits when team makes good start

Raj, I appreciate your viewpoint, but do you ever have something positive to say? It’s not a black and white situation. Please find some positivity in your thought process too. Something must be going right.

I can't find whats wrong did i say. Deepak Hooda might feel low as he got dropped despite scoring. Team management invested 5 years on Pant who turned out to be one of the best in Test format and banking on it too many opportunity is given to him, by doing injustice to other keepers, in shorter format where he appears to be highly inconsistent.When it comes to SKY, i request you to check his career, his runs has come when team had good start, he has failed to build innings when team is in trouble, Jadeja has did it plenty of time for CSK, most recently WC 2019 Semis. These things needs to be said as its affecting the team in crunch games

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Was searching for star players who were dropped and made a great comeback later

Performances : Mohinder Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Zaheer Khan, Gautam Gambhir, V Shewag, Rohit Sharma

Controversy : Mushtaq Ali, Kapil Dev, N Sidhu

Injury & illness - Mansoor Ali Khan
Pataudi, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Ashis Nehra, Anil Kumble

[rajitghosh]

The first in controversy would be Lala Amarnath thrown out of the 1936 England tour by Vizzy

[prasen9]

Absolutely ludicrous to drop Hooda to get the guy born with a silver spoon, Pant, into the team. He possibly cost us the match today by wasting 5 balls, almost 4% of the resources. You just can't do that chasing 215. Hit out or get out. Pant can't bat. Jadeja barely can. Our batting should focus on Rohit, Rahul, Kohli, Surya, Hooda, Hardik, Karthik for the T20I WC. Also, Avesh and Umraan are projects and this is not the time to play them. Play them after the WC. We should have given chances to people who were half baked such as Nata, Saini, etc. Now, we will go in with Bhuvi, Bumrah, and a bunch of prayers. Very, very bad planning. We need to learn to plan better. Without good planning, with so much talent and so much resources, we will continue to flounder.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Finally SKY does a job which was needed from him i,e taking the responsibility when team is in trouble with early wickets.A great innings that deserve win for the team but he was running out of partners. So, SKY & Hooda very much ahead for the middle order spot in the WC Squad. It will be great comfort if our 3rd seamer can bat Harshal, Thakur, Deepak has such capabilities. Harshal did'nt impressed enough with bat and Thakur is also struggling with Deepak unfit. Out of these three India wants Thakur to back in form as Deepak & Bhuvi are quite similar type of bowler and Deepak will find hard to bowl tough overs.

[Atithee]

The elephant in the room is Kohli. And, Karthik is unable to produce when it’s an ideal opportunity to put his hand up. I’ve said it before—we need to cast aside all big names and create a team with lesser known, and we will be just fine. Rohit, Virat, Karthik, a couple more (Jadeja?) from this team have to go. Else, we have no hope.

[prasen9]

Unfortunately, the team management goes by name recognition and thus Hooda is being kept out.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

DK's role was as finisher, today was ideal condition for him to show his finishing skills but he failed.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Its not a good thinking to bring in important player like Hardik back to Odi so much early, as he has recovered from injury few months ago. He is in good zone and very much automatic choice in shorter format, there was plenty of time to include him in odis after T20WC 2022. Venkatesh Iyer should have been given chance in all these odis which is to be played before T20WC as he has performed in 50 Over domestic and deserved some more games

[prasen9]

Ok, now we are on to the ODIs.

Dhawan, Rohit, Kohli, Iyer, SAY, Pant, Hardik is the obvious top-7. However, if Hardik cannot bowl 10 overs, then we get Jadeja in and drop Iyer.

The bowling is a bit iffy in one spot. Bumrah, Chahal, Shami. Thakur because he can bat or Prasidh who is a different type of bowler.

So: Dhawan, Rohit, Kohli, SAY, Pant, Hardik, Jadeja, Shami, Bumrah, Chahal, PK.

Now, if we want to try new bowlers, I would not mind Arshdeep for Shami or Bumrah. Or Thakur playing in that slot to strengthen the batting.

[prasen9]

So pretty much the team I had predicted. Except that Kohli has a groin strain. Huge, huge tail. Awful. Hope the bowlers pay enough dividends to keep the total down.

[Atithee]

The mysterious injury has struck again to rule Kohli out rather than being dropped! Bowlers have done well so far.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

2023 50 over World Cup preparation will depend on having quality spinners in the side and ICC should should set Day Night game timings from 11 am or 12 pm noon to avoid dew having impact in the crucial matches

[prasen9]

Atithee, professional players always have niggles. Sometimes players in a rut find it difficult to play despite their niggles and sometimes if they are in form, they play despite their injuries. It is a gray area on whether people are injured or not. And, whether they have been dropped or rested or simply soft dropped due to form plus some small injury is also not black and white. It is what it is I suppose. Kohli did not play and Shreyas did not bat. Hardik bowled four overs but when Bumrah is Bumrah, things are over in a jiffy.

For the record, in the last two years, Kohli has played 12 matches where he has averaged 37 at a SR of 85. Not terrible and not awesome. Given that he is Kohli, he should still walk into the ODI team. The same should not be the case for tests, where his slump has been deeper and longer. But, 37 in the last 12 innings at 85 is fine. Top players will have such phases, when they are meh.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Dont understand why our ex players are divided into 2 parts on Kohli issue. One section wants him to be in the team and continue for his previous performances and the other section wants him to get dropped from the side. This kind of situation did'nt happened when other stars were dropped for poor performances / injury and thrown away into the domestic. Infact domestic cricket helped them for strong comeback. Its look quite surprising that present generation stars are egoistic and not willing to go to domestic and correct their faults. Kapil, Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman, Kumble were also big names and they never missed domestic when they were off from national duties or were dropped for poor form. Sachin played quite few games for Oxford University when he was recovering from Tennis Elbow as well as for Mumbai in off season. Ganguly played club cricket in Kolkata and also for Bengal when he was dropped, even Smith & Warner kept their ego aside played club cricket when they were comming back from ban