General Cricket Thread ...

[prasen9]

I think the trio of Pujara, Kohli and Rahane are still good enough or the best we have for this tough overseas conditions. Not sure the bench guys have too much experience to counter the bouncy fast pitches in SA. Bet on couple of these guys to come good in the series. It will be a good learning for Shreyas, SKY, Priyank etc. to be in the dressing room. Vihari doesn’t give you confidence that he can be a regular and reliable number 5. Rahane looked good in both innings until the dismissal…Pujara was out caught down the leg side and Kohli looked good in both innings until he chased those wide balls. Hoping to see one/two centuries from the middle order in the series.

The point is they are not "good enough". Pujara averages below 30 for over two years. Kohli in the last two years and Rahane in the last year+. There is no reason to say that this is good enough and consign the bench guys to failure without giving them a chance. Vihari has not done much worse than these guys overseas and Iyer has done very well in India when these guys failed. They need to be provided chances only to say that substandard batting is not acceptable. Only to say that poor performance will not be rewarded. Only to motivate people to do well to keep their place in the team. Right now, they think that the slots are their inheritances and will not be taken away. Only Rahane batted well in this test to some extent. Maybe Kohli too in the first innings. Pujara was an unmitigated disaster. He was caught down the legside because he is a poor batsman. No good batsman would be out on that type of ball. And, Kohli showed that he is not mentally strong to keep away from chasing wide balls. Poor batsmen suffer from concentration lapses. Good ones do not. They were very poor and have been for a while. Not only in one innings but innings after innings for 2-3 years now. Enough is enough. We should not destroy the careers and the potential of our young batsmen. Kohli already did that with Nair refusing to play him to shelter his friends and pals in Pujara and Rahane. Time to kick these non-performers out.

We are timid enough to believe that this is the best we got. In Australia, we were forced to play our bench and they played swimmingly good. It is crazy to consign the ones who have not been given chances by calling them not good enough while stating these guys who are really bad in the last 2-3 years as good. That is the definition of being Orwellian.

[prasen9]

Kohli said Shami is one of the top three seamers in the world. So, who is he keeping out from amongst Cummins, Starc, Afridi, Hasan Ali, Hazlewood, Southee, Rabada, Jamieson, Bumrah, Boult, Wagner, Anderson, Broad, Roach, Holder ... I could pick at least five who are arguably better bowlers than Shami. He did use the term "seamer" though. So, are we kicking out Cummins, Bumrah, Starc, etc. because they are fast?

[Kumar]

Well, Kohli once said Ashwin cannot play in T20 or ODI when Washington Sundar is fit. And he said we chose Jadeja because England have lot of left handers (and that he will lot of rough to bowl into).

So Kohli’s mind works in strange ways

I am not here to talk about that. Just saw that Bangladesh thrashed NZ by 8 wickets. That is not the surprising part. The surprising part is that, The match was played in NZ, where Asian teams go and surrender meekly. Kane did not play, but still an incredible achievement.

By the way, Ajaz Patel was dropped and Ravindra was played. I think Ajaz would have made a bigger difference than Ravindra. Ravindra scored 4 runs and 16 runs, and took no wickets. I don’t think NZ get their team selection right . Even in india, they should have played Wagner.

[prasen9]

The English really need to clean house and get rid of the junk batsmen especially the openers and top order. Certainly out should be Burns, Crawley, Hameed, and Pope. Maybe Malan gets a few more chances? I'd try Lawrence in a match or so more to see if he can cut it. Bairstow - decide based on what he does this test. Revisit Buttler to see if they can do better. Root and Stokes are world class. They need good openers or try one opener and Malan if they have to. Then, this ragtag bunch could try to shore up the middle order if they do not have anyone else.

Although to their credit, they hit Boland a bit and moved his bowling average to above 7 !!!

[prasen9]

How about him? Usman Khawaja? Twin centuries as a reply. He should be played ahead of Head if it was on merit. However, given that Australia will most possibly not need that much runs from that position, it makes sense to play the younger guy at that position looking at the future to see if Head can cut it.

The real test is abroad and Ussie is not very good in the sub-continent. At home, he is king!

In fact, all teams should have different sets of batsmen for home and away tours. Bowlers are changed more frequently, e.g., Ashwin in England, vs at home. But, batters are also bipolar in many cases and we should have a home batting team and an away batting team.

[prasen9]

Cricket teams are not very rational especially in this era of points for test championships. The Aussies were so afraid of avoiding a loss that they left a big chance of half-a-loss (draw, pointwise is half of a loss). They gave 102 overs to themselves and 388 runs. This is perhaps the trauma of Brisbane. But, in doing so, they gave themselves 108 runs more to get a wicket. That is maybe 50 runs more and several overs were lost to get those runs. Bad strategy. If we really want to maximize points, we need to take more risks and make more accurate and not very defensive declarations. In that sense, I was very happy that India got all out in Test 1 cheaply (although that highlights a different set of problems) so that if there was rain in T1, we would not really be grabbing half-a-loss as we did in Kanpur against New Zealand. Two draws = 1 loss. Opportunity lost to win twice.

[Omkara]

Kohli resigns as test captain. Should have done it the day he was removed as one day captain.

[Rajiv]

Meanwhile Gavaskar, has made an important observation on this saga.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cricket/ ... 3-amp.html

[Omkara]

Gavaskar has been a** while dealing with Kohli ever since he passed a comment relating to Anushka. This statement here is utter rubbish. Kohli's test record is better than most Indian captains, and if Ganguly hates that, then so be it. I would have liked Kohli to resign after he was removed from one day captain. That would have been the right time. He could have said that the SA series would be his last, given a chance.

[prasen9]

I think Gavaskar is wrong. I give a lot of latitude to people to speak their mind. I would not call it utter rubbish. My take is that Kohli would not have been sacked right away but his power would have diminished because of the loss. He would most possibly argue to save his chums Pujara and Rahane and would be overruled. In his mind, he did not want to remain what he thought was a "weak" captain. Anything except absolute power is not okay for Kohli. Don't get me wrong. I am a big Kohli fan and I think he is arguably our best captain ever but this is what I think he feared. He was also clearly jaded by this bubble business. And, the stress was too much. I think we should have seven year term limits (give or take) for any administrative posts. Some churn allows for new ideas to come in.

Wrt sacking, my take is that maybe Kohli had burned half his rope. If he had another "unexpected" series loss, he would have been sacked. He just quit because he did not want to take all the politicking that would inevitably rise when there was a weak leader.

BTW, should we have a separate Indian Cricket thread? If any of the mods agrees and wants to do the work, maybe move these to an Indian cricket thread?

[Kumar]

Interesting take from Greg on coaching.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/greg ... ad-1298724

I see that lot with US soccer, where they kill the joy with their structure program(basically starting at age 4/5). Americans are so good at basketball for a simple reason, they play on the streets so much.

[Kumar]

Happenings in Indian cricket team over the past years from Ratnakar memoirs

https://indianexpress.com/article/sport ... y-7757611/

Apparently, Virat was not happy with Anil ‘for not standing up for the players and creating a tense atmosphere in the dressing room’, among other things

A day before the selectors met, I received a call from Rahul. He told me that he had spoken to Sachin and Sourav, his predecessors, and both had concurred with his view that Twenty20 was a ‘young man’s game’. He accordingly requested me to inform the selectors that the three of them would not be available for the ICC World T20 (2007). Dilip and his colleagues proceeded to pick 30 probables, sans the trio. Later, the chairman told me that he had received a call from Sourav, who said that he was in fact available for selection and the information conveyed to him was incorrect.

.

[Kumar]

Should cricket continue to follow bio bubble? I know cricket is a different sport compared to US sports leagues where it is easy to make up games.

What are your thoughts?

[PKBasu]

Shocking news that Shane Warne is dead at just 52 -- quite a bit younger than me

He lived on the edge, but nonetheless was too young to die. Sad day for world cricket with both Rod Marsh and Shane Warne gone in the past 24 hours.

[suresh]

Sad news.