India in Australia 2024-25

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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by prasen9 »

I am hoping Easwaran will be given a test and not KL Rahul or Gill being asked to open to make space for them. Perth will be pacy. So, my team?

Easwaran, Yashasvi, Gill, Kohli, Sarfaraz

Pant

Jadeja

Bumrah, Siraj, Akash Deep

So, the only question mark is whether we play Ashwin or Washy or PK? Or, Nitish Reddy? The above three pace bowlers make a long tail. So, we almost have to choose the best batter among the others.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Rajkumar Sharma »

Dropp in Pitch in Perth for the first test in BGT
https://youtu.be/tK2FSQwNqRg?si=AFm8FxpxyTl1kh3b
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Rajkumar Sharma »

Australia tour is ahead and none of our 150+ are in picture :D
Kuldeep Sen, Umran, Mohsin, Kartik Tyagi and now Mayank Yadav, all are injured and will be again in headline once IPL begins, and it also shows how worstly these talents are handled in India, five of them got injured when they were required.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Atithee »

Easwaran and Gaikwad out cheaply to a no namer. How do you pick Easwaran as the opener when he squanders most opportunities to make his case?
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Rajkumar Sharma »

Doesnt find any name close to his domestic performance each season. BTW he scored runs in last South Africa A tour but did'nt get debut for India . Jaiswal made the cut with all his runs in indian conditions, not even playing any A series in SENA.Yes, Gaikward hasn't score runs in SENA in any of India A series. He should change his batting position to n.o 3 and perform to make any impact in selection. One of Indrajith & Aparajith duo can be seen in every India A tours, playing the game for more then 12 years, has failed to perform, whereas performers like Bawne, Nair, Patidar has been thrown out.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by prasen9 »

Gaekwad is crap as a opener and does poorly in comparison to others in FC cricket in India too. Beats up on the bad teams and does not do much in trying conditions.

Easwaran has succeeded in some cases but also fails. But, Rahul has failed over 50 tests and Gill over 20-25? The point is that we need to give some other people a chance. Nobody is ready and we don't have a Kohli waiting in the wings and Kohli too failed in several series - I think two and was about to be chucked out if he failed another series when he started scoring abroad. In this inning, every Indian bat failed. Padikkal batted a bit okay. We need to give Easwaran a run simply because he has been the best among the next-in-line and we need to find a replacement for Rohit. Rohit has been giving us 25-30 runs an inning the last year. I think Easwaran or someone else can cobble up something close to that. But, the bigger gain maybe if they give us more, then we have found someone for the longer run, which we must do right away.

Bawne should be given chances. Nair was a sad case of nepotism and deserved more chances. Patidar got chances but performed very poorly in tests. He should have been retained as next in line but Padikkal scored and thus perhaps is next in line for a MO slot.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Rajkumar Sharma »

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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by prasen9 »

If you look at the first few wickets, proper batters, they think they are playing in India. Almost all of them were done by the bounce and trying to drive and the ball bouncing a bit more. These people are brain-dead. You are playing in Australia. You should expect this and think about adapting their game. But, maybe a bunch of balls did not have the extra bounce and they thought that this would not happen.

The point is that this type of things happens too often. Lack of planning. Or ability. Now, only Shreyas Iyer would be tagged that he cannot play bounce and kicked out despite performing better than Gill or Rahul, who for whatever reason get permanent places in the team. All of these guys could not play bounce and that should be noted. Why is it better to play outside the off and get out versus ducking at a bouncer or pulling a ball badly and getting out? This is my problem with the Gill vs Iyer comp. Gill has awful technical issues with the swinging ball (or actually on rank spinning wickets too when the ball deviates sidewise). But, that is okay to be out like that lbw or bold or caught or whatever. But, when Iyer has problems against bouncers that is really bad. I would rather someone who cannot play the bouncer but has a better technique (not saying Shreyas has) than someone who is terrible outside the offstump or even worse on balls pitched on stump. That is because you can teach a Shreyas to just not play the bouncer and take everything on your body or sway out. As opposed to someone getting out to balls pitched on the stump. You have no choice but to play them. That is why the cannot handle chin music is overrated. Our players cannot handle outside offstump music becuase they grew up in flat wickets where you plonk the foot forward and drive. Does not work in Australia. At least, does not work without serious thinking and adjustments. Let us see how they do in I2 and the other tests going forward.

Good that PK at least got some wickets. Saini is being hit. :-(
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by SaniaFan »

I think right now it is very difficult to make a case against Gill. With average of 47 in last 9 tests he is second best behind Jaiswal.

But still I think it would have made sense to play Shreyas as home as he is generally amongst the better player of spin in India. I think India won against Bangladesh in Bangladesh last time due to his and Kuldeep's effort and both are the first ones to be dropped.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by prasen9 »

I am not asking Gill to be dropped now. Generally, I do not like picking up the recent success and saying hey look. But, Gill has been carried for a long, long time despite a record. His runs in these 9 tests are scored against sub-standard bowling in India. Against England, he was also very shaky and got umpteen number of lives or escaped close lbw calls etc. The other 100 was against Bangladesh?

My point is not that Shreyas is better than Gill. Maybe Gill is better than Shreyas. My point is against systems that ignore failures and reward favorites. Most often they do not work out. See Rahul, Gill, etc. Maybe Gill will turn it around. He was dropped for some games I think and he did have some time in the domestics.

My point is that people use Shreyas' not being able to play the bouncer well as the reason why he is not given chances in SENA. Playing the bouncer well is the least of concerns. Tons of people don't play the 4th stump ball well and those are the real ones we need to get out.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Rajkumar Sharma »

Shreyas Iyer has issues with short ball but in SENA he hardly got out with short ball, all his outs were edging the ball. He got chance to bat in 6 innings but has'nt shown any improvement. If i am not wrong, Gill has that one and only, old innings of 91, by which he can't be dropped and KL that famous ton on debut in Australia. Though KL has better record in SENA among three.
https://cricmetric.com/sage/?q=Shreyas% ... 0countries
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by prasen9 »

If Shreyas has not shown any improvement, let us use the same yardstick on Gill. Gill showed marked deteroriation let alone improvement except the last year and against Bangladesh. Six innings is not enough. We need to identify the top performers in domestics, have them play in the A-team - not the tamasha we see where we are rotating the players in the A-team because the selectors are lazy and do not want to pick who they think need to be groomed, and then give them a decent run in test cricket.

I don't care about Shreyas personally. My point is that we do not use the same yardstick for everyone. There is rampant nepotism where the selectors select their favorite chums despite worse performance.

Shreyas performed better than Gill in his career. But, Shreyas was kicked out and Gill was not. That is the travesty. Even bigger travesty is that Rahul gets all these freebies. Given this much investment, I hope Gill works out in Australia but if I were to bet, I am not that hopeful.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by Atithee »

Nepotism is the act of granting an advantage, privilege, or position to relatives or friends in an occupation or field. Gill is whose relative or friend that others are not? Furthermore, where in the world is there no nepotism? The relativity may differ but to label every decision as nepotism and expect an ideal state isn’t going to happen. Why have selectors then? Similar to job interviews. Just assign a numeric criteria and let the AI do its job in both cases. Idealism is ideal but not reality.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by prasen9 »

Gill is chum with Dravid and the selectors. For whatever reason, the others are not. This is what I think. If I were writing a scientific paper, I would not write this because I do not know that as a fact and don't want to spread my conjectures/conspiracy theories. But, this is a forum. If I had to word carefully, I would say Gill and Rahul are undeserving players who have been given more chances than they deserve. Maybe "partiality" is a better word? So, I concede the point that maybe without proof "nepotism" is not validated.

Wrt the ideal state, I know very well we will never get impartial selections based on merit. Not in cricket, not in this world. That does not mean that we should keep quiet when thoroughly undeserving failures get chance after chance and people with a better body of work are chucked out.

If this is the quality of selectors we have, I would be glad to do away with them and create an impartial AI that will select. I am pretty sure that the AI will do better than this bunch of jokers or the original bunch of jokers (as the immortal Jimmy Amarnath phrased them). That is what MoneyBall showed when the A's with little money could utilize the market slack to get a lot out of a bunch of people even without having money to pay them properly.

Having said that, if we use AI to do a first cut and where we do not have the evidence, use human intuition, we can get the best system. Not when the selectors reward failures. I am not asking for an AI to do the job. I am asking for humans to have basic humility to not ignore data that is staring at them. Do not reward failures. Use your intuition to identify a core group of talented ones on whom we do not have the data and blood them. Saying I know better than nature/reality and ignoring rank bad failure after failure is just wishful thinking at best and total stupidity at worst. Maybe I should call it Partiality/Nepotism/Stupidity - one of the three and not just nepotism. Maybe SNP for short. :-)

Idealism is ideal but not reality. Reality is there. There is nothing much to say. The useless Rahul and the oft-failed but recently successful Gill is there. Now, for the sake of India, I hope they finally pay us back a little bit and score some runs so that we can win a series.

The problem is that if you say reality is reality and shut up, things will not change. We need to speak from what we believe is correct, is right, is ideal. We should not accept SNP. If so, then might as well ban any subjective talk on this board. We are all trying to say what we believe is correct although I think all of us are grown up enough to know that in our lifetime the world will not be a fair place. Should we just do away with all journalism becasue there will always be corruption? What next do away with courts? Etc. No, we will not do that. We will always try to get to the ideal selection and each one of us will have different opinions on ideal selections as we should. Only through vigorous debate do we come to something reasonably rational - the noise introduced by our biases and SNPs cancel out perhaps ... the wisdom of the crowd is actually quite a reasonable decision making way. In that sense, I am stating my viewpoint as one of the crowd.

So, okay I will use SNP from now on instead of using nepotism (which strictly speaking is unfounded or wrong) and people who don't read long rants will wonder what the heck is it.
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Re: India in Australia 2024-25

Post by PKBasu »

India A are now well-positioned at 208/2 in the second innings, after conceding a big first innings lead of 88 runs. Sai Sudarshan (21 and 96*) and Devdutt Padikkal (37 and 80*) have enhanced their reputations. Ruturaj Gaikwad (0 and 5) has not, and neither has Abhimanyu Easwaran (7 and 12-run out; perhaps unlucky in the second innings). Mukesh Kumar (6/46) was easily the best Indian bowler. Prasidh Krishna (3/59) was next best, but Navdeep Saini (0/52) got hammered, and Nitish Reddy got the other wicket (1/14 in 7 overs).
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