ACC Asia Cup

[prasen9]

Kishan can play spin. But, I think Iyer and Rahul are better players of spin. Ishan is a better keeper. Ishan is also the faster batter. Rahul is slow. Today, slow was fine. Kishan needs to work on getting singles off of spinners. Rahul was doing that very well. Anyway, the choice is not as clear.

I too think with three #11s, we cannot give up the bat of Jadeja or if we need three spinners the bat of Axar either. Generally, Jadeja would give more runs than Axar on a difficult wicket but I don't think more than Kishan. I'd also love to have better spinning allrounders, especially someone who is a leggie/wrist spinner and can bat.

We should have gotten Tilak Verma and platooned him with Hardik.

[SaniaFan]

On Indian pitches or turners, Iyer should always play if he is fit. He is best Indian batter against spin. I think Rahul should be the other one.

[Atithee]

We need to change our openers to Thakur and Hardik. It’ll solve a lot of our problems. They are wasted down the order, especially Thakur. I’d even ask Jadeja to open. He has the big shots. Let him go freely and hit the leather off the new ball. This is regardless of what Rohit and Gill can or cannot do as openers. We must get the value out of the people who can at least hold the bat properly.

[prasen9]

Wherever Jadeja plays, the team management should ask him to hit. His major problem is that he is thuk thuk master par none in this team. We know he can hit. This is what causes me to tear my hear out. Stupid strategy. Yes, send him to open. Maybe he will be a Sehwag types. The current ODI Jadeja as a batsman is a classic case in misusing our resources.

Essentially, Kohli, Jadeja, Hardik and Gill did us in. Gill should have been a bit more proactive with beating up the pacers like Rohit did. With so many failing, you cannot have a competitive total. Given the wicket, Rohit, Rahul, Kishan played well. Axar could have done more but for a #8 with three #11s after him, maybe fine too.

We also need to bowl as if we are playing a test match. No point having defensive fields, etc.

[Atithee]

You cannot blame Axar today. And, hats off to Siraj for understanding his role. The 25 odd runs at the end are HUGE on this pitch. These runs could also make a vita difference in NRR if it comes into play.

[prasen9]

Not blaming Axar today. But, I was saying that he could have scored a bit more. But, his bowling was a bit disappointing though. I don't know if he has totally focused on improving his batting and his bowling has gone downhill a bit.

This is why I was not blaming Ishan for his batting. It was actually a very good innings. The only problem was that he was hitting straight to the fielder while KL was finding the gaps. In some cases, it seemed Ishan was not actually even trying to place things or think of batting things more slowly so that there would be time for a single, etc. In context, this was at least worth a half century for both Rahul and Ishan. And, Rahul's innings was actually better than Rohit's.

Rahul was pretty bad behind the wicket. Ishan is not perfect himself technically, as needed to keep wickets in such pitches. But, the fact that Rahul is keeping means that he is firmly before Ishan as our first keeper in the team management's mind. This, imho, is short-sightedness and wrong selection.

Since we have qualified, the next match we should play:
Gill, Ishan, Iyer, SkAY, Rahul, NTTV, Hardik, Axar, Kuldeep, PK, Shami.

Someone needs to work on Axar's bowling. He seemed to be short of ideas except spear it in. At least adding speed variation and an armball should not be that difficult.

[Kumar]

What a performance from Wellalage. Why are Indian batsman just finding it difficult to play left arm spinner? Why do we not give opportunities to our youngsters.


We really need to force our star batsman to participate in domestic first class cricket. Otherwise our tactic of preparing rank turners will backfire.

I agree with the idea of Rahul keeping in this game. They need to know if he could keep in this tough wicket to spinners. Ishan is probably slightly better, but is it enough to make a difference? In the next game, I would probably rest Rahul(Iyer I’d fit), Kohli(Tilak Verma). Hardik (Thakur), Bumrah and Shami.they will probably play Sky (and not Tilak).

Play Jadeja at 2 drop right after kohli if Kohli is at the crease. Jadeja needs someone like kohli to run quickly between wickets.

India seriously need to consider including Tilak in the WC.

By the way Bumrah appeared to roll his ankle while bowling today. He did bowl many overs after that so he appears to be okay. Once again , really showing short sightedness of this team mgmt risking Bumrah.

[Atithee]

Virat Kohli has only averaged 13.44 against left-arm spinners since 2022.

https://x.com/Cricketracker/status/1701 ... 28290?s=20

[prasen9]

I would not read too much into 9 outs. Also, what is the source of this information? Many things are said on the internet. He seemed to have had some trouble with left-arm spinners in the last few years though.

[Atithee]

I would not read too much into 9 outs. Also, what is the source of this information? Many things are said on the internet. He seemed to have had some trouble with left-arm spinners in the last few years though.

No idea. Didn’t fact check it and maybe a distorted metric. I vaguely remember Sachin had similar troubles and it’s imprinted in my brain that he’d invariably get out to a debutant or the newbie in the opposition.

[prasen9]

It is also possible that he has a problem. I am not saying he has not either. There are enough things to worry about than this one. See the fearless innings Wellalage played. This is what Axar and Jadeja needed to do, not to speak of Hardik. Our players sometimes seem to care too much and that pressure makes them perform poorly or become ultra-cautious etc. Of course, the extra runs by Axar and Siraj helped us win (by creating the pressure) but Axar also got out in the last over while Wellalage did not. Again, it may be one day but I was hoping Axar would have helped us bat the full 50 overs. Anyway, the main problems were Kohli, Jadeja, Hardik and Gill with the bat.

Get the alternates all in against Bangladesh.

[Kumar]

Kohli has really struggled against left armspin since 2022. He has played 11 innings and has been dismissed 9 times. For an average of 13.44 and sr of 70.

Interestingly , if u go back to start of 2019, hisrecord changes to average of 31, and same 9 dismissals in 23 innings. So this has been a recent problem.

https://www.espncricinfo.com/ask/cricke ... nament=odi

I have no qualms against Axar batting.. he ensured that we used nearly all 50 overs. He played as well or even better than Ishan kishen. The problem is that his bowling seems to have lost all the bite. We need to start trying the next gen left arm spinners. Our best domestic left arm spinner is Saurabh kumar, who can bat a little but is probably not as good as Axar or jadeja. His domestic list a batting avg is 15, but he has faced only 300 odd deliveries. He did reasonably well in last vijay hazare and has two FC 100s and 11 50s to his name. If u want to go younger, there is Shams Mulani who is 26 and had an average of 50 in last vijay hazare rournqment , but bowling was just 41. I don’t think he is as good a bowler as Saurabh who is considered one of the best left arm spinner in country. We need to consider taking him and have him bowl in the nets.

Other choices are Nishant Sindhu. He has good stats, but don’t think he is a very good spin bowler. Probably the best batsman among the group.

[prasen9]

It is possibly a random event. Things like these happen in long innings. That said, we should see the next few matches and we will know if it is genuine or not since now people are talking about it. He is now conscious about it and he will be extra careful against left-hand spinners, think about how to counter them, etc. I think he will come out okay especially since most pitches will not have this much bite.

We don't really need a left-handed spinner in ODIs. I'd rather get a leggie who can bat.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

V Kohli against all type of bowlers
http://www.cricmetric.com/playerstats.p ... layer_type

[Kumar]

It is possibly a random event. Things like these happen in long innings. That said, we should see the next few matches and we will know if it is genuine or not since now people are talking about it. He is now conscious about it and he will be extra careful against left-hand spinners, think about how to counter them, etc. I think he will come out okay especially since most pitches will not have this much bite.

We don't really need a left-handed spinner in ODIs. I'd rather get a leggie who can bat.

Kohli got out to few mishits. Lot of his dismissals sound very similar. Got out to keshav Maharaj, Santner and Shakib twice. Seems like he is not reading the turn well.


There are no right arm wrist spinners in domestic who can bat well except for Tewetia. May be shreyas gopal.