India in South Africa, December 2023

[Rajkumar Sharma]

[prasen9]

If we want to win this test series, or perhaps the next one, we need to not send Pujara, Kohli, and Rahane. Not one of them. We need to try out our batsmen in Yashasvi, Gill, Rinku, Sarfaraz, Iyer. The bowlers, we can use the old ones or new or a mix of the two. That is because batsmen take a few trips to learn to bat. For fast bowlers the conditions are easier. They have to just learn to control their enthusiasm and discipline, which is easier to do and faster. Anyway, Bumrah, Shami, Siraj are not that old. Maybe back them up with Unadkat and Avesh.

The key to a win though is whether Pant is available. Most possibly not. Ishan Kishan is a very poor man's Pant.

[Kumar]

Curious why are we playing NZ at home? Did we not just play them in india last time around as well? In same way, we just played in SA, so the SA series should have been a home series. Not sure why it got flipped. Ideally if India had played AustrAlia and NZ back to back away, we may have done better in NZ

[Rajkumar Sharma]

We need to have few A games before this series. Injury & Kohli BCCI controversy ended the last tour, when India surprised SA by wining the first test. Saini & Mukesh should feature in few test matches before this series.

[prasen9]

There is only one test match and they are not going to play unfortunately. I hope they have lots of A-team tours. But, the BCCI just wants to make money.

[Atithee]

[PKBasu]

So Pujara and Rahane are dropped from the test side. Perhaps apt, given they failed in the West Indies, although Rahane did well in the WTC final. I'm disappointed to see that Karun Nair (who showed excellent form in English county cricket) is still not being considered for an overseas test series (particularly for the India A squad). It is a good idea to send the A team to South Africa, but I would like to see test specialists like Kohli and Rohit join the A team for those matches (since they are now test specialists, at least for the South Africa tour).

[prasen9]

Test Cricket: Gill has gotten 30 dismissals in the last 3 years in tests and averages 32. Rahul 21 dismissals averaging 30. They have failed conclusively with the bat. Wrt Rahul, he should only play if he is the wicket-keeper. It is great that Pujara and Rahane are out. I hope we don't go back to Gill. I'd rather try Ruturaj in tests.

After a long time when we did not have terrible nepotism, slight adjustments and favorite picks will remain in every selection, it seems that blatant favoritism while ignoring performance has come in again.

Ishan is best in ODIs. He is being played in tests and T20Is. Go figure. People are making random decisions based on some weird preconceptions. This is not the way to build a championship team. When the margins are large, say against a Sri Lanka, it does not matter. But, when we are playing against the best in the world, e.g., Australia, etc. then these margins matter.

[sameerph]

Test Cricket: Gill has gotten 30 dismissals in the last 3 years in tests and averages 32. Rahul 21 dismissals averaging 30. They have failed conclusively with the bat. Wrt Rahul, he should only play if he is the wicket-keeper.

Is Rahul good enough as a keeper when one has to keep for 100-125 overs ? I don't know if her was a regular keeper in the domestics in the longer format.

What about Ishan Kishan ?

I think for tests we need keeper to be good as a keeper first and than batsman. If these 2 are picked only because they are good batsman than it can cost us. A dropped catch in a test match can make a difference of 100 runs or more which cannot be made up while batting. In the shorter versions, the difference narrows down, so it is ok with somewhat of a lesser keeper.

[prasen9]

Agree fully. But, Dravid, our useless coach, decided to force retire Saha. Then they chose Bharat and decided to drop him. Now they are choosing Ishan and Rahul. All of these are selections based on a hope and a prayer. They are totally ignoring "reality" - all these players have a long body of work. Ishan is just a marginally better keeper than Rahul. Ishan is also marginally a better batter than Bharat. He gives us 3-4 runs more with his bat. That is a bye's worth per inning. Why was Bharat dropped? The hope is that Ishan will give us much more with the bat. This will not happen. He is no Pant. There is no clarity of thinking in this team management. So, the team is a mess.

KL Rahul averages about 44 in domestics, Ishan about 38-39 and Bharat 36. But, Rahul's keeping is the worst. The best would have been to keep Saha for a year or two for backup purposes in case Pant was hurt. And, then groom our next best young keeper who can bat. Not bring in someone, drop them after five tests, then hope and pray and put someone else in who does clearly not have the keeping and perhaps even the batting (although the batting may be fine).

All these random selections will matter if it is a tight series. And, we will lose out again.

Who is our best keeper under 25? Can he bat?

Imho, I would go with Rahul. He seems to be fine as a keeper when keeping to pace and he has time to collect the ball. RSA is not going to give us spinning wickets. And, Ishan is a mess behind the stump with the spinners and looks clueless. Rahul is also a very cool-head wrt DRS calls and gets it right most of the time when he is keeping.

My team: Yashasvi, Rohit, Ruturaj, Kohli, Iyer, Jadeja, Rahul, Thakur, Shami, Bumrah, Siraj.

If we want to strengthen the tail, then drop Thakur and bring in Ashwin.

On really bowling pitches, we should bring in Gill and drop Thakur. Go with four bowlers if it looks like the match will not last beyond 3-4 days.

[Kumar]

Again agreeing with Prasen .. KL can easily keep in RSA if it will not be a spinning track. I guess test batting line up of Rohit, Jaiswal, Gill, Kohli, Shreyas and KL make sense.

If Gill does not make adjustments and fails in this series, who is our next batsman that is ready to take over that no. 3 slot?

[prasen9]

I say just play Gaikwad. We have seen enough of Gill failures. Of course, your question is a valid question. I don't follow much of domestic cricket to be able to answer. Maybe RajK or someone else who follows domestics more carefully can opine. I would like to see Rinku in the test team. Move someone like maybe Iyer at #3 and Rinku at #5. Or Rinku. Or throw in Sarfraz and see if he can do it. Whoever. We have had enough of Gill. This series. Or he should be out. Here too I would like to see Gaikwad.

[Kumar]

Long term, I think Pradosh Ranjan paul may be a promising candidate. He has a small sample size though.

One wild card option may be Patidar. He had great series with A tour and outperformed everyone in middle order.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Two bad quality in DLC, injury proned and one of the worst towards end overs, but he has certainly got more instinct then Thakur.

[prasen9]

This T20I team has the following:

Old: Jadeja (34), SkAY(33), DLC (31), Mukesh, Jitesh (30)
Young: NTTV, Yashasvi (21), Bishnoi (23), Sundar, Gill (24)

The rest middle aged: Arshdeep, Gaikwad, Rinku, Iyer, Ishan, Kuldeep, Siraj, etc.

I have no idea what we want to gain by playing Jadeja and SkAY. Two slots used up that could have been used to find out what the youngsters could do.