India's Dream Cricket Test Team

[prasen9]

I suppose I was spoilt by the Tendulkar, Dravid, Sehwag, and more dream batting lineup we had. Unfortunately, the next gen has turned out to be a significant step below them. Leave aside three, we have not had a single batter with their calibre after them.

The best of the next gen was Kohli. We got Kohli, Rohit, Pujara.

I hope we, at least, get some players at their level in the next gen. Ideally, much better in the TDS level.

Dream Teams? [Not platooning for home and abroad]

1st: Gavaskar, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Kohli, Pant

2nd: Rohit, Sidhu, Laxman, Hazare, Azharuddin

3rd: Gambhir, Dhawan, Pujara, Mohinder, Umrigar

I guess if you are having a partnership with Pujara and Amarnath, we can all go to sleep for 2-3 days and come back and not lose much.

Of course, Rohit, Dhawan, and maybe even Sidhu are domestic dadas. So, at least these will need replacements when we go abroad.

[prasen9]

Among Indian batsmen, KL Rahul is the worst batsman who got 50 tests. A lot of wicket-keepers were worse than him. But, he has been the worst batter who got a long-term position in the Indian time ever. I think his excellent ODI record and pretty good T20I record got him a whole lot of tests extra as well as his latest keeping exploits.

If you lower it to 40 tests, you have only Pankaj Roy, Chetain Chauhan, Srikkanth, and Jaisima (39) below him. All openers as Rahul has been for most of his career.

[Kumar]

If u take into context that KL has played just 34% of his matches on home ground, does that change the equation? I don’t think any indian batsman has played such a low% of home series? In fact has played 42% of his matches in SENA greater than his home matches.

[prasen9]

KL Rahul averaged 41 in India and 31 abroad. If you take the macro average it comes to 36.6, still pretty bad.

If you lower things to 40 tests, you get the other great failure Yuvraj Singh. Nobody is there in the 50+ test category as bad as him.

The one just above him MLK Pataudi, who played 46 tests. At that time our team was not that good. He averaged 34 at home and 38 abroad. So, he goes to 35.6 macro. Rahul leapfrogs MLK barely.

A 50+ person was Chandu Borde. 43.3 at home, and 23.4 abroad. So, he goes to a macro of 33.35.

Above that come Shasrti and Jadeja. Not good comps because they are allrounders. Next is Dhoni. Same.

The one just above that is M Vijay. 47 at home and 31 abroad. Macro average: 38.5, ahead of Rahul.

So, if you adjust for home/away splits, he is only better than Chandu Borde.

We demanded better after Yuvraj got 40+ tests. We said enough is enough. With Rahul, we make excuse after excuse and keep him in the team pointing to one big score that he gets usually at the beginning of a series, but then ignore the whole string of failures.