I cannot believe that I am letting it affect me so much. I had decided that I will not even check the proceedings after what happened yesterday but it was impossible. I can feel a strange heaviness on my chest. I am feeling depressed, disgusted and humiliated.
India is on the verge of another defeat in Tests away from home. I am not a man of numbers but I think it is seven in a row in as many test matches away from home. That is pathetic since in tests 'winning and losing is not everything'. You can draw a test match as well.
For winning or drawing a test match, a team needs bowlers who can take 20 wickets and batsmen who can put decent runs on the board or give enough resistance to the opposition to bat out the sessions. India has neither the batsmen nor the bowlers.
'India does not have the bowlers' should not come as a surprise as that has been a historic problem. Seldom has India boasted a bowling line-up that could consistently take 20 wickets in Test matches away from home. In India, these bowlers are 'kings'. You make a track that has uneven bounce, which starts to turn from the first session on Day 1 and then every bowler starts looking the best bowler in the world. Put these bowlers away from their 'comfort zone' and then you realize that they look as average as they truly are.
Moreover, we pick bowlers based on their past performances. Not on the basis of what a bowler has been doing but what he did a zillion years ago. Before this test series, I was surprised that everyone was excited about what Ishant Sharma would do on Australian track. The reason for that excitement was his performance on the last tour to Australia. Come on people, wake up. Ishant Sharma has been a mediocre bowler ever since. The team management, for some reason, always defend him by making statements like 'Ishant bowled his heart out but was unlucky not to get a wicket'. If that is true then we need a luckier bowler. A good bowler would be 'unlucky' in 1-2 or 5 matches. If he is always unlucky then he should be unlucky in a domestic tournament. If you have to pick and send bowlers only on the basis of past performances then why not send Kapil Dev or Agarkar to Australia. They have bowled well in Australia in the past!!!
This bowling attack lacks variety to dazzle an opponent like Australia. Zaheer is good and is clearly the spearhead. No issues with him. Umesh Yadav has managed to surprise everyone (at least me). He has shown that he does not only have the pace but also has decent variation. In spite of his inexperience, he adds a lot of value to the bowling attack. We lack a third quality seamer. Injury to Praveen Kumar did not help but injuries are common and we cannot blame them. Sreesanth is injured and moreover, he is one inconsistent performer. Aaron, thankfully injured himself or this tour would have been a bigger disaster (if there is any room left). We need experience and variation. Sadly, we do not have enough choices. We keep hearing names like Dhawal Kulkarni, Deepak Chahar, Sudeep Tyagi, Arvind etc but none of them have got enough exposure to be suddenly put to fight the tiger. Moreover, these bowlers have also been pretty inconsistent. I firmly believe that an Irrfan Pathan would have added a lot of value to our bowling attack in Australia. He has been bowling well and seems to have rediscovered his inswingers. He has the experience and he can also bat. Still, the selectors chose to overlook him. I guess the selector of the west zone ran out of his quota after getting Sachin, Zaheer, Rahane, Rohit Sharma selected in the squad. He clearly does not have as big a quota as the chairman of the selection committee.....Dravid, Laxman, Ashwin, Mithun, Vinay Kumar and Ojha....impressive!!! If Sachin, Dravid and Laxman retire now, my money is on Murali Vijay, Badrinath and Abhinav Mukund to come as replacements....unless the chief selector is replaced!!!
Coming to the batters, it has clearly been a disappointing performance. And it is not a single performance that I am talking about here. They have failed to cross 300 runs in an innings mark in many innings across last several test matches. So much for the so-called best batting line-up in the world. It is the batting performance that truly surprises me. It is not that these batsman lack technique, experience or class. Sachin, Dravid, Laxman, Sehwag are truly world class batsmen. Though I am not a big fan of Gambhir, he has a good record in test matches. Kohli has not been performing well in Test matches away from India but he is a good talent. He is a straight bat and certainly has a long future in Indian cricket. All of them have scored runs but collectively they have failed as a batting unit. That surprises me. What is so wrong?
What I want is that Sachin should score his 100th hundred in this series (and by that I mean the last test match) and retire. There are already calls for dropping Laxman. Sachin and Dravid have played particularly well in the last few seasons but they should not wait too long. They should leave as Gavaskar did. People were surprised and questioned why did he retire? Players should not wait for so long that people start questioning why dont they retire.
In my opinion, the biggest issue with India's performance in Test matches is our captain. I do not think he is fit to be a test player. It goes without saying that Dhoni is an asset in ODIs and T20s but he clearly is not a test batsman. He does not have the temperament. He bats lower in the order but has hardly batted successfully with the tail. That is a trait that one should learn from Laxman, who has done that successfully many a times. He tries to bulldoze his way out of pressure situations. As a captain, he has been equally mediocre. He tries to restrict batsmen in Test cricket!!! That is when there is hardly any shortage of overs available to a batsman and especially when he simply does not have the bowlers to maintain pressure. You do not give any runs for 5 balls and then bowl a boundary ball.....mission failed!!!
Some heads should definitely fall. This performance and India's past few performances abroad have been shameful. It calls for some major changes in the team. Issue is...what changes. If one wants to change the Captain, the other logical choice is Sehwag but he has been surprisingly inconsistent. However, I guess that is a change which is definitely required. However, I doubt that change will happen soon. Dhoni plays for Chennai Super Kings, which is owned by N. Srinivasan., who is a biggie in BCCI. Krishnamachari Srikanth, our chief selector is the ambassador (!!!) of Chennai Super Kings and his son plays for the side. It is a family drama out there. This association makes Srikanth one of the biggest fans of Dhoni and I doubt if he would go against the boss of his son. Conspiracy Theory? Probably.
The other changes that needs to be made are infusion of fresh talent and finding a good wicket-keeper batsman. We should give more opportunities to the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Cheteshwara Pujara (I think he is pretty much in the scheme of things but is out due to injury), Manish Pandey, AT Rayudu while persisting with Kohli and Rohit Sharma. When the Big 3 retires, Yuvraj Singh should be included to provide stability to the middle order.
Finding a wicket keeper batsman is going to be tough. Right now, the choices do not go beyond Parthiv Patel, Dinesh Karthik and Wriddhiman Saha. Among these, Parthiv should be given the chances. Though, he is a mixed bag. He is neither a great wicket keeper nor a great batsman but he is decent at both. Karthik is a good wicket keeper but he is a unreliable batsman for the Tests format. Haven't seen much of Saha except IPL but have followed some of his scores in domestic cricket and there is nothing extraordinary about him. Or we can try a new guy. No, I am not suggesting that we should make part time keepers like Rayudu or Utthapa to take up the gloves. It could be a fresh talent. I do not know how is Sreevats Goswami doing? All I am suggesting is we should make a change but keeping in mind the future.
As far as bowlers are concerned, the biggest issue is the lack of a quality spinner. What will make a big difference is the presence of a good leggie or a left arm spinner. Ojha is decent but inexperienced. Leggies like Mishra and Chawla have been disappointing. I like Rahul Sharma and I think if we persist with him, he could be a winner. We definitely need to find a good spinner and quickly.
And we need to find a replacement of Zaheer pretty quickly as none of the others look good enough to fill those shoes. After Zaheer, PK is likely to spearhead the attack but he needs to avoid injuries. Early days but Umesh Yadav could be a choice. We need to find 1-2 good seamers.
So, there is a need for improvement and change in all the departments. No wonder we are performing so badly!!!
(Photograph Courtesy: FirstPost)
No comments:
Post a Comment