Durban Test: Team can do better playing it on its merit

Not playing it as the second test in the series but a test that they are playing having done a lot of practice in these conditions would do our team a lot of good. Kumble is always lethal on last few days' pitch. Sreesanth should keep his cool. He bowled well but more than his bowling prowess, it was SA batters' uncalled for heroics that let their team down. If you see SA's second innings, they played better. Better than us. Zaheer enjoyed the feast but he still strays and sprays bolls on both sides of the wicket, when would he learn to be disciplined. I would like to see Munaf back in the squad but only if he is match fit. Our batters are all due for performances, I think passing the buck wont do anymore each of them have to contribute. They've had enough practice. Rahul should score and lead from the front which I think he WILL do. Catching/fielding was good in the last match, lets not loose that touch. Tendulkar should stop trying, he should now do it. More so to alleviate the pain from his fiasco last time he was here as a captain. Kallis, Pollock and SA as a whole has a very good record with 8 wins and just 2 defeats in last 16 matches that they have played here. India on the other hand has nothing in past to look at. But a lot has changed since, and the players are much more experienced than before. They actually have not much to learn from the last test either apart from grit and a few bowling performances. More than we won it, it was they who lost it. Last test cant tell us miraculously something we couldn't figure out in years of playing competitive test cricket. No doubt our team has a lot of potential, we should just put our potential and experience to good effect.
What do you say?

What does that tell us -- more on it latter...

BC Lara scored his 10,000 th ODI run recently. Looking at the other members of this elite club, you realize that Saurav Ganguly has been in there for years, not only that he completed his ten grand in least number of matches. What does that tell you about him.

Recent heroics of Sreesanth highlighted his short chat with Donald. What could he learn in those few minutes from Donald that he couldn't learn in those grueling training sessions under Chappell? Wait a minute Donald was a specialist bowler, Chappell wasn't. What does that tell us?

Tendulkar vs His Stats - What records wont show

You pile up as many records for or against, what it wont show is the dedication with which he runs every single even to this date. He raises his hand and gets counted whenever there is a situation that demands a quick witted out witting over to produce a quick wicket or two. He runs hard to save singles and throws with exuberance of a school kid on field. He is giant as compared to many of the players who are almost as old as his run in the Indian Cricket History, he can sit back and can still be sure of being selected but he makes the younger look not just older but Old.

Me voicing my opinion in a debate on Little Master

One Paced, Unfazed n Very Very Special - Laxman

He plays just one way. Ufazed by the situation, indifferent of the requirement.

When others are not performing he looks good, because whatever it is that is bothering others doesn’t affect him. He is VVS. He is a class act. But he is one dimensional. He can do only what he does, nothing else. Don’t ask him to play faster or slower. You can only ask him to play. That’s why when team is in good position, the conditions are right and player are all scoring quickly he looks like dragging his feet. Looks more so in ODIs. His inadequacy first became clearly evident in Sharjah during Coca-Cola Cup-1978. After Tendulkar got out having insured our entry in the finals, he came in and even though he was playing as specialist batsmen in team he just dragged and played for time. India lost that match. He didn’t do the needful. He just played. Many such incidents afterwards left him looking bad, more than anything else because everybody else was looking good. When situations demand him to change his game he calls it quit or falls trying to do so.

Having said that, with so much of stillness and cool in his game he has an amazing calming effect which can be felt especially when he enters an iffy situation. He is able to build useful partnerships with tale-enders for this reason. A class act he plays in any condition with utmost ease. Against fast bowlers you would often see him play without elbow pads. Very wristy like Azhar, he makes fast bowling look like kids play. Devine timing with which he scores those boundries can baffle any fast bowler and spinners- they dont bother him at all. Azhar, however, had other dimensions to his game too. May be he will develop those dimensions in his game himself once he is sure of his role in the team and the management has made its peace with facts like he is not an opener.

It aint that complex acutally

If there is anybody better, replace Tend, otherwise play him. He brings so much to the team. Hundred percent commitment, exuberance and tons of experience, he is not replaceable at the moment. Here we are debating on his genius, while all the world eleven teams cherish and value his presence like anything even to this date. We Indians really miss out on the respect factor. An occurrence of failure and he sees the crowd on his own home ground booing him. Well we always talk about whether he lives up to it, question once whether we live up to it.

World cup 2011 final in Mumbai.

With master plan chaos, Delhi looks like an earth quack site. Bustling localities turn into eerie deserts of silent buildings almost overnight. I hope its all for good as I want to retain my faith in the judiciary. If all goes well Common Wealth games would return what Delhi has lost in terms of revenues.
As far as hosting WC finals are concerned, I'm worried more about Common Wealth right now. If we are able to do that properly, WC final an year later wont be as tough a job for us.

So a bowling coach bill in the offing?

Pathan's move once again made me look for answers to the same old query, as to why don’t we hire a bowling coach. The plight of the situation can be felt by this lament

"The current management seems quite allergic to the concept of having a bowling coach and it's now too late to have one...nothing reflects this more than the fact that over 10 fast bowlers have been experimented with in the last year. And still the team is not in a position to name three bowlers," wrote Srinath in a national daily.
[ source : Indiatimes ]

If there really is a taboo regarding this issue, which people in charge are not willing to go over, can’t they find a mid way. Something like a forum where the needy and the expert could share thoughts. Impaneled renowned veteran bowlers answering queries and may be scheduling sessions with our bowlers, if needed, should go some way in resolving the issue. Our bowlers can really use some help.

We appreciate Pathan, but do they?

I appreciate Pathan’s move of turning to Akram for help. I’m quite relived to hear that. Akram has mentioned in past, as we all know, that he has never had problems with that. He actually found young players not asking for advice a grim state of affairs.

But I also wonder what took Pathan so long to figure this out that he should seek help from the bowling legend, given that he has mentored him before. For us this seemed like an obvious thing to do. But he kept waiting for some reason. That makes me think how much encouragement there in the current set up for a player to take such a step. It can be hard for a heavily paid coach and a battalion of personnel looking after the team, to genuinely appreciate it.

Richest Board in World

What boys are doing right now, they have a coach who trains them for that and they all get heavily paid for it. These are smart, rich and classy people we are talking about. Its your problem if you cant figure it out and nobody cares.

Captains making the bowling look even worse?

I made -what I would call- an noteworthy observation while hearing members of our world cup winner team doing commentary during a tight match. I specifically noticed their approach towards the game and couldn't help comparing them with current cricketers. While they were assessing a bowling change in the match saying the bowler is useful in given situation as he is slow and mostly accurate, if you make an offside cordon and bowl consistently offside … and stuff like that, a recently retired cricketer described the same situation as the bowler being ‘trusted’ by the captain to handle the situation, and bail his team out. Then he laid on the rhetoric of the bowler having a knack for taking wickets in tight situations, having a golder arm and stuff like that. He probably finds a bowler talking wickets in tight situation- a surprise.

This gives you an insight of how bowling change is being regarded in modern Indian cricket and how it is different from yesteryear’s cricketer’s approach.

Dravid, for example, makes bowling changes as and when needed but also at times seemingly just to carry out proper bowling-over distribution among all his bowlers. We have seen, especially in many tight matches, that he often misses out on various potential bawling options. We have seen him, at least once forgetting what bowling options he has at all, haven’t we?

This lack of planning, when a bowler is asked to bawl, this ad-hawk-ism about bawling changes pressurizes the bowler to do a lot more thinking then he should require to. Look at an Australian or a Kiwi match, the captain looks like in control all the time. You hardly feel that a certain bowler is being ‘trusted’. The captain looks like having a plan. Because he has a plan you would also see him admonishing a bawler when he thinks the later is not bowling to the plan.

You would hardly see Dravid giving indications of being in control, a bowler looks like being on his own most of the time.

Is bowling training up to snuff

What turns an ordinary talent into batsmen’s nemesis. I say the training that he gets to bowl the ‘other’ 4 or 5 deliveries. Every bowler who is playing international cricket is expected to have enough talent to bowl at least 1 potential wicket taking delivery every other over. With that, maintaining the right line and length during the other 4 - 5 deliveries not only gives him control as he is not giving away runs but also lets him use his talent of swing or seem movement etc to its full lethal potential as he’s already practiced enough to bowl in the corridor of uncertainty. A good experiment fetches you maximum dividends in the corridor of uncertainty.

During last few years of Shrinath’s career, he was bowling consistently in the corridor of uncertainty; he was most dangerous then thus. He, however, learned it himself and it took him all his experience to do that. You look at any new bowler in Australia, you will find him doing the same but not at the end of his carrier- Nathan Bracken, for an instance is not hugely talented or experienced but is a force to reckon with within a few years of his playing international cricket. He may not have potential to take a wicket on every delivery but he sure wont give you easy runs.

We are not short of talent. We are lucky to have Irfan Pathan, who is able to swing the cricket ball dangerously, we have bowlers like Ajit Agarkar, who with an amazing wrist action can generate serious pace, swing the ball and bowl whistling Yorkers at death. What these two have, they thwart in the ‘other’ (in their case) 3-4 bawls that they bawl.

Shrinath, just before retirement, was acting as the spear head of our pace attack, we could see his consistency visibly getting brushed on to the other two bowlers- Zaheer an Ashish, and the trio formed an attack which was a pleasure to watch. He was probably acting as the bowling coach of the team unknowingly at that time. We all saw, how Waseem Akram's guidance had turned Irfaan from a raw talent into a finished product. Our bowlers are direction less right now. They need guidance, thats it.

Importance of keeping Tendulkar in team.

He is too precious a player to be kept out of any team.

Even if he is going thru a rough patch it makes sense to keep him in team. Why? Well like I said he is too gifted a player. What do I mean by that? Well, do you remember, during a long partnership between Tendulkar and Dravid, in which Tendulkar was showing the world how easy it was to play the most formidable spinner in the world. Following his foot steps Dravid tried playing paddle sweep, and after a few tips from his senior partner, he was not just managing it but enjoying playing the shot.

Tendulkar is richest as a batsmen in terms of shots that he has. You look at Sehwag, we still often talk about him in terms of how many of ‘those all shots’ he has been able to imitate. He flashed and now it seems he is charging his batteries, and while he is doing that, you often hear him telling newsmen how he hasn’t been able to decipher where Tendulkar, gets all his energy from.

While entire team has his shoulders down, is taking a break away from performing, this veteran is looking as fresh and young as ever. Its actually only by looking at Tendulkar that you feel like thinking about the problem that the (rest of the team) team might be facing or otherwise we would all have given it to the conditions in south Africa by now.

I would like to add, like Srinath's presence helped our younger bowlers; Ganguli's presence allowed many Indian batsmen improve upon their timing and rediscover the art of hitting 'safe sixes', Tendulkar's presence plays a huge role and is a critical factor to the teams growth process.