India lost a winning battle……again. What I am tired of seeing is the lack of commitment from the Indian cricketers. All we had to do was bat out the entire day. By the standard set by Indian batsmen over last 5-6 years (individually), that should be a cup of tea. With fine examples set by captain himself (of not being in form for I don’t how many years) I don’t foresee any improvement in cricket.
Individual strength of each Bangladeshi cricketer could be say 10, but team strength comes out quite close to 110. With India, it’s a different story. Individual strength could be at average of 50, but team strength doesn’t cross 200. New Zealand may not have big stars, but their team strength matches to almost all teams (except Australia, who seem to have both individual strength and very very strong team strength). I am tired of comments from experts about India being too good on paper but mediocre as a team. Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar are easily one of the best batsmen in history of cricket; Anil Kumble is easily a legendary in bowling department. In onedayers, we had the most successful opening pair in form of Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar. The big question remains: how do we manage to lose despite having these players?
Bigger question asked every time: why should only Sachin or Kumble alone shoulder the batting and bowling responsibility?
I see a major flaw in selection system which allows any player with just one good innings to retain his place for next twenty tests. Even the best players in Australia are sacked if they do not perform. We saw captains resigning after both ’99 and ’03 world cups after their teams’ poor performance. Having not won a single multinational tournament after Nat-west, we still have the same team as we did three years ago.
We do not learn from out mistakes. Repeated urges to improve fielding quality of the team has fallen on deaf years. In fact only two of the current cricketers focus on fielding. We do not stick to a standard batting order. The way our captain gets out in predictable. Why can’t India set up fast tracks? We need to win test matches abroad too. Indians adopted kookaburra balls long after almost every other test playing country recognized it as a standard.
Our bench strength isn’t strong enough to fill the void created if any senior player gets injured. Why shouldn’t regional level cricketers be exposed to higher standards of training? Why should the initiative of calling the county teams to India or state level teams to rest of the world be a big decision to make? Why shouldn’t one dayers be played at regional level too? There are several ways of improving the quality, but none of them are implemented. All I can do is hope that India wins the forthcoming one day series. All the best for the team. May the better team win.
# posted by Shankar : 1:42 AM
