Archive for the ‘India Cricket’ Category

Indian Team For World Cup – Not The Best Available

Posted: January 18, 2011 by The CouchExpert in Cricket, India Cricket, World Cup 2011
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5

Prasad Moyarath

Bangalore

18 January 2011

“Horses for Courses” is an oft-repeated excuse offered by the Indian cricket selectors to pacify the soaring public demand for the non-inclusion of a particular player. By announcing a 15 member squad for the 2011 World Cup with no major surprises, the selectors have divided the public opinion there by alleviating the need for this excuse. But not all are convinced that this is the best possible squad to reclaim the World Cup. Though this squad looks perfect on paper, the ground reality is that the few debated positions can turn disastrous for the team.

In Sehwag, Gambhir, Tendulkar, Yuvraj, Kohli, Dhoni, Raina and Yusuf Pathan, the selectors have picked the best 8 one day batsmen available. Harbhajan, Zaheer and Praveen Kumar are automatic choices as the best 3 one day bowlers. Ifs and Buts come up for the next four places. The ICC World Cup rules, the playing venues and the match timings become vital for considering players to fill these slots.

Though the World Cup is going to be held in India, Bangladesh and Srilanka, the ICC rules don’t permit the participating nations to replace players without ICC’s permission. Also if a player is replaced, he will be out for the entire tournament. This makes it mandatory for each team to have a replacement player for each position to meet a crisis. This exposes a vital flaw in the Indian team selection. Though there are enough days between matches, if Dhoni is to get injured and doesn’t recover in time for the next match, the current Indian team doesn’t have a specialist reserve wicket-keeper. If Dhoni can recover from that injury in a few days’ time, asking ICC for his replacement then will make India lose Dhoni for the rest of the tournament. In form Parthiv Patel would not only serve as a reserve wicket-keeper to meet such contingency but also as a reserve batsman. Indian selection panel’s conclusion that a reserve wicket-keeper is not needed for a World Cup in India lacks vision.

All the Indian matches are Day/Nighters. This World Cup is being held in February and early March and in the Day/Night matches, dew is going to play a major role in the second innings. Spinners won’t be able to grip the ball properly in dew conditions and this makes the selection of more spinners useless. Sehwag, Tendulkar, Yuvraj, Raina and Pathan can bowl part time spin and India doesn’t need an additional off spinner. This questions the inclusion of R.Ashwin. Though Ojha is a good left arm spinner, the fact that India doesn’t have a wrist spinner compels the inclusion of Piyush Chawla. Also Chawla is a better batsman compared to Ojha.

Now we need to look at the selection of 2 pacers from Munaf, Sreesanth and Nehra. Munaf’s recent performance in South Africa and his ability to bowl tight overs in the middle makes him an automatic choice. Nehra has lost his pace and swing and is not the bowler he used to be ever since his comeback. Sreesanth is in outstanding form and his pace and swing will turn out to be an asset for the team under lights. By selecting the out of form Nehra ahead of the in form Sreesanth, the Indian selectors have committed another blunder.

No reserve wicket-keeper, an additional spinner who may never play and an out-of-form pacer who can turn out to be a burden for the team, the Indian cricket team for the 2011 World Cup is definitely not the best available as claimed by K.Srikkanth.

An Indian Fast Bowler – A Distant Dream

Posted: January 12, 2011 by The CouchExpert in Cricket, India Cricket
5

Prasad Moyarath

Bangalore

12 January 2011

The history of Indian cricket can be divided into two, Before 1983 World Cup and After 1983 World Cup. This article is on Indian fast bowling after 1983.

When India won the Prudential World Cup defeating West Indies in 1983, the whole nation rejoiced. The newspapers highlighted the all round performance of Mohinder Amarnath and the wonderful catch by Kapil Dev in the finals. But even the most fanatic Indian fan was unwilling to accept India as the World Champion in cricket. The fact that India didn’t have a fast bowler made every one doubt India’s credentials. Cricket was not the most popular sport in India then. This victory changed the face of cricket in India.

The West Indians toured India immediately after the 1983 World Cup and demolished the Indian side with ferocious fast bowling. Those Indians who never followed cricket till then got a real time demonstration of quality fast bowling from Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Winston Davis, Andy Roberts and Wayne Daniel on that tour.

India won the Benson & Hedges Trophy in Australia in 1985 and had many victories in Sharjah, but had to be contented with the medium pace of Kapil Dev, Chetan Sharma, Sanjeev Sharma etc. BCCI’s inability to find a quality fast-bowler hurt the country so much that a corporate giant came forward to help the country. MRF started the MRF Pace Foundation at Madras in 1987 with Dennis Lillee as the chief coach. Youngsters getting selected to this academy and then playing for their state teams in Ranji Trophy made news in sports pages of national dailies at that time.

India toured Pakistan in 1989 under K. Srikkanth which saw the birth of Sachin Tendulkar as a batsman in international cricket. India had two MRF Pace Foundation products in that team viz. Salil Ankola and Vivek Razdan. There were no speed guns to monitor the speed of the bowlers and the sight of these two youngsters bowling with a long run up excited many though they didn’t make any impact like Kapil Dev and Manoj Prabhakar. These two played some more matches and vanished from the scene with injuries.

1990s saw the rise of Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad. Though Srinath had raw pace, Prasad was a swing bowler. After 2000 speed guns became popular and people started rating pacers by the speed of the delivery. Zaheer Khan excited Indian fans with his 140+ kmph deliveries in the 2000 Chanmpions Trophy. Munaf Patel troubled Steve Waugh in the nets of MRF Pace Foundation with his pace and the news of Dennis Lillee declaring Munaf as the fastest bowler in India was read with great interest by Indian cricket lovers. Atul Wassan, Subrato Banerjee, Abey Kuruvilla, D. Ganesh, David Johnson, Paras Mhambrey, Avishkar Salvi, Ajit Agarkar, Tinu Yohannan and L. Balaji were some of the Indian pacers who appeared and disappeared from the scene in quick succession. Injury was a common problem for all these fast bowlers and all of them kept losing pace after each injury. Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel who used to bowl at 140+ kmph at the start of their careers are now bowling at 130+ kmph or even less. Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth are no different.

Many Test nations have come-up after 1983 like SriLanka, Bangladesh etc and they all have quality fast bowlers without any training facilities. Don’t forget that MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai is training fast bowlers from these countries too.

Lack of fast and bouncy pitches in India was always cited as the main reason that prevented the emergence of a quality fast bowler in India. But a comparison with sub continental teams like Pakistan and Sri Lanka will reveal that this is not the root cause. Fitness is a major concern for many. There is a popular belief that Indians cannot become tear away fast bowlers. If stamina was the major handicap, we would have seen many quick opening spells in our first class cricket. Even after getting selected to the national team, there is no improvement in the pace of fast bowlers even though we see a difference in their body weight. Every now and then our former cricketers express their opinion that speed is not the first priority for a fast bowler. I believe that these comments are having a negative impact on the mindset of young fast bowlers. The fast bowling coaches, the coaches of the State teams, our first-class cricket system and also our national bowling coach, all should be under scanner and as a responsible body for the development of cricket in India. The BCCI should appoint a committee to scientifically analyze this problem and find a right solution for it.

India might have won many matches with its swing bowling medium pacers, but going forward, the team needs to have a set of fast bowlers who can bowl consistently at 140 kmph and above. Line and length may be the key for getting wickets but pace adds extra venom to the attack.

An Indian fighter jet which was a dream in 1983, the same year in which India won the World Cup has been made a reality by DRDO and TEJAS has been inducted to IAF a few days back but an Indian fast bowler still remains a distant dream.

Youngsters For The Future

Posted: January 10, 2011 by The CouchExpert in Cricket, India Cricket, Opinion
13

Prasad Moyarath

Bangalore

10 January 2011
The recent popularity of Test matches has put the one-day and Twenty20 cricket enthusiasts who predicted the death of Test cricket after the advent of Twenty20 cricket in a conundrum. They are forced to agree to the mantra of Test cricket aficionados, “Test cricket is the actual cricket and it tests the technique and patience of a cricketer and separates the strong hearted from the rest”. Tendulkar’s batting against Pakistan in Chennai with acute back pain, Kumble’s spell in West Indies with a bandaged broken jaw, Graeme Smith going out to bat with a broken hand and the recent Kallis’s innings against India fighting acute pain due to side strain are some of the instances of bravery shown in a cricket field in Test matches.

The Australian strategy of fielding separate set of players for one-day and Test cricket was seen with suspicion by many, but the failure of some of the best one-day players like Michael Beaven, Shahid Afridi and Yuvaraj Singh in Test arena has forced them to accept that there is indeed some difference between Test cricketers and the rest.

Indian Test team had the best four batsmen – Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman – in the middle-order and it was almost impossible for any new youngster to get into the middle-order unless any of these four were injured. Indian selectors never nurtured any new batsmen to take over from them and the fact that Ganguly’s replacement has still not cemented his place in the team is a testimony for that.

With Sachin, Dravid and Laxman in the late thirties, Indian middle order will need replacement for these players soon. Indian selectors have already identified Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara and it is their duty to persist with them. I would suggest two more names to fill the void that is going to be created when these greats decide to hang their boots.

Parthiv Patel, the 25 year old Gujarat captain is a Test discard for many. He came in as a 17 year old wicket-keeper with very little first-class cricket experience and played 20 Test matches out of which the majority was outside India. Not many knew that he was the under 19 Indian cricket team captain at that time and that he had got the Border-Gavaskar scholarship for the best talented youngster in the country. Parthiv’s batting ability was never doubted and his compact technique against Brett Lee in Australia, Shoaib Akthar in Pakistan and Harmison in England was applauded even by his critics. Inexperience in keeping wickets in different surfaces against Kumble led to his downfall. Much water has flown under the bridge and Parthiv is an experienced player with a lot of centuries in first class cricket. He has improved his keeping and is the captain of Gujarat.

Dhoni will have to give up wicket keeping soon and concentrate more on batting and the presence of Parthiv in the team will make his work easy. Parthiv can play as an opener, middle order batsman or a wicket-keeper batsman. A batsman coming back after being discarded by selectors is nothing new for Indian cricket considering the history of Siddhu and Ganguly. I will stick my neck out and say that if properly nurtured, Parthiv Patel will be an asset for the Indian Test team.

Virat Kohli is the new find for the Indian One day team for many. For some, he is the former captain of the Indian under-19 team that won the World Cup. But for me, he is the hero of a story which appeared on the newspapers in December 2006. Delhi was playing against Karnataka in a Ranji Trophy match. An 18 year-old Delhi batsman hit a chanceless 90 and saved Delhi from a certain follow-on. When he fell in a dubious manner, instead of celebrating, the Karnataka players applauded his effort. You may wonder what is so special in that innings. Kohli lost his beloved father that morning but decided to continue batting from his overnight 40 and took Delhi to safety. He left for his father’s funeral after his innings.

It is no wonder that Kohli who showed maturity beyond age at such a young age is scoring in tons in Indian first-class cricket and in one-day internationals. More than his runs, it is his attitude towards batting that makes him different. Selectors should spare no time in inducting this youngster to the Indian Test team.

With India touring England, Australia and West Indies after the World Cup, the Indian selectors have got a golden opportunity to test these future stars of Indian cricket. I have no doubt that Parthiv Patel and Virat Kohli have it in them to pass this litmus test.

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