Popular Post express bowling Posted October 28, 2017 Popular Post Share Posted October 28, 2017 (edited) I remember the year 1989 very well. Gavaskar had retired a couple of years earlier and Kapil had lost pace. We were losing to Pakistan more often than not in ODIs. The 1983 World Cup and 1985 Benson & Hedges Cup twin wins were things of the past. Crickets fans were feeling directionless. Then came the tour to Pakistan , where a baby-faced 16 year old stole the hearts of the entire nation with his brave batting against the Pakistani quicks. Watching cricket was a pleasure once again for Indians ... and this euphoria lasted for more than fifteen years. In the 1990s, when Tendulkar batted, the whole nation " batted " through him. In 1991, a tall, thin guy, with flailing arms while bowling , burst onto the scene and bowled really quick ... and India had its first genuine fast bowler, Srinath. The year 1996 saw an elegant left-hander score a century on test debut at Lords. This was followed by another century in the next test match. While this was happening, another young man with impeccable technique missed his centuries by a few runs in both those tests. Indian cricket fans were brimming with excitement once again at the emergence of these twin gems. Be it a wristy Hyderabadi scoring 3 centuries in his first three tests in 1984-85, a bespectacled Kumble taking a 4-fer in in Sharjah in 1991, Zaheer and Yuvraj sparkling in Nairobi in 2000, a dashing Sehwag scoring 105 in South Africa on test debut in 2001 ... these memories will stay with us for ever. More than these moments and memories, every time a special talent emerged, it gave us reasons to watch cricket for the next few years. No one will forget the dabaang innings of 148, that a long-haired keeper-batsman played in 2005 against Pakistan ... and a new star was born. No matter what one feels today, every Indian cricket fan felt a connection with that young man, which would stay with us till the time he won us the 2011 World Cup as captain. Then came Kohli, who would go on to become one of the biggest superstars. entertaining us in all three formats with his spectacular batsmanship. Rohit, Rahane, Pujara, Dhawan, Ashwin, Jadeja, Shami, Umesh, Bumrah, Bhuvi etc. ... all of them inspired interest among certain sections of fans. Seeing a young Shami debut, combining genuine pace with reverse swing to floor the West Indians in 2013, was very exciting. Fast bowling fans just loved it when young Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron bowled at 150 kph. Sports survive and grow in stature and popularity because of superstars and stars. Thirty-one years have passed but people still talk about and remember Maradona winning the football world cup. Fans need to find a connection with individual players. They are happy when that person does well and sad when he fails. They realize their own sporting dreams through him or her. Cricket is facing competition from other sports in India like never before and needs star players more than ever. In Indian cricket, we are recently seeing a trend of trying to introduce thirty-plus players as a matter of priority, especially the batters and keepers . Youngsters are getting chances but only when an " elderly " is not good enough or is injured or fails the yo-yo test or rotation policy demands more players. If the current ODI batting line-up makes it to the 2019 World Cup then we will have six batters who are 30+. Dhoni 38, Karthick 34, Jadhav 34, Dhawan 33, Rohit 32, Kohli 30. I am not suggesting that thirty plus players should all be be dropped or not given fresh chances. But, there should be a mix of experience and youth. Too many youngsters mean lack of experience and too many older players mean lack of new direction and dwindling fan interest. Moreover, there is no point in promoting mediocrity when it comes to selecting fresh players. We have seen young spinners and all-rounders being introduced and backed though ... and the result is there for all to see. Be it the wrist-spin twins, Kuldeep and Chahal, or the charismatic all-rounder Hardik Pandya, they have given new direction and new energy to our team. I hope that some talented youngsters are allowed to flourish in the batting, keeping and fast-bowling departments too. If they receive the same backing as the young spinners and all-rounders are getting, they will also do well . KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant, Prithvi Shaw, Vijay Shankar, Karun Nair, Md. Siraj, Basil Thampi, Avesh Khan, Kamlesh Nagarkoti etc. etc. are waiting. It never was and and never is about choosing the top performers in domestic cricket or the well known names. It is always about spotting and backing the players who have the potential to achieve something extra at international level from now on. Edited October 28, 2017 by express bowling MCcricket, beetle, Forever Indian and 24 others 1 20 6 Link to comment
speedheat Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Wonderful article express ji as usual!! "Sport survive because of superstars" this has deep meaning, beautiful, bcci morons and selectors should defiantly read it. Mosher 1 Link to comment
SK_IH Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Well written but everyone from selectors,team management & senior players are complicit in this status quo ,so nothing gonna change express bowling 1 Link to comment
Khota Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Nice! It is good to develop and back but they should not be fast tracked to team. Let them develop and enjoy their game too. Link to comment
Laaloo Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 @G_B_ This should be posted as an article on the main page. G_B_, express bowling and Mosher 1 2 Link to comment
GolGappe Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Excellent post! India can easily put together a more competitive U25 ODI and T20i than the present bunch. 5-1 smackdown in RSA will open up lot of spots in one-day team. Turning_track and Sgattick10 2 Link to comment
Mosher Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Great post EB bro! express bowling and Laaloo 2 Link to comment
Laaloo Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 (edited) Seriously this is a top notch article. Short and straight to the point. I could actually read this over and over again. Edited October 28, 2017 by Laaloo Sgattick10, Mosher, express bowling and 1 other 1 3 Link to comment
Vk1 Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Great post. The overall competitiveness of ODI teams worldover has come down a notch except for England and Pakistan. This is helping our team in a great way. I'm not expecting south africa to beat us badly. They themselves have host of issues especially in lower middle order and bowling. I had some hope but selecting Dinesh Karthik with the worldcup due in less than two years has confirmed that nothing is going to change. Link to comment
wanted_desi Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 Top Post! People need a reason to watch games, and right now i don't feel like making effort to watch Dhawans/Sharmas/Rahanes battting. I would have liked to see India A games where you have more exciting talent. Laaloo, speedheat, Mosher and 3 others 2 4 Link to comment
nevada Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 (edited) A great post that most cricket fans will fully agree with. Besides the players mentioned above, there are couple others who were backed at a young age and though they didn't turn out to be superstars, they did have moments where they did well. Parthiv Patel was the captain of a junior India team of which Vengsarkar was the manager/coach. He was very impressed by the youngster's temperament and gave a glowing recommendation of him. Very soon, Parthiv debuted for India though he had limited to no first class experience. Ajit Agarkar was on under 19 team of which Srikkanth was manager/coach. He spoke highly of him, and some time later Agarkar got in to the Indian team. Both Vengsarkar and Srikkanth backed a youngster purely on talent, not due to regional affiliation or business interests. But in the current environment, the chances of backing a player based on a hunch and fast tracking him are very less. After warming the bench for a long time, Rishabh Pant has disappeared from the selectors radar. Shreyas Iyer will most likely go through the same. Kuldeep Yadav was not selected in the test X1 despite the coach Kumble strongly backing his selection. But unfit(not physically, but for the role) players like Rahane, Karthik etc are repeatedly backed. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. One is, there is a huge amount of money at stake via endorsements. There can only be 11 players in the national team. The superstars in the X1 obviously get the biggest endorsement pay outs. Emergence of new, exciting talents in the playing X1 can relegate the not so young superstars to "senior" status. To maintain their youthful image, emergence of newer, younger superstars must be prevented. Also, from a pure cricketing perspective - these days teams have become ruthless and don't want to lose any match even after winning a series so the chances of youngsters getting a look in take a hit due to this reason as well. Another reason could be IPL rivalries. Don't want to name names but it isn't uncommon for some of the superstars to sledge younger players on other teams and the young ones to reply in kind, creating bad blood between them. Murali Kartik's career suffered because he was an in your face type of personality whose antics in a domestic game or two against Saurav Ganguly did not go down too well. IPL being more intense with so much at stake, one can only imagine the level of clashes and feuds between domestic players. In the current enviroment youngsters need to do well, and on a consistent basis to stand a chance of making a career for themselves. Edited October 29, 2017 by nevada Laaloo, tweaker and wanted_desi 1 2 Link to comment
BeautifulGame Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 People will happily watch and follow a winning team. When you lose regularly is when you need superstars to cling onto.And that's what we were in 80s and most of 90s. Link to comment
express bowling Posted October 28, 2017 Author Share Posted October 28, 2017 (edited) 2 hours ago, BeautifulGame said: People will happily watch and follow a winning team. When you lose regularly is when you need superstars to cling onto.And that's what we were in 80s and most of 90s. Would you have watched as many ODIs with interest in the 2005 to 2013 period if it was Parthiv or Karthick in place of Dhoni ? Would we have won as many ODIs between 2005 to 2013 if it was Parthiv or Karthick in place of Dhoni ? Edited October 28, 2017 by express bowling Link to comment
Laaloo Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 We only have one odi left against NZ so even a failure will keep everyone in the team. Next we have Lanka, so minnow bashing will essentially keep them in the team. Thankfully we have a tour to South Africa where we can finally get rid of the dead weights and the retreads. wanted_desi and express bowling 1 1 Link to comment
Ankit_sharma03 Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 One of the biggest failure of this team mngmt has been this only- developing youngsters. Why do i say failure its becoz of the amazing pool of players we have now Iyer, pant could have been given chances Rahul (odi) n Nair (test) could have been well backed Kuldeep and chahal could have been given chances before CT Aniket cud have been given a go in test series against aus rather we choose ishant again. SL tour, Wi tour, Ind-Aus t20 series - these were 15-20 games were we cud have tried so many youngster and few good champion players could have been discovered instead we gave these games to regulars whose personal record got better. These 15-20 games cud cost us World cup as few players might miss out due to lack of exp excuse and the likes of karthik , yuvraj , raina cud be seen back just on basis of their experience . So much to try, so lil time left that to now will be overseas , may be these tough tours wud literally challenge players and highlight many of our problem that has been thrown under carpet coz we are winning without being even challenged Jimmy Cliff and Mosher 2 Link to comment
Turning_track Posted October 28, 2017 Share Posted October 28, 2017 (edited) Such beautifully written post. Want to shove it on the faces of those who are hell bent on destroying young careers. Also there is a certain lobby in the BCCI and its close quarters who wants us to believe things are fine and hunky dory. Shastri, Manjrekar, Gavaskar, Bhogle all repeat the same rhetoric and push a certain agenda in their own subtle way like they get an orgasm. In the last 7 years we have endured some terrible losses, who will be accountable for it? Ask some tough questions? Nah, but just briefly touch the topic for a few mins and voila the series/tour is over. 8-0 loss in Eng,Aus- Any changes? No, only the oldies retired. The rest repeated again. Pujara warmed the bench in Aus in 2012. SA tour 2013- SA almost chased the total of 438. We played the same recycled team again and again. Do these experts/journalists/former greats ask why this attack which comprises of Ishant as its most experienced player, has the figures of 329 (Clarke), 294 (Cook), 302 (McCullum) scored against? We have already lost a few ICC trophies just by not being pragmatic. And I don't think there will be many changes in the team, even if we lose the final ODI against NZ(their 1st ODI series win) . The bigshots in the team will find one way or the other to keep the youngsters out. Edited October 28, 2017 by Turning_track nevada 1 Link to comment
Popular Post maniac Posted October 29, 2017 Popular Post Share Posted October 29, 2017 (edited) The problem right now is a lot of player power...Reminds me of the saying letting inmates run the asylum...In the history of Indian cricket apart from Sachin I have never seen an individual cricketer enjoy so much power and leverage leave alone a group of players....BCCI and the administration from time to time let players know who is the boss- even with Likes of Kapil,Gavaskar and Ganguly it never felt that they were bigger than the selectors or BCCI....in fact those days don’t think selectors were not even decent domestic cricketers leave alone mediocre international cricketers that we have now. The whole Kohli-Kumble thing lets put taking sides aside for a moment and for argument sake let us say Kumble was the worst coach ever,it was still a poorly handled debacle by the BCCI.Some times right or wrong you just have to put your foot downbut the whole fiasco felt like BCCI just gave in to demands of a few individuals. Look at the selections right now...Young batsmen are not tried and the ones with potential are benched like KL Rahul. Even though never a big fan of either Jadhav or Pandey,clearly Pandey has the more upside of the 2...a better fielder and a better athlete.Jadhav even though has been a decent journey man cricketer it is clear that he feels like a safer option being a 30+ year old under achiever. Let us buy the argument for a second that there is no alternative to Dhoni and Dhoni has been a brilliant performer playing in his prime right now and has stellar stats,but it’s a fact that he is not going to play T20’beyond 2018 or Odi after 2019, where are the alternatives being readied to take over from him? Are we just going to throw options at the wall and hope they stick after 2018 and 2019??? Where is the back up plan? Is it a 33yr old Karthik...u gotta be kidding Jayant Yadav performs decently as an allrounder/Spinner but he is clearly a threat to Ash and Jadeja and slowly he disappears from the face of the earth. Sran a left armer shows a lot of promise but inexplicably Nehra makes a comeback to the side from nowhere in 2016. Dhawan performs poorly in all his T20 opportunities and is dropped from T20 but just walks into the T20 side with no questions raised. Karun Nair even though I still think his 300 was a fluke but it is still a frickin 300 at the test level against a top side-England...he just gets 3 more games and is dropped without even being in the scheme of things. Something is clearly not right. Edited October 29, 2017 by maniac express bowling, MCcricket, tweaker and 8 others 3 8 Link to comment
Vilander Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 1 hour ago, maniac said: The problem right now is a lot of player power...Reminds me of the saying letting inmates run the asylum...In the history of Indian cricket apart from Sachin I have never seen an individual cricketer enjoy so much power and leverage leave alone a group of players....BCCI and the administration from time to time let players know who is the boss- even with Likes of Kapil,Gavaskar and Ganguly it never felt that they were bigger than the selectors or BCCI....in fact those days don’t think selectors were not even decent domestic cricketers leave alone mediocre international cricketers that we have now. The whole Kohli-Kumble thing lets put taking sides aside for a moment and for argument sake let us say Kumble was the worst coach ever,it was still a poorly handled debacle by the BCCI.Some times right or wrong you just have to put your foot downbut the whole fiasco felt like BCCI just gave in to demands of a few individuals. Look at the selections right now...Young batsmen are not tried and the ones with potential are benched like KL Rahul. Even though never a big fan of either Jadhav or Pandey,clearly Pandey has the more upside of the 2...a better fielder and a better athlete.Jadhav even though has been a decent journey man cricketer it is clear that he feels like a safer option being a 30+ year old under achiever. Let us buy the argument for a second that there is no alternative to Dhoni and Dhoni has been a brilliant performer playing in his prime right now and has stellar stats,but it’s a fact that he is not going to play T20’beyond 2018 or Odi after 2019, where are the alternatives being readied to take over from him? Are we just going to throw options at the wall and hope they stick after 2018 and 2019??? Where is the back up plan? Is it a 33yr old Karthik...u gotta be kidding Jayant Yadav performs decently as an allrounder/Spinner but he is clearly a threat to Ash and Jadeja and slowly he disappears from the face of the earth. Sran a left armer shows a lot of promise but inexplicably Nehra makes a comeback to the side from nowhere in 2016. Dhawan performs poorly in all his T20 opportunities and is dropped from T20 but just walks into the T20 side with no questions raised. Karun Nair even though I still think his 300 was a fluke but it is still a frickin 300 at the test level against a top side-England...he just gets 3 more games and is dropped without even being in the scheme of things. Something is clearly not right. top post. KL Rahul, Pandey, Jayant Yadav, surely something is wrong. Link to comment
MCcricket Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 See it's like a river flowing, once water stops moving it becomes stagnant n stale, the health of a team is based on this dynamics, steady supply of fresh talent, keeping team strong and from getting stale n weak. Now how does that work, three formats three different teams based on merit, selectors are majorly to be blamed for picking players who r good in one format and reward them with a spot in a format they r poor in, Example Rahane in ODI, Dhawan in T20. Again selectors to be blamed for not rewarding consistent n good performances in A tours n ,Ranji, BP 11 teams by picking up the worthy players at least two in each format from that pool consistently. What we are seeing with the Advent of IPL , and big money any signing up with Rhiti Cornerstone n captains of the team belonging to either influencing selection of his pet pals, example RP Singh who was picked by Dhoni out of nowhere coz he was signed up with Dhonis firm Rhiti, or who can forget his CSK mates in the team. It looks like being in the Indian squad is a fiefdom or privilege of a few n it's hard for potential till new talent to make their way as established players in formats and captains will makes it hard to get in guys like K Yadav. Selectors not having balls or vision n despite very poor numbers by Dhoni , n guys like Yuvi n other has been have clung onto them, n believe they will serve India in 2019 lol.Kartik at 32 n being a failure for 13 years finds a place, n one think he lacked was temperament which is hard to change . Selectors should select with a plan in mind n independently for each format, Captains should be monitored n also the Nexus between Sports management firms n IPL teammates becoming indespensible, Dhoni had started a dangerous precedent n we had to deal with all those losses, Kohli is too much into loyalty n is not showing objectivity in selecting playing 11, where Kumble was right. Selectors picking up youngsters for T20 especially young bowlers is a wrong was to groom them, Siraj should have been picked up for ODI instead. Indian test team is stable n strong but still squad needs at least two rookies or young talent. ODI team is poor n stagnant n this is due to selection n Dhoni being in the team n not playing young talent. T20 team is worse as freeloaders who are playing either test or ODi are picked up in T20 without merit. Shami is being wasted, promising guys like Aniket, Ankit, Hooda, Pant, Iyer are not getting a chance to show their potential n challenge guys like Rahane n Dhawan . Indian cricket team is become like a small previlidged group n no one can challenge players who r in squad for their places ven if they are not good enough n that is sad. Laaloo, maniac, Jimmy Cliff and 2 others 1 4 Link to comment
Vilander Posted October 29, 2017 Share Posted October 29, 2017 4 minutes ago, MCcricket said: who can forget his CSK mates in the team. yeah Ashwin Jadeja Murli and Raina. All of them sifarshi their skill had clearly nothing to do with their selection correct you are very true. Aoutstanding observation. Link to comment
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