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'03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ?


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Prior to '03 on the left, '07 on the right; Sehwag 34.65 -- 31.18 Tendulkar 44.43 -- 44.12 Ganguly 42.95 -- 41.22 Dravid 39.15 -- 40.01 Yuvraj 29.40 -- 35.29 Kaif 29.00 --- Uthappa 36.42 Mongia 26.42 --- Pathan 25.15 Dhoni 46.61 --- Parthiv 14.66 Karthik 18.75 --- Bangar 17.88 Agarkar 28.73 -- 27.55 Zaheer 25.51 -- 27.53 Kumble 29.63 -- 31.05 Harbhajan 29.20 -- 31.96 Srinath 28.08 --- Munaf 28.68 Nehra 32.17 --- Sreesanth 36.11

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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ? Zaheer, Bajji, Agarkar were all their in 03 too, but sadly Agarkar didnt get any game.... as we went with same combo everytime..Nehra, Zk, and Srinath... but lets see how he performs in this wc... and tell u what.. batting lookz same, it was strong last time too, just some problems were that they all had failed to bat well in the last odi tour before wc, which was against nz... infact they completly did the justice to the word "sucked"

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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ?

As expected' date=' Dhoni and Yuvraj-mark II stand out. Those two are the powerhouse of the Indian team, and if we win the WC, those 2 have to play a big, big role.[/quote'] Indeed, but Yuvraj's improvement seems to be offset by Sehwag's regression. I am more curious about the bowling attack; Zaheer - despite his recent performances, isn't quite the bowler he was at his peak 4 years ago. Munaf looks like the ideal type of bowler to fill in Srinath's shoes, but whether he is good enough to match Srinath's 16 wickets @ 23 is something i'm not fully convinced about. Agarkar's career has seen some negligible improvement but is he capable of intimidating batsmen over the course of a full spell in the same way Nehra did ? The team with the best bowling attack will be reaching the final of this tournament. This is evidenced by the fact that in '03; IND and AUS had three bowlers each in the top 10 wicket-takers. Similarly, In '99, PAK and AUS had 4 and 3 bowlers respectively in the top 10 wicket-takers. It is also worth mentioning that India had 3 batsmen in the top 10 run-scorers in that particular tournament (Dravid, Ganguly and Jadeja) yet they still exited in the super sixes. Likewise in '92 - PAK had 3 bowlers in the top 10, as did ENG. Bottom-line; unless a your batsmen are good enough to chase 300 every game (which is impossible), it's the bowlers who win you the matches. So our trio of Munaf, Sree and Zaheer need to muster at least 35 wickets between them if India are to reach the finals - regardless of how well the batsmen do.
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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ? To be honest these numbers don't really mean anything, it only serves good for debates. Not one player will even think what his numbers are when he gets on the ground. The form of a particular player will depend on a lot of variables, opponent, memories of his performances against the team and invariably the form on that day. Each individual's form on a day tranforms into the form of a team on that day. Sehwag for instance went with couple of hundreds in NZ in testing conditions but in Saffie conditions where the batting was lot easier he was mediocre. You can't explain these things in cricket. Numbers at times don't mean anything in cricket. I think India does have as good team as they did in WC'03 but whatever you have on paper will not materialize we all know that. I feel India has the best batting line up going into the world cup.

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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ? Our batting has improved, atleast on paper, inspite of Sehwag & Tendu's regression. Sehwag didnt do much last time, inspite of being having a great run prior to the cup. With Yuvraj, Dhoni & the X-factor Uthappa, our batting lineup does appear stronger. We have a lot more players who can up the ante in our lineup, something we lacked in the last cup. (Thank god, Tendu clicked almost every game) Its hard to judge our bowling however. The conditions in SA helped our seamers well and made them perform better than their standards. Besides, teams have gotten more aggressive in their top order. And with power play rules in play, our bowlers will have to bowl really well to keep teams in check. Overall keeping the conditions in perspective, i'd say our bowling is a tad weaker & lacks in experience compared to the last cup. More than our batting, it is our bowling that saw us in the finals, last world cup. This cup wont be any different. If we end up with an average bowling performance, we aint gonna go too far, irrespective of our batsmen's form. Also, prior to the last world cup, we had an amazing run in ODIs. Natwest finals glory, ICC Champs trophy win etc. And there werent too many teams (back then) other than Aus, SA & Ind that were considered genuine contenders for the cup. Its the opposite now. There are many genuine contenders for the cup & our run of form (barring our recent home success) has been poor. Considering all factors i'll say, we dont have any edge over other teams to be top 3 favorites. So whether we are a better team or not, repeating the success of last world cup, is gonna be very tough.

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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ?

Wonder how you people are forgetting the most crucial factor which is fielding and running between the wickets. We are much much poorer in both the departments while other teams have improved quite a lot in that.
I think Dhoni, Yuvraj and Tendulkar are good runners between wickets. Rahul Dravid is usually good but many a times he has ran himself out. Ganguly has improved a lot and from what I saw in the last few ODIs I was very surprised he has been calling the runs very well. Laxman's running hasn't improved a bit. Haven't seen Uthappa enough but he doesn't look all that great running between wickets. We saw Sehwag run himself out so absolutely no comments on that one. When you have lot of ageing players in the ranks the fielding usually suffers and that is quite true as for India is concerned. Uthappa doesn't look too bad but there will far too many players to hide in the field and that is something that can't be changed.
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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ? I think Munaf, Kumble are the problem fielders. On the other hand, UV, Uthappa, Kartik are pretty good. Rest are decent (even Ganguly is decent now). Can't really complain. They were all picked for a reason.

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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ?

Wonder how you people are forgetting the most crucial factor which is fielding and running between the wickets. We are much much poorer in both the departments while other teams have improved quite a lot in that.
I think Dhoni, Yuvraj and Tendulkar are good runners between wickets. Rahul Dravid is usually good but many a times he has ran himself out. Ganguly has improved a lot and from what I saw in the last few ODIs I was very surprised he has been calling the runs very well. Laxman's running hasn't improved a bit. Haven't seen Uthappa enough but he doesn't look all that great running between wickets. We saw Sehwag run himself out so absolutely no comments on that one. When you have lot of ageing players in the ranks the fielding usually suffers and that is quite true as for India is concerned. Uthappa doesn't look too bad but there will far too many players to hide in the field and that is something that can't be changed.
Uthappa is a good runner between the wickets, he also is an awesome fielder don't forget Khartik, good battling player.
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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ?

Wonder how you people are forgetting the most crucial factor which is fielding and running between the wickets. We are much much poorer in both the departments while other teams have improved quite a lot in that.
I think Dhoni, Yuvraj and Tendulkar are good runners between wickets. Rahul Dravid is usually good but many a times he has ran himself out. Ganguly has improved a lot and from what I saw in the last few ODIs I was very surprised he has been calling the runs very well. Laxman's running hasn't improved a bit. Haven't seen Uthappa enough but he doesn't look all that great running between wickets. We saw Sehwag run himself out so absolutely no comments on that one. When you have lot of ageing players in the ranks the fielding usually suffers and that is quite true as for India is concerned. Uthappa doesn't look too bad but there will far too many players to hide in the field and that is something that can't be changed.
Ravi, This is what I mean. But is India the only team with aging players? In the XI, most probably we'll have only 3 30+ players: Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly. All the bowlers are relatively much young. By contrast, just check SL : Jayasuriya is 36, Attapapattu is 35, Vaas is 34, Murali is 34 and these 4 will certainly be in their XI. Is their fielding bad? Aussies also have plenty of 30+ players in their XI. So it is not right to blame the aging stars for the bad fielding of India.
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Re: '03 vs '07 - 4 years on, do India have a better team ? Isn't that the sacrifice India was willing to make when they brought in Ganguly and dropped the likes of Raina and M Kaif? People like M Kaif and Raina might save you 10-15 runs in the field but we saw the team's result when they were there, it just emphasized the fact that at the end of the day batting and bowling are far more than ground fielding.

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