All time inter-zonal teams competition: which is the strongest?

[zen]

8 minutes ago, maniac said:

Shastri is underrated at times. Even though he was terrible towards the end of his career, a guy like Shastri with his bowling ability would be worth his weight in gold currently.

 

He did have some hitting ability but was dadu version 1 with his holding one end bs

West zone has a very good bowling attack .... a bunch of big hitters 

 

Shastri can come in place of say Patil but Patil is known to be a power hitter. And if you want someone to stabilize, there are guys like Gavaskar too, whose ODI stats became good once he got a hang of the format  

 

Records type batting analysis [change type]

View career summary [change view]

Start of match date greater than or equal to 1 Jan 1985

Ordered by default (ascending)

Return to query menu Cleared query menu

Career averages

	Span	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	0
unfiltered	1974-1987	108	102	14	3092	103*	35.13	4966	62.26	1	27	8	Profile
filtered	1985-1987	56	53	10	1954	103*	45.44	2960	66.01	1	20	4

 

• Avg of 45 and 21 50+ score in 53 innings 
• Played most of his games in the 85-87 period

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by zen

[maniac]

West Zone is the strongest though

 

Mumbai Lobby Ftw @Cricketics @Vilander @Real McCoy 

[maniac]

2 minutes ago, zen said:

West zone has a very good bowling attack .... a bunch of big hitters 

 

Shastri can come in place of say Patil but Patil is known to be a power hitter. And if you want someone to stabilize, there are guys like Gavaskar too, who ODI stats became good once he got a hang of the format  

 

Records type batting analysis [change type]

View career summary [change view]

Start of match date greater than or equal to 1 Jan 1985

Ordered by default (ascending)

Return to query menu Cleared query menu

Career averages

	Span	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	0
unfiltered	1974-1987	108	102	14	3092	103*	35.13	4966	62.26	1	27	8	Profile
filtered	1985-1987	56	53	10	1954	103*	45.44	2960	66.01	1	20	4

 

Avg of 45 and 21 50+ score in 53 innings 

 

It’s between Shastri,Patil and Jadeja. Shastri can replace Jadeja. I rate Shastri as a better bowler and obviously a much better bat.

[zen]

9 minutes ago, maniac said:

It’s between Shastri,Patil and Jadeja. Shastri can replace Jadeja. I rate Shastri as a better bowler and obviously a much better bat.

that can work 

 

 

Sachin

Rohit

Engineer

Vengsarkar 

Gavaskar (85-87 period one) / Patil (flexible batting order) 

Hardik

Jadhav

Shastri / Jadeja

Agarkar

Zak

Bumrah 

Edited February 8, 2019 by zen

[maniac]

South Zone odi team is not too shabby

Kris Srikkanth

Dravid

Laxman

Azhar

Rayudu

M.Pandey/DK

R.Binny

R.Ashwin

Kumble

Srinath

Prasad

 

Reserves:Sunil Joshi can replace Binny on a turning track.

 

DK can keep or Dravid

 

Thank you Brijesh Patel for inducting every Tom dick and Harry Karnataka player into the Indian side in the 90s  @Kannadiga

 

 

 

 

 

[Gollum]

9 minutes ago, maniac said:

West Zone is the strongest though

 

Mumbai Lobby Ftw @Cricketics @Vilander @Real McCoy 

Kripya vote daale 

I am sorry Rohit couldn't make the West Zone squad but Ishant will be in the main XI in North Zone. 

[maniac]

Just now, Gollum said:

Kripya vote daale 

I am sorry Rohit couldn't make the West Zone squad but Ishant will be in the main XI in North Zone. 

You mean westzone test squad right. I am at peace with that brah. But odi obviously it is god,Demi god and the remaining mortals 

[Cricketics]

Bowling for west zone looks weak and batting all looks like players who would play to bat on and just could struggle at times.

 

Zak is good with Bumrah but Zak likely will break down fast and will put too much pressure on Bumrah.

 

 

Bowling is weak for most teams but more so for West Zone. If they concede 500, chances are West Zone team will collapse in the first inning leaving lot of pressure for Tendlya to succumb who will also falter eventually.

 

North Zone too strong with lot of tricks up their sleeve and great all round options

[zen]

11 minutes ago, Cricketics said:

Bowling for west zone looks weak and batting all looks like players who would play to bat on and just could struggle at times.

 

Zak is good with Bumrah but ifealy will break down fast and will put too much pressure on Bumrah.

 

 

Bowling is weak for most teams but more so for West Zone. If they concede 500, chances are West Zone team will collapse in the first inning leaving lot of pressure for Tendlya to succumb who will also falter eventually.

 

North Zone too strong with lot of tricks up their sleeve and great all round options

North Zone has 3-4 ATG or potential ATG level players. West Zone has like 8-9!

 

PS

North: Sehwag, Kohli, Kapil and Pant  

West: Gavaskar, Mankad, Pujara, Sachin, Hazare, Engineer, Zak, Bumrah and Gupte 

Edited February 8, 2019 by zen

[Cricketics]

2 minutes ago, zen said:

North Zone has 3-4 ATG or potential ATG level players. West Zone has like 8-9!

 

PS

North: Sehwag, Kohli, Kapil and Pant  

West: Gavaskar, Mankad, Pujara, Sachin, Hazare, Engineer, Zak, Bumrah and Gupte 

Too many greats means too much ego. Theyw ill screw up wanting to outbat each other. Vengsarkar will get someone dropped from

the team. Same mind set of players don’t work. North Zone too strong in that. 

[maniac]

26 minutes ago, Cricketics said:

Too many greats means too much ego. Theyw ill screw up wanting to outbat each other. Vengsarkar will get someone dropped from

the team. Same mind set of players don’t work. North Zone too strong in that. 

You are going with the assumption that all

players are playing at their peaks and performing to their full potential. Gambhir and Sehwag has problems with the captain too.

 

Anyways North looks the 2nd strongest team after west though especially in LOIs. Test Both North and south are the same level

[Sooda]

@Gollum Great thread, btw I did something similar 7 (SEVEN!!!) Years ago

 

right here

 

 

Edited February 9, 2019 by Sooda

[Sooda]

Can the South side be tweaked, open with Ramesh or Rahul instead of Kunderan . WOuldnt want Budhi facing a pace attack of Kapil and Ishant say

 

Get Kirmani to keep wicket drop Tiger and Kumble to captain. I dont like there being one paceman, but dont know how to fix it...interestingly Im pretty sure Buhdi Kunderan bowled a bit too in his time... :)

 

Murali Vijay

Ramesh

Dravid

GR Vishwanath

Azharuddin

Laxman

Kirmani 

Ashwin 

Kumble

Srinath

Chandra

 

 

[Sooda]

Id open with Merchant for West and drop Vengsarkar, tricky one though. Hard to see past them winning it

 

Also, SS Karim should keep for RoI.

 

From my 2012 thread:

 

Central Zone: S Bangar, Vijay Manjrekar, M Kaif ©, P Amre, Raina, N Ojha (wk), Durani, P Kumar, N Hirwani, S Gupte, R P Singh

 

East Zone: Arun Lal, Pankaj Roy, SS Das, S Ganguly ©, A Malhotra, Dhoni (wk), Laxmi R Shukla, Utpal Chatterjee, Dilip Doshi, R Bose, D Mohanty

Edited February 9, 2019 by Sooda

[Tattieboy]

5 hours ago, Gollum said:

Dividing it like they do in Duleep Trophy. But for the sake of fairness (and mercy!!!) I will merge Central Zone and East Zone, otherwise they will get steamrolled by the other 3. Squad of 18 and best XI to be chosen depending on conditions. Red ball format only and peak (non chucking, non fixing ) versions of all cricketers. In case I have missed some prominent names please do tell. 

 

1) North Zone (JK, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi)

Sehwag

Gambhir

Mohinder Amarnath

Kohli (c)

Yuvraj

Pant (wk)

Kapil

Chetan Sharma

Harbhajan

Ishant

Bedi

 

Reserves: Sidhu, Dhawan, Chetan Chauhan, Madan Lal, Yashpal Sharma, Rajinder Goel, Prabhakar

 

Observations: Tremendous (5 options) opening pair, gun top order, slightly wobbly middle order, decent bowling but quite a few chinks there (mainly poor SR), aggressive characters and aggressive captaincy/leadership candidates, swag

 

2) West Zone (Gujarat's 3 teams, Mumbai, Maharshtra minus Vidarbha, Goa)

Gavaskar (c)

Vinoo Mankad

Pujara

Sachin

Vijay Hazare

Vengsarkar

Engineer (wk)

Sir Jadeja

Zaheer

Gupte

Bumrah

 

Reserves: Vijay Merchant, Jaffer, Chandu Borde, Rahane, Umrigar, Padmakar Shivalkar, Irfan Pathan

 

By far the toughest to limit to 18, I had to leave out some big names like Wadekar, Contractor, Dilip Sardesai, Sandeep Patil, More, Vijay and Sanjay Manjrekar, Agarkar, Shastri ....spoilt for choices especially in the batting department.

 

Observations: Terrific batting.....potentially the best all round batting unit out of the 4 options, best all conditions bowling, one big drawback will be the captain whoever it is will be very defensive and/or inept, will the captain be able to extract the best from this brilliant bowling unit?

 

3) South Zone (Karnataka, TN, Andhra, Hyderabad, Telangana, Kerala)

Murali Vijay

Budhi Kunderan (wk)

Dravid

GR Vishwanath

Azharuddin

Laxman

MAK Pataudi (c)...even though he was from Bhopal he shifted to Hyderabad to be under Jaisimha's tutelage

Ashwin (Prasanna in SENA)

Kumble

Srinath

Chandra

 

*Deliberately picked 3 spinners in starting XI because of who the captain is 

 

Reserves:  KL Rahul, Ramesh (rate him above Srikanth in this format), Kirmani (in case I want a safer opening option in place of the mercurial Budhi), Prasanna/Ashwin, Venkatraghavan, Venkatesh Prasad, Sreesanth.

 

Observations: Clutch team...look at the middle order with 3 of India's most clutch batsmen of all time, excellent 4th innings team with both bat and ball, almost unbeatable on spinning tracks, weak pace bowling arsenal (but Srinath/Sreesanth/Prasad in RSA will be deadly), outstanding spin bowling arsenal and can field an intimidating spin quartet on certain tracks, greatest Indian captain and someone who was a master at utilizing spin resources

 

4) Rest of India (Central plus East Zone...Rajasthan, Vidarbha, MP, Chhattisgarh, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Bengal, NE)

 

Pankaj Roy

Syed Mushtaq Ali

CK Nayudu

Ganguly (c)

Dhoni 

Saha (wk)

Bhuvi

Shami

Kuldeep

Doshi

Umesh

 

Reserves: Hanumant Singh, Salim Durani, Kaif, SS Das, Ojha, Praveen Kumar, RP Singh

 

Observations: Piss poor batting, decent bowling resources, only hope is drastic swinging/seaming conditions and their bowlers getting 1st use of those conditions....may be just may be PK/BK/RP/Shami/Dada can run through the opponents and some gritty batting to complement. Otherwise a very sorry looking team that will get smashed by the other 3. OK in the bowling department and good leadership..... I may have messed up the XI, please correct if that is the case. The oldies from these regions are not good enough.

 

My take is that West Zone looks the strongest, Bumrah's arrival has given it a huge boost in strength. However South will probably edge it in Asian conditions. North may run West close in most places but will eventually lose. 

 

Asia: South>West>North

Elsewhere: West>North>South but too too close to call between 2 and 3. 

Overall: West is best 

Rest of India will get ragdolled 9/10 times . 

Interesting thread , as an outsider here are a few curve balls to you . 

I am looking at those zone selections purely in Indian conditions , Ranji / Duleep Trophy as there are many many wonderful cricketers who just could not step upto the test arena but excelled in first class. 

Buhdi Kunderan first played for railways so you could have him ( original Sewag ) and Sewag opening together .

Umesh ...264 wkts 29.40

Shani ...   242 wkts 28.20

Bhuvi .......218 wkts 26.50 

Reserve RP Singh ....301 ..30.60 

As a selector I would be more impressed with Kailash Gattani ( Rajistan)  396 wkts ..19 .91 

 

Vinoo Mankad average 34.60 ? 

Wasim Jaffer 50.50  or Lalchand Rajput 49.50  or Gaekawd with 40 test matches not instead of Mankad ?

It was always my experience that West Zone was the strongest zone . 

 

[Straight Drive]

Would have Madan Lal over Chetan Sharma in North zone.

 

 

[Ankit_sharma03]

8 hours ago, Laaloo said:

@Gollum

 

would ajay jadeja be ja be considered for west zone? I’d rather have him than Rahane or shastri 

Jadeja played for haryana for most yrs 

and then rajasthan, kashmir , delhi also . So he cant be considered for west 

8 hours ago, Laaloo said:

 

how about robin singh?

played for TN i guess

[Gollum]

7 hours ago, Cricketics said:

Bowling for west zone looks weak and batting all looks like players who would play to bat on and just could struggle at times.

 

Zak is good with Bumrah but Zak likely will break down fast and will put too much pressure on Bumrah.

 

 

Bowling is weak for most teams but more so for West Zone. If they concede 500, chances are West Zone team will collapse in the first inning leaving lot of pressure for Tendlya to succumb who will also falter eventually.

 

North Zone too strong with lot of tricks up their sleeve and great all round options

Love your optimism tics bhai but methinks North bowling is the weakest out of the big 3. No out and out strike bowler, even legends like Bedi/Kapil had poor SR. West has a well rounded bowling unit with Zak/Bumrah, 2 outstanding spinners in Jadeja/Gupte and the legendary A/R Mankad. South has Srinath and an outrageous pool of spinners marshaled by the genius skipper MAK Pataudi.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Gollum

[Gollum]

@Tattieboy Budhi Kunderan and Pataudi in the same XI....your mate Budhi would be over the moon 

[Gollum]

7 hours ago, Sooda said:

Can the South side be tweaked, open with Ramesh or Rahul instead of Kunderan . WOuldnt want Budhi facing a pace attack of Kapil and Ishant say

 

Get Kirmani to keep wicket drop Tiger and Kumble to captain. I dont like there being one paceman, but dont know how to fix it...interestingly Im pretty sure Buhdi Kunderan bowled a bit too in his time... :)

 

Murali Vijay

Ramesh

Dravid

GR Vishwanath

Azharuddin

Laxman

Kirmani 

Ashwin 

Kumble

Srinath

Chandra

 

 

I thought about that but by all means Budhi was a capable bat and played a lot in Scotland, pretty sure he would have found his own methods to overcome testing new ball spells. And there isn't a great opening candidate who can make a big difference in the XI, maybe Rahul or Mayank can prove us wrong in the future. I didn't want Kirmani in the XI because he doesn't bring much with the bat and I wanted to fit in Pats. An opening wicket-keeper bat frees up a spot, good for the team combination I'd say.

 

I wanted Tiger to lead this side because I consider him a genius and our greatest ever captain, also a brilliant (and clutch) batsman and fielder. He has some high quality spinners to choose from and an excellent quick in Srinath...a luxury he never had in his captaincy career when he, AA Baig or Sunny would open the bowling to take the shine off. Ashwin is phenomenal with the new ball and can partner Srinath. One paceman will work on most pitches and will be a better alternative because Prasad/Sreesanth aren't that great candidates to begin with. The 70s quartet was often let down by LBW rules and poor catching, now they will be more lethal. Dravid, Azhar, Laxman, Pataudi in key catching positions backed by better umpiring and more LBW decisions. On (say) a pitch like Cape Town, Srinath/Sreesanth/Prasad can play....all 3 had tremendous records in RSA. Once again I will say this, Pataudi as captain is the X-factor, he was a chess master in rotating the spinners, pitch rolling, field setting etc and this bowling unit will be deadly. Chandra was a freak and Prasanna the Murali of those days, Kumble the workhorse and Ashwin the slayer of LHBs....all of them at their peak with Pataudi as the general.  

 

But I respect your opinion, we can never agree totally in these sort of discussions. 

7 hours ago, Sooda said:

Id open with Merchant for West and drop Vengsarkar, tricky one though. Hard to see past them winning it

 

Also, SS Karim should keep for RoI.

 

From my 2012 thread:

 

Central Zone: S Bangar, Vijay Manjrekar, M Kaif ©, P Amre, Raina, N Ojha (wk), Durani, P Kumar, N Hirwani, S Gupte, R P Singh

 

East Zone: Arun Lal, Pankaj Roy, SS Das, S Ganguly ©, A Malhotra, Dhoni (wk), Laxmi R Shukla, Utpal Chatterjee, Dilip Doshi, R Bose, D Mohanty

I thought about Merchant opening but that will leave 1 bowling option short, so chose Vinoo.

 

You rate Karim above Saha? 

 

Dude fielding separate EZ and CZ teams here is cruel ....they will get slaughtered. And players like Gupte and Vijay Manjrekar played more no. of years for West Zone teams...same with Amre I guess. 

Edited February 9, 2019 by Gollum