Is India a Dad's Army?

[zubinpepsi]

After reading some articles of late I also hade the opinion tht we have this dad's army.. but lookin at these numbers given in cricinfo.. it seems like we have the best balanced side..a right mix of youth and experience compared to other teams.. I think we have the right team for the west indian conditions. When u look at each table, we have the team which has more r less a very good mixture of youth and experience.. so if anyone calls our team as dad's army throw some australian eggs on them.. :hic: World Cup 2007 The real Dad's Army, and inexperienced England Travis Basevi and George Binoy March 7, 2007 The World Cup has reached its warm-up stage and while some of the older players are coping with weary shoulders and niggles, the young 'uns are getting acclimatised to the foreign conditions in the Caribbean. This week, we look at the overall age distribution across the World Cup squads and the reservoirs of experience, or the lack of it, they possess. Australia have been wearing the Dad's Army label for a while now and perhaps rightly so because they have ten players on the wrong side of 30 attempting to defend their World Champion status. South Africa, who have an average age of around 30.07, are worthy contenders as well. You would have noticed that most of the better fielding sides are the ones whose players are getting on in years. Among the major Test playing nations, India and Pakistan are among the youngest squads but are arguably the worst fielders. The minnows present an interesting contrast. Canada are the oldest team in the competition with an average age of over 31. They have the only two 40-plus players of the tournament in George Codrington and Anderson Cummins, the latter being the West Indies highest wicket-taker in the 1992 World Cup, and being only one of five players from that edition to be selected for the forthcoming tournament. Bermuda have a generation gap of sorts, with ten players in their thirties, and the other five all in their early twenties. At the other end of the spectrum is Netherlands' Alexei Kervezee, the youngest player, at the tender age of 17, whilst Zimbabwe have 13 players below the age of 25 and are overall the youngest squad in the West Indies. As a result of the chaos that has eaten away at Zimbabwe cricket over the last five years, only one player - Stuart Matsikenyeri - survives from the team that played the 2003 edition in South Africa. The Asian heavyweights are miles ahead of the rest in terms of collective one-day experience and India and Sri Lanka are a fair distance ahead of Pakistan. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan are the five players in the tournament with more than 300 ODIs worth of experience. A most eye-catching stat is England's inexperience. Eight of their players have played fewer than 25 one-day internationals and only Paul Collingwood and Andrew Flintoff have played more than 100. West Indies' Kieron Pollard and Kenya's Rajesh Bhudia are the only players with no international experience whatsoever going into the World Cup. While Pollard impressed many in the West Indies with his hard hitting during this season's Carib Beer Series, Bhudia remains an unknown quantity. He's played in just two List A matches and hasn't batted or bowled in either.