Captain of Bhangra Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 The team Once you get into the Indian team (if you're lucky enough to be born in the right part of India), you need to buckle down and get a few good games behind you. That will get you your fan-base, media hype, which in turn leads to money from endorsements, and added to the fame, your pick of hot women to shag. By the time the World cup comes round, you can fail, because it is the hopes of billions of people you risk shattering, not your bank balance. The fans Sometimes I cringe at my fellow Indian fans' behaviour. We all hear about the guys who torch effigies and stone houses, but there's a breed of Indian fan who is more harmful to our game. This fan will see the greatness of an individual Indian player, and his commendable achievements, and become a fan of that player. That player will not be great forever, but will be regarded as being fit for selection based on previous history. The best example of this can only be Tendulkar. He has achieved some major accolades in World cricket, and was the best of his generation. Many Indian fans (watch, for proof, a lot of them will be arguing with me in this thread for making this statement) have turned a mortal human being into a God. This means that now, when that same player is nothing more than an average player, he is walking in to the team. The Board can not be blamed, would you want to be the guy to drop Tendulkar? You'd have to be put on witness protection. Compare this with the far more advanced Australians. You can hate them all you want, but their success is based on their harsh attitude. You can be a World class batsman, winning games for them single-handed for a year or two, but if you screw up just a few times, you'll be out. Knowing this, most of their batsmen retire gracefully before they are pushed. Tendulkar will never be under that sort of pressure, and therefore is unlikely to walk. On Indian message boards, a comment about Tendulkar is more blasphemous than an attack on someone's Religion. He is the best since Bradman, but we need to thank God that Bradman was not Indian, because the way we are, he would still be in the team now, they'd stand his corpse at the crease. When Indian selectors crack down on current performance, and stop living on what players did 5-10 years ago, we'll get somewhere. To fix this retarded team, here's what needs to be done: 1. Zonal selections abolished - I don't give a sh*t if all the 11 players in the national side come from one small rural village and struggle to speak Hindi. If they're the best 11 players in India, they should all be in the Indian team. 2. Performance based selection - It doesn't matter if you have 60 hundreds for India, you play crap for a few games, you're out, and the next best guy comes in. The two above actions combined will benefit Indian cricket as a whole. If you play domestically for India, you will perform better, knowing that your chances of a call up are fair. Equally, if you are already in the Indian squad, you will work your ass off to stay in that squad. The amount of competition created by this will produce a pool of World class cricketers, and will also make sure that Indian domestic cricket is the best. The talent is already there, the motivation needs to be provided by the above... Rant over... Link to comment
yoda Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... Excellent post, COB. Totally agree with you, except that part where you say: It doesn't matter if you have 60 hundreds for India, you play crap for a few games, you're out, and the next best guy comes in. We can't really push someone out cause they play crap for a few games. I agree that past performance shouldn't give you an extra long life, but should give you "some" life. It definitely needs to be shorter than it is now. I would add few more things to improve our system: Revamp first class system to two tiers. 1. Top tier would only have 5 teams. Unfortunately it has to be zone based. South/North/East/Central/West. If a zone is very weak, have a system to move players from a zone loaded with talent to other ones. National team will be picked only from this tier. This would allow teams to be picked from a smaller pool of "better" players who will play against better players and will provide a better indication of who might be fit for selection to the national team. 2. Second tier would be similar to what we have today a gazillion teams. A non-performing national player gets sent back to top tier to get his act together. If he sucks there, get goes down to second tier. Top players from second tier move to top tier and poor performing players from top tier move to second tier. One of the big problems we have right now is that we don't really have our best players representing the country cause we have a diluted system with too many teams. Link to comment
Rafiq_Rocks Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... 1. Zonal selections abolished - I don't give a sh*t if all the 11 players in the national side come from one small rural village and struggle to speak Hindi. If they're the best 11 players in India, they should all be in the Indian team. Link to comment
Inside_edge Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... Good suggestions.I will drop a line or two. Infrastructure: Build stadiums in even density to cover most part of the country while maintaining/upgrading pitches of the ones already active. Stadiums and facilities will provide opportunity to millions of talents that don't even make it to forefront. And for heaven's sake, have right assortments of grassy,hard,slow and turners instead of only pattas. One thing is, no matter how good the plans, nothing gonna change when corrupt, dishonest guys rule and play the game.Waisey Imandari and sachhai are the answers to most of our issues let alone cricket. Link to comment
Guest BossBhai Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... -- Removed on request of the user -- Link to comment
Guest BossBhai Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... -- Removed on request of the user -- Link to comment
soma Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... 1. Top tier would only have 5 teams. Unfortunately it has to be zone based. South/North/East/Central/West. If a zone is very weak, have a system to move players from a zone loaded with talent to other ones. National team will be picked only from this tier. This would allow teams to be picked from a smaller pool of "better" players who will play against better players and will provide a better indication of who might be fit for selection to the national team. 2. Second tier would be similar to what we have today a gazillion teams. It is very good idea. It is a simple and an efficient approach. The scouts (selectors??) would not have to spend through thousands of players' stats to select a team. This may work only if other board members don't influence the selection process, which is highly unlikely. Link to comment
Guest BossBhai Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... -- Removed on request of the user -- Link to comment
gator Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... excellent points, COB.... irony is, everyone knows it, but it wont happen..... an extra point to add will be, if u dont qualify for minimum atheticism, u wont be picked regardless of who u r..... there goes out, ur gangulies, kumbles, dravids... Link to comment
head coach Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... really good thread and excellent suggestions by some of you. I say keep the door open all the time and have competition for each spot in the team. As Chappell suggested have a pool of 20-25 players and give them chances in series. Give rest to the guys by having rotation and give opportunity for new talents. Chappell gave all the good advice but it fell on dumb ears. Atleast now is the time to sit and think fellows. Rise up and act soon! Link to comment
veer Posted March 25, 2007 Share Posted March 25, 2007 Re: My View: What's Wrong With Indian Cricket... its all in the head.. its just the mentality of Indians.. all three of these games you can easily relate to our typical mentality.. and when you have leader like dravid who do not hold fear in his players unlike ganguly, then its just "hoti hai chalti hai mamu.. " .. if bermuda wins today and we go in super 8.. i bet we will come out with vengance.. because now that people are not expecting us to go thru and there is little hope.. they will play without any pressure.. need to take care of this attitude first.. Link to comment
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