jonas10 Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 Question for anyone who would like to share their opinion. Recently I've heard lots of commentary, theories etc "India should play five specialist bowlers" "Yuvraj should be dropped for Raina" "Yusaf is being wasted play Raina instead" etc. I've never heard anyone talk about dropping Ghambhir for either a fifth specalist bowler or to bring on Raina. For the last year I have not been impressed with Ghambhir at all. His technique is great but as a #3 I'd expect much more from him. I know a major reason they play him is cause he is a lefty but so is Raina as well. Id suggest moving Kholi to #3 since he is India's most reliable anchor and slotting Raina who can part time bowl and is a much better fielder at 6. All Ghambhir really brings to India is batting and that being said his strike rate is usually mediocre when it really matters. Revised Squad Sehwag Sachin Kholi Yuvraj Dhoni Raina Pathan Harbhajan Z Khan Ashwin/Chawla Patel Comments? Link to comment
Manny_Pacquiao Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 two things 1. u could at least spell his name correctly 2. the guy is one of the best ODI batsmen around and there is no way he is gonna be dropped. go fish somewhere else Link to comment
pinkfreud Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 Gambhir will never be dropped in favour of Raina because Gambhir is one of the best players of spin in the Indian squad. Also, everyone knows that Raina is weak against the short ball. Gambhir is more of an innings builder and though he didn't play well yesterday, I'm sure he can notch up a better performance in the coming games. Now Piyush Chawla on the other hand... :--D Link to comment
jonas10 Posted March 7, 2011 Author Share Posted March 7, 2011 I know he wont be dropped. I'm wondering why its never even considered. For someone that is "one of the best players of spin" he has looked very mediocre in all three games. Over the past year he has been tremendously out of form and yet he appears to be another person with a spot reserved for him. Kholi would do much better at #3 anchoring the innings Link to comment
pinkfreud Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 I know he wont be dropped. I'm wondering why its never even considered. For someone that is "one of the best players of spin" he has looked very mediocre in all three games. Over the past year he has been tremendously out of form and yet he appears to be another person with a spot reserved for him. Kholi would do much better at #3 anchoring the innings The same argument can be made against Yuvraj Singh, who's been in worse form than Gambhir. How can you call Gambhir mediocre when he anchored our innings in the Bangladesh match before Virat came in and helped Sehwag uproot Bangladesh? And one should also not forget that Gambhir made a good half century in our tied match against England. Gambhir is more of a stabilizer than a risk taker and that's exactly what we need in the #3 batting position. We already have destroyers in Sehwag and Yusuf, and it's a well known fact that between Gambhir and Raina, Gambhir is more reliable against both the spin and the short ball. Link to comment
jonas10 Posted March 7, 2011 Author Share Posted March 7, 2011 Pink, you are correct. But part of the Indian strategy is playing 4 bowlers with guys like Yuvraj and Yusuf making up the remaing 10 overs bowling. Also Yuvraj is still a much better fielder than Gambhir. If you wanna discuss the Bangla match you'll remember he got his 50 and got out right away. His strike rate was awful the first 20 balls and Kholi was much better as an anchor with Sehwag. For someone that is suppose to be an anchor I look at a guy like Amla who plays the whole match, rarely does he get out on 10 15 runs the way Gambhir does. Currently Gauthum is not bringing a lot to the team, he cant bowl is a medicore fielder and seems to have a run limit of about 50. Link to comment
flamy Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 I know he wont be dropped. I'm wondering why its never even considered. For someone that is "one of the best players of spin" he has looked very mediocre in all three games. Over the past year he has been tremendously out of form and yet he appears to be another person with a spot reserved for him. Kholi would do much better at #3 anchoring the innings huh? yesterday was a freak dismissal, otherwise he is looking very fluent. dunno watchu talkin aboooooot. Link to comment
pinkfreud Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 Pink, you are correct. But part of the Indian strategy is playing 4 bowlers with guys like Yuvraj and Yusuf making up the remaing 10 overs bowling. Also Yuvraj is still a much better fielder than Gambhir. If you wanna discuss the Bangla match you'll remember he got his 50 and got out right away. His strike rate was awful the first 20 balls and Kholi was much better as an anchor with Sehwag. For someone that is suppose to be an anchor I look at a guy like Amla who plays the whole match, rarely does he get out on 10 15 runs the way Gambhir does. Currently Gauthum is not bringing a lot to the team, he cant bowl is a medicore fielder and seems to have a run limit of about 50. Gauti didn't get a 50 in the Bangla match; he got a half century against England, and his strike rate was 100% in the Bangladesh match. Also, his strike rate against England was far better than Yuvraj's strike rate yesterday. It's silly to talk about 'poor strike rate' in 20 balls rather than look at a batsman's entire innings. Sachin also scored his century against England after a relatively slow start- why isn't anyone talking about that? Because that is what stabilizers DO. They don't whack the ball in a hurry because their main job is to anchor the innings well enough for the smacking to begin in the later overs after a good foundation has been established. I too agree that Gambhir could have done better as a whole by staying through till the end, but it still isn't a concern because our middle order seems to be doing well enough in crunch situations. If you ask me, our bowling is more of an issue than people like Gambhir. It's one of them who needs replacing, not our batsmen. I personally feel Gambhir is bringing enough to the team. So what if Raina is a part time bowler and better fielder? At the end of the day, It's already evident that Dhoni's onus is on batting strength, and judging by this very fact, Gambhir will always be the pick for batting when it comes down to him and Raina. However, I'm not saying Raina shouldn't be given a chance. It would be handy for us to play him against Netherlands so that he can play in the future should something awful happen to one of our batsmen. Also, against teams like SA where their death bowlers and spinners are using short balls, bouncers, and tweak balls respectively, Gambhir is far better suited to help us tide through than Raina. Link to comment
vvvslaxman Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 Because he captained recently against NZ and won man of the series. He is in good form as well. I also thought about this. But on second thoughts when it comes to chasing Gauti is one of the best going around. Link to comment
acharya Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 only one to be dropped shud be chawla - I don't know why people want to drop gauti Link to comment
Clarke Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 How come no one talks about dropping Sachin, Dhoni & Zaheer Link to comment
jonas10 Posted March 7, 2011 Author Share Posted March 7, 2011 No one talks about dropping Dhoni cause we need someone to keep the wicket. Zaheer cause we need someone to take wickets and Sachin cause apparently winning the world cup is primarily for him! Gambhir has plenty of replacement options most notably Kholi who is a much much steadier anchor than he is. I guess being in form is subjective. Kholi is in the form of his life and is the best batsman in the world chasing these days. Gambhir has one thing going for him - he is a lefty with Yuvraj being the other lefty. I would love to see Kholi in at 3 and Raina in at 6. Ghambhir just is not bringing anything exciting to the team and is basically on the team for expectation and not current performance. Link to comment
Switchblade Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 why should he be dropped o.p i thought that he did well as he was playing the anchor role when Viru and then Sachin were attacking from the other end yesterday as suggested by flamy it was more of a freak dismissal and he usually does well when we have to chase and recently he was man of the series against Kiwis Link to comment
ganeshran Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 Gambhir is technically very strong and has very few flaws unlike Raina. So no point in dropping either Gambhir or Kohli. Link to comment
kabira Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 The person who spells two indian names incorrectly, cannot be an indian. Paki troll alert... Link to comment
Switchblade Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 The person who spells two indian names incorrectly' date=' cannot be an indian. Paki troll alert...[/quote'] there are many who are starting some foolish threads Link to comment
ShanS Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 WTF is this about dropping Gambhir ? As others have mentioned already, he has very good technique and he's the ideal guy at no.3 position because he can build an innings and also can hit the ball if required. He opens the batting in Test matches. So facing a relatively new ball (2-3 overs) if one our opener gets out early shouldn't be a problem for him. He just scored 50 odd runs against Eng at a good rate. He didn't do too bad against BD either. Only failure was yesterdays match. I guess he didn't notice the fielder was a bit wider than usual. Credits go to Porterfeild if he placed that fielder a bit wide knowingly. TBH his dismissals were a bit unlucky if one can say so. Against BD tried to work the ball for 1.. ball sneaked through bat. Against ENG, again looking for 1 against offie.. again bowled. Only difference was against BD the ball sneaked past the inside half.. against ENG, the ball sneaked past the outside half! I've seen Gambo getting out numerous times trying to run the ball down towards the 3rd man boundary and only succeeding to nick to slip/'keeper etc. I hope he would be more careful in future about selecting proper deliveries to score a single from. Link to comment
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