sensible-indian

Yes. Kuldeep should get an extended run. Not a tight workhorse but has different ability. Dynamic spinner - Kuldeep Workhorse spinner - someone else So the XI will have 6 bowlers. 3 full time pacers (with Nitish to support them) 1 main spinner (with Sundar to support him) Unreal balance. I know a long way to go. Lets see how Nitish bats in other countries.

Hope we dont create a reverse Irfan Pathan. Washington is a batsman who can bowl. He might one day become a proper full time spinner or he might not. In SENA, you need a workhorse spinner.

Spinner?

True but more often than not...Gavaskar chooses the easy route.

Patriot. Nationalist. Sigma male. Where are the laser eyes? Oops thats reserved for our Jaishankar. Hate Gambo's politics. Love him as a fighter, cricketer and human. Dunno how he is as a coach tho.

Sooooo cute.

Yes. Both Gavaskar and Sachin can give a masterclass when they wish to. But Gavaskar talks nonsense 99% of the time tho. The reason why we have ignorant fans is cos we have poor coverage (where commies & experts only engage in fan service). Anyways, I get your point about coaching too.

Honestly, feel like India are escaping and Aus will thrash us the next 2 tests. The luck is bound to run out some time. But then BGT in Aus is anything but predictable so one can never confidently make predictions. lol.

Yeah switch it up as you deem fit.

Pace bowling is bad. Its the best we got. Who else is there? If Bumrah beeaks down, it would get comical.

When have Gavaskar or Sachin presented insightful views? We need people who present insightful views. Pujara right now is shaping up to be a great expert. If he has decent commentary skills, he could educate people big time.

As I said a few days back, this XI is better than anything we will put up in MCG. 1. Jaiswal 2. Rahul 3. Gill 4. Pant 5. Nitish 6. Sundar 7. Jaddu 8. Ashwin 9. Bumrah 10. Siraj 11. Akashdeep Replace Ashwin with Tanush Kotian and my point still stands. In fact, batting gets strengthened more cos Tanush is a better bat than Ash in current form. Clutch too. I wouldn't mind trying another batsman in place of Gill. Like Eshwaran. Dude averages in his teens in SENA since Gabba 2021 (if I am not wrong).

Completely agree. Will add a sidenote (NOT related to rankings) Peaking hard in the RIGHT series or for the RIGHT duration is more valuable than consistent scoring. For example, Cook peaked HARD during 2 of the toughest tours - Aus & India. Result - series win Root is the better bat than Cook but the latter ended up giving English fans their fondest memories. Lara peaked HARD during Aus tour of WI 1998 Result - series draw (or else Aus would have thrashed WI) Pujara peaked HARD during 2018 tour. Result - series win Tendulkar peaked HARD during Sharjah 1998 carrying a lame duck team. Result - series win Yuvi peaked HARD during 2007 and 2011 WC Result - series win (no one gives a damn about Yuvi's average) Peak rating is not a useless stat. But yeah, it can be quite misleading if used wrongly. - Botham's peak as an AR was probably unmatched by anyone (maybe except Sobers). - Mushtaq Ahmed in his peak was a better spinner than ALL spinners except Warne & Murali (his body of work was insane for 4 years). 5 wickets per game with 19-21 average in SA, NZ & Aus and 26 average in Eng. Unreal dominance. It matters tho (maybe not ranking points wise but impact wise).

It's not that India has lack of coaches. Ashwin's impact will be far more for Indian cricket if he is allowed to speak his mind. Dude ended the chucking menace with a press conference and his full sleeve antics in a game. He made Mankad normal in IPL. You need massive reach to effect large changes. Being a coach where you can't voice out your opinion might produce 1-2 spinners but you don't get reach there. Today you are seeing memes about Kohli and Rohit which is creating pressure on BCCI. What's happening right now Bad results --> People's eyes opening up --> Criticism --> BCCI forced to take action But we can't always wait for bad results. We lost potentially 2 WTC titles because of this. What we need is: Knowledge --> People's eyes opening up --> Criticism --> BCCi forced to take action Ashwin is more valuable reaching the masses than being in a silent role. My personal take.

I feel the opposite. Ashwin might be a good coach.... But i feel he would be better served to educate the market. The more educated fans are, the more pressure on BCCI to appoint proper coaches. Ashwin's old coach Sunil Subramaniam is an amazing coach who is barely known outside. I know this cos my close friends got coached by him and all of them have high regards for Ashwin but the reverence they have for the coach is next level. If India had any sense, they never would have let Bharat Arun get away. We need more education. Less glamour.

This image says it all.

Fans are becoming more knowledgeable but we still have a long long way to go. Forget the cricketing world, I consider posters in this forum far ahead of the general fans. But to be honest... A lot of posters in this forum barely understand what chucking is and their knowledge on Indian spin pitches is shockingly bad. Personally, I am pretty bad at the technical aspects of the game, so I would love to hear someone explain it to me. As long as they aren't boring like Arun Lal, I would love an honest commentator who does technical analysis. Like how express bowling breaks down pace bowling and educates the entire forum. There is not a single commie in the world who breaks things down like he does. If Pujara can do it for batting, that's a great great thing. Ideally in he commie box, you need to have a variety of commies. Technical guy. Hype man (Shastri, Ian Smith types). Conversationalist. Stats guy. Heard that back in the day, Narottam Puri used to prepare a lot before commentating. Nowadays, we have experts waking up, brushing their teeth, taking a bath and then coming onto the commentary box to vomit whatever they feel like.

Ashwin is totally the kind of guy who would speak like this. lol. Personal opinions and media trained answers are not the same. His father spoke what he couldn't & wouldn't speak.

All Ashwin would have wanted was the WTC title which was unfairly denied to him (2023) when he was actually looking good. I can't think of a cricketer who deserved the WTC title more than Ashwin (and Jadeja). When that's almost gone and you won't be picked and kept on tenterhooks till the end, what's the point. You pick dud bats in the team for years and keep dropping bowlers, naturally chickens will come home to roost....and guess who pays the price? The scapegoat. And in this case it was Ashwin (who unfortunately declined quite a bit at an unfortunate time). Before India left for Aus, considering the reports coming from BCCI, I said Ashwin should announce immediate retirement as a giant FU to the management. And now it has come. The timing is good tho. We escaped in Gabba. The environment is not all gloom and doom. Great time to retire. Irony is that even this pale shadow of Ashwin wasn't actually bad in Adelaide. 2.9 rpo against Aus who faced ZERO pressure (due to our bats shitting the bed again) and our pacers (except Bummy) leaking 4-5 rpo from the other end. Head thrashed him for a bunch of sixes or else he was even tighter than his figures suggest. Got Marsh...may be Head with some luck. Compare that to performance of all spinners in this series (so far). Irony is that if you dropped Roko and kept Jaddu, Sundar, Nitish Reddy and Ash in the playing XI... We get to strengthen our batting, bowling, captaincy and likely our catching too. That's how bad we are right now. No wonder he chose to retire and walk away from this circus.

Completely disagree. Bravo to Rachin. Shame on Indian bats.

Pdogg destroyed Gambo in twitter. Go and watch it in twitter. He brought up strong points that just cant be refuted. Gambo got this job cos KKR won IPL. But who was KKRs coach? Chandrakanth Patil. He won with many domestic smaller teams prior to getting the job. Was Gambo the mentor for all thsoe teams? He said Gambo and his team wasnt bad per se.. But the question is Are they the right fit for us right now? And what process was followed to pick him as coach?

It was a weird pitch. Some balls would rag like a rank turner. Some would just go on straight. (Not talking about natural variations). Even the bounce was inconsistent. Sometimes behaved like a Mumbai pitch..sometimes not. Pitch wasnt quick. Was relatively slow for a Mumbai pitch. Defo much tougher than a regular turner. But a pure rank turner would rag consistently once the turn starts. Just wondering how to classify this pitch.

You hear that? Thats the sound of BCCI gargling Kohli's balls. We don't play Bazball. We play Koball. And next month, Aussie cumball is gonna rain down on our parade.

Sigh...we call everything dust bowls and rank turners these days. Until India gets good spin playing batsmen, this misconception wont die down. We are so used to seeing horrible batsmen with no technique that we rate pitches based on current bats performances.

To be fair, Kohli had a legendary overseas cycle in 2018 on some of the toughest pitches ever. Was great in SA 2013 too. England he sucked except 2018. Aus - he has had great outings.