Timid mentality in test batting...

[asterix]

Test batting is no just about leaving the balls or play defensive shots most of the time...

 

Theres a reason Sehwag, Warner etc have done so well in Test cricket...

 

Nobody will remember the timid, wet cats like Aggarwals, Pujaras & Rahanes... To hell with the “batting technique”...

 

Id rather have KLR, HaPa, Pant, Iyer type players in the team...

 

Edit: Not implying to replace Pujara. I included him in the list to highlight the “sameness” in batting approach of all other batsmen...

Edited December 20, 2020 by asterix

[Stan AF]

This is something that never gets discussed and always flies under the radar.

 

IMO, Any batsman worth his salt should find a way to score runs. Period. No ifs and buts. Offense is the best defense.

Let's face it, bowlers job is to bowl tight lines and it is upto the batsman to disturb that rhythm. If you can't do that you don't belong to the species named batsmen.

 

And coming to the Indian team, I see no natural stroke makers in the team bar maybe kohli. There's absolutely no one else who would give a fan a confidence saying alright this guy would attack and take us out of the woods. So much timidness as you pointed it out. There's just no free flowing run making ability. I can never bring myself to appreciate batting that is done by the likes of Pujara and Rahane. We need natural born run makers.

 

Earlier we had Sehwag, tendulkar, laxman, dravid who would score tons and tons of runs. These 4 have a combined 100 test 100s between them and what do we have now?

[Straight Drive]

Instead it's the flamboyant batting which results in crap scores like 36. Proper batting does not gives such ridiculous scores. The core of team should be proper orthodox batting with maybe one risky scorer in tests. The team will go more downhill if test batting is treated like LOI batting.

[Straight Drive]

Let's see if Pujara's replament scores 500 in test series in OZ. Until his replacement does that it is all khayali pulav. 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Straight Drive

[nevada]

They picked Shaw as poor man's Sehwag and it didn't work. Agarwal has actually batted positively in home conditions and is not a chipku type usually. He too is struggling with technique issues. KL would also have knicked one to the keeper most likely. HaPa might have done slightly better as he plays with an uncluttered mind. The Aussie bowlers were in the zone yesterday, but our timid batsman put more than an extra spring in their step. 

[Lone Wolf]

26 minutes ago, asterix said:

Test batting is no just about leaving the balls or play defensive shots most of the time...

 

Theres a reason Sehwag, Warner etc have done so well in Test cricket...

 

Nobody will remember the timid, wet cats like Aggarwals, Pujaras & Rahanes... To hell with the “batting technique”...

 

Id rather have KLR, HaPa, Pant, Iyer type players in the team...

Agarwal is anything but timid dude has big strokes & power game.  Maybe TM wants everyone to play like pujara.  Regarding guys like Pujara,  Rahane,  Vihari,  Saha..  These all are similar kind of players that won't win you games.  Kaptaan lolli is also limited but he makes up with whatever he has. 

I also believe we should go with genuine stroke makers in overseas & left right combos. 

Mayank 

Kishan (Attacking opener Aka David Warner) 

Rohit

Kohli 

Gill

Pant

KLR

This batting line up I reckon can score 300+ consistently.  Right mixture of youth & experience & players with decent backfoot game + left handers. 

 

[kubrickian]

16 minutes ago, Straight Drive said:

Instead it's the flamboyant batting which results in crap scores like 36. Proper batting does not gives such ridiculous scores. The core of team should be proper orthodox batting with maybe one risky scorer in tests. The team will go more downhill if test batting is treated like LOI batting.

Attacking batting in tests is not T20 batting. It basically means batting with positive intent, meaning picking the right deliveries to score. If you have too many 20 off 70 deliveries type batsmen, there wont be any pressure on opposition bowlers and if they are very good, they can pick you off.

[nevada]

14 minutes ago, Stan AF said:

This is something that never gets discussed and always flies under the radar.

 

IMO, Any batsman worth his salt should find a way to score runs. Period. No ifs and buts. Offense is the best defense.

Let's face it, bowlers job is to bowl tight lines and it is upto the batsman to disturb that rhythm. If you can't do that you don't belong to the species named batsmen.

 

And coming to the Indian team, I see no natural stroke makers in the team bar maybe kohli. There's absolutely no one else who would give a fan a confidence saying alright this guy would attack and take us out of the woods. So much timidness as you pointed it out. There's just no free flowing run making ability. I can never bring myself to appreciate batting that is done by the likes of Pujara and Rahane. We need natural born run makers.

 

Earlier we had Sehwag, tendulkar, laxman, dravid who would score tons and tons of runs. These 4 have a combined 100 test 100s between them and what do we have now?

None of our batsmen is of Sachin/Laxman/Segwag's calibre with the ability to punish even good bowling. At-least right left combination would have helped but we don't have a single leftie in the top or middle order. In all formats, our main batting issue is a stagnant scoreboard. Until we have a captain who backs a batting lineup for an entire series, batsmen won't play freely. Constant chop and change with live in today mindset has prevented talent development.

[Straight Drive]

13 minutes ago, kubrickian said:

Attacking batting in tests is not T20 batting. It basically means batting with positive intent, meaning picking the right deliveries to score. If you have too many 20 off 70 deliveries type batsmen, there wont be any pressure on opposition bowlers and if they are very good, they can pick you off.

Who do you think will average 48 plus like Pujara, even in thoughts. Can you or someone else name a player who will surely have scored or will score approx 6000 runs at avg of about 50. Does India has a better test batsman than him right now apart from Kohli.

 

When batsmen attack, the more risky it becomes, unless one is Sehwag or Richards who would hit middle of bat playing away from body. Those were rare players in test cricket history. 

 

India needs proper orthodox batsman like Pujara, especially this team which is built of players whose temperament is more suited to LOI.

 

36 runs is because Pujara and Kohli failed. When Pujara and Kohli score tons or doubles, the team scores 400 plus or 600 plus in innings.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Straight Drive

[puneet28]

I don't think so. Not too long ago, team management wanted Pujara to step up his SR. Yesterday we flopped because we didn't respect the bowlers. 

[kubrickian]

3 minutes ago, Straight Drive said:

Who do you think will average 48 plus like Pujara, even in thoughts. Can you or someone else name a player who will surely have scored or will score approx 6000 runs at avg of about 50. Does India has a better test batsman than him right now. 

 

India needs one proper orthodox batsman like Pujara, especially this team which is built of players whose temperament is more suited to LOI.

Not saying Pujara needs to be replaced. Need a batsman and even an opener who can play that role but need other batsmen who can score also. At the moment, seems like there is too much sameness in batting approach. No variety to unsettle the bowlers.

[Straight Drive]

4 minutes ago, kubrickian said:

Not saying Pujara needs to be replaced. Need a batsman and even an opener who can play that role but need other batsmen who can score also. At the moment, seems like there is too much sameness in batting approach. No variety to unsettle the bowlers.

There are some who think Pujara is the problem. 

 

Pujara actually scores. Only Kohli in this team scores more than Pujara. Pujara has around 6000 runs. Who apart from Kohli has that many at avg of 48. It's a blatant lie that Pujara does not score. 

[Trichromatic]

Sehwag and Pujara?

 

What did Sehwag do in SENA? What's the use of Sehwag like batsman in such conditions? 

 

Pujara has won series in Aus, test in SA.

 

If we are looking for gun player on turners and SC, Pujara is again doing that role.

 

Sehwag averages 33 in SENA that after playing multiple series on tracks where batsmen from both sides scored 400-600 for fun. He scored century against likes of Brad Williams, Lee, Bracken on flat decks? 

 

If he had play on same tracks where Pujara has played most of the time in SENA, he would be averaging 20.

 

That mythical attacking batting of Sehwag in SENA made him walking wicket there.

[SK_IH]

It's a different issue. Put these same batsmen in the comfort of home conditions & you ll see rates of 4 rpo like India smashed SA last year. When the bowlers are not giving you any freebies in alien conditions, batsmen generally suffer. Even the 2011 English debacle was mainly due to one of finest English attack bowling consistently & ruthlessly which India were not prepared for. 

Last time around Pujara was successful in negotiating the attack but in this match the bowlers just didn't relent. The batsmen just kept finding the edge which do not happen often but it was that kind of a day.

I have been greatly disillusioned by test cricket lately simply due to such gutless batting efforts routinely by all top sides when they travel. I have come up with theory that in the last 10 odd years most of the top sides have assembled all round bowling attacks who know how to exploit their own conditions mercilessly. The likes of Eng, NZ, India have improved immensely, Aus & SA were always elite. The potency of bowling attacks combined with batsmen with ordinary temparament have resulted in these debates. The new generation do not have patience/resilience to grind a session when things are not easy & hence abject surrenders take place on routine basis away from home. 

The bottom line is test cricket has no future, ICC & respective boards are trying their darndest to milk as much as it can by these long winding 4-5 match  test series between Aus/Eng/Ind because they know it won't stay forever.

[Trichromatic]

6 minutes ago, Straight Drive said:

There are some who think Pujara is the problem. 

 

Pujara actually scores. Only Kohli in this team scores more than Pujara. Pujara has around 6000 runs. Who apart from Kohli has that many at avg of 48. It's a blatant lie that Pujara does not score. 

 

 

Pujara will end up as top 10 Indian batsman all time in SENA. He averages 40 in SENA since 2015. Overall he is just behind our ATG batsmen.

Sehwag won't make that list. But people want Pujara out of 11.

[Trichromatic]

10 minutes ago, SK_IH said:

It's a different issue. Put these same batsmen in the comfort of home conditions & you ll see rates of 4 rpo like India smashed SA last year. When the bowlers are not giving you any freebies in alien conditions, batsmen generally suffer. Even the 2011 English debacle was mainly due to one of finest English attack bowling consistently & ruthlessly which India were not prepared for. 

Last time around Pujara was successful in negotiating the attack but in this match the bowlers just didn't relent. The batsmen just kept finding the edge which do not happen often but it was that kind of a day.

I have been greatly disillusioned by test cricket lately simply due to such gutless batting efforts routinely by all top sides when they travel. I have come up with theory that in the last 10 odd years most of the top sides have assembled all round bowling attacks who know how to exploit their own conditions mercilessly. The likes of Eng, NZ, India have improved immensely, Aus & SA were always elite. The potency of bowling attacks combined with batsmen with ordinary temparament have resulted in these debates. The new generation do not have patience/resilience to grind a session when things are not easy & hence abject surrenders take place on routine basis away from home. 

The bottom line is test cricket has no future, ICC & respective boards are trying their darndest to milk as much as it can by these long winding 4-5 match  test series between Aus/Eng/Ind because they know it won't stay forever.

 

It's not just that. Australia played 2003-2015 mostly on flat decks. Same is case with other teams. We batted 2 days to draw a test in NZ. It was gutsy batting on flat deck in 2009. Big scores were common in England also in 2000s.

 

Give conditions like 2014, 2004 or 2008 to these batsmen. They will also score big 100s.

 

SA always had difficult conditions and that's why no Asian batsman could score double hundred there.

[ShoonyaSifar]

What you call timid batting is classical test match batting, on far too tougher pitches vs a much better bowling unit than we had faced in the 2000s.

 

For all the so called 'flamboyance', only time we won a recent series in SENA was when a 'timid' batsman stood up (albeit vs a weakened Aus side but the bowling was equally strong).

 

 

[Lone Wolf]

All the answers to our worries lies in having 2-3 left handers in the Top 6. 

Cummins & Hazelwood would had to change their lines & lengths if they were bowling to left handers Y'day.  Instead they feasted on army of Right handers & kept bowling on similar line & lengths & our batters kept nicking off. 

Left handers bring variety & different angles & stroke  making.  That's why every top team has them.  I wonder what is wrong with selectors & TM that they can't even learn watching opposition teams trouble them with left handers.  Latham,  Nicholls troubled our bowlers in NZ for same reason.  Our bowlers had to change ends to dismiss them or trouble them.  Wade with his weird shuffle troubled our bowlers initially in both inns & in 2nd Inns he just troubled them so much.  Dean Elgar is also the one that comes to mind. 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Lone Wolf

[SK_IH]

3 minutes ago, Trichromatic said:

 

It's not just that. Australia played 2003-2015 mostly on flat decks. Same is case with other teams. We batted 2 days to draw a test in NZ. It was gutsy batting on flat deck in 2009. Big scores were common in England also in 2000s.

 

Give conditions like 2014, 2004 or 2008 to these batsmen. They will also score big 100s.

 

SA always had difficult conditions and that's why no Asian batsman could score double hundred there.

English & NZ bowling attacks post 2010 have been excellent. This combined with batting lineups with suspect temperaments.  The last great touring side was SA due to their batsmen who had old school mentality. They could pile on runs & stonewall as the situation demanded, away from home.

[Straight Drive]

6 minutes ago, Trichromatic said:

 

 

Pujara will end up as top 10 Indian batsman all time in SENA. He averages 40 in SENA since 2015. Overall he is just behind our ATG batsmen.

Sehwag won't make that list. But people want Pujara out of 11.

In last few minutes I have also decided this Pujara is useless. Maybe he scored 6000 against Kenya, Ireland Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.

 

My team for test for future.

 

Tripathi - He hits ball in air and attacks bowler , so what he gets out on zero. Even Sunny got out on zero at times. So what's the point of doing tuk tuk and getting out.

 

Sanju Samson - He is best suited for top 3 spot . Anywhere down in batting order and it's injustice for him. So he gets in.

 

Nitish Rana - We need a left handed batsman at any cost. He can bowl as well. Wow. Book his ticket.

 

KL Rahul - Averages 34. He can only improve from there. There is no downside left you see from there.

 

Hardik Pandya - He has the ability to take on best bowlers in world and even counter attack. 

 

Pant - I would like to replace Saha with Pant. That's my genuine selection though.

 

What a scary test lineup which will throw shivers in minds of great test pace bowlers. Who would like to be scored a four if not a six every over.