Ian Chappel attributes India's fast bowling success to high population

[shychipmunk]

Snapshot from Ian Chappel's ESPN Cricinfo article

 

Is this not undermining the talent and hardwork of India's fast bowlers?

Does this not sound like an excuse?

 

[Sandeep99]

Chappell and his whining. If India fail, we're not good enough. If we win, it's population silly. 

[Serpico]

I used to think a lot about this.. how come we have the largest and most passionate population but not producing and nurturing great talents regularly when teams with less than 10% of that are doing it. Ideally not only our team should be the best, even our second string team should be world class.. I'm glad that we have finally arrived at this phase. 

 

I don't mind if people are talking about it, it is what it is. We had the largest population since our team got test status. Let them rationalise the defeat in which ever way they like, as long as we're winning consistently it doesn't matter

[G_B_]

27 minutes ago, Sandeep99 said:

Chappell and his whining. If India fail, we're not good enough. If we win, it's population silly. 

 

he has to churn in an article come what may. The nature of the media means you need to have a bit of an odd opinion to stick out.

[TNAmarkFromIndia]

14 minutes ago, Serpico said:

I used to think a lot about this.. how come we have the largest and most passionate population but not producing and nurturing great talents regularly when teams with less than 10% of that are doing it.

Not much of a fast bowling culture. I guess coaches too are/were more intent on consistent line and length bowling rather than fast bowling. Maybe even the heat and non-helpful wickets for fast bowling at grassroots level have to do with it. 

[Adamant]

This type of argument has basically zero logic. 

Indians are also genetically not as tall and athletic as some other nations. 

Average height of men in australia is 5"11

Average height of indians male is

5'4

 

Now we can also use this excuse that we are not physically gifted and still we are doing so well. 

 

The fact is that you need to do well with whatever resources you have. 

If we calculate on basis of population then pakistan should be no. 2, also NZ should be the greatest cricket nation ever. 

 

Majority of our population still reside in rural areas,  65.53 %, to be exact. 

Many of them don't have the facilities to earn bread let alone play professional sport. 

 

Also, the attitude of 20th century born Indian parents, most of them don't allow their kids to pursue a career in sports. 

In Australia and western world, sports is as important as education. 

[deathmonger]

he isnt saying anything negative tbh.

 

we with our population should always have been a cricketing superpower, the equivalent of say the us in basketball.

 

but one issue was poverty. india might have lots of people but most of them were dirt poor. that's why most of the legends pre 00s are all from big cities, cause they are the only ones who could afford to play cricket (kapil is the only exception i believe).

 

after economic reforms in 92, as indians became richer money started trickling into cricket and the "effective population" became bigger and bigger. also better facilities to nurture and groom that talent - higher fc salaries, ipl contracts, sports science etc. and now we have such a large pool.

 

a lot of good indian cricketers post 00s are from relatively smaller towns (As in not one of the big 6 - mumbai, delhi, chennai, bangalore, hyderabad, kolkata) or humble backgrounds - dhoni, pant, shami, bumrah, pujara, jadeja, pandya etc etc. gill and siraj now.

 

good thing is india still has loads of years of economic growth left to go so this pool will keep on becoming bigger and better (unlike first world countries like aus and nz which have hit a limit). so as indians keep getting richer and healthier etc etc the team will keep getting better and better.

 

we have the highest w/l ratio in all three formats in the 2010s.

 

2020s is when we will pull away (as can be seen by u19 performances over the last few editions - this generation will come of age in the 20s).

 

by late 2030s i believe it will be like a usa basketball situation.

Edited February 1, 2021 by deathmonger

[Vickydev]

He is not wrong though. He is talking about the depth in our pace attack which for Test cricket is as good as England and better than Australia. Our strength in depth in pacer is only going to grow due to our sheer numbers. Once we got our house in order we were going to produce genuine quality fast bowlers. That was the only thing holding us back really. 

 

Nowadays almost every elite Ranji team has atleast one 140k around pacer and that sort of strength in numbers is only going to push us forwards breeding more competition.

[Khota]

Population has some to do with it. In the end it is all about money and resources. The real test of a nation is if it can be competitive in football.

[TNAmarkFromIndia]

1 hour ago, Khota said:

Population has some to do with it. In the end it is all about money and resources. The real test of a nation is if it can be competitive in football.

That's again where culture comes into picture. We don't have a footballing culture outside of a few pockets of the country. The whole "find 11 decent footballers in a country of a billion" doesn't really work when you're growing up in a country where the competition is really poor and resources are substandard.

[Soldier]

3 hours ago, Adamant said:

This type of argument has basically zero logic. 

Indians are also genetically not as tall and athletic as some other nations. 

Average height of men in australia is 5"11

Average height of indians male is

5'4

 

Now we can also use this excuse that we are not physically gifted and still we are doing so well. 

 

The fact is that you need to do well with whatever resources you have. 

If we calculate on basis of population then pakistan should be no. 2, also NZ should be the greatest cricket nation ever. 

 

Majority of our population still reside in rural areas,  65.53 %, to be exact. 

Many of them don't have the facilities to earn bread let alone play professional sport. 

 

Also, the attitude of 20th century born Indian parents, most of them don't allow their kids to pursue a career in sports. 

In Australia and western world, sports is as important as education. 

I agree with the most part but India actually have plenty of strong physically tough and tall players. Problem is India also have plenty of shorter people too. India is diverse. 

 

In Australia sports is encouraged. In India it's not. 

[Soldier]

4 hours ago, Sandeep99 said:

Chappell and his whining. If India fail, we're not good enough. If we win, it's population silly. 

Sometimes you just need to slap some sense into the thick skulled dweebs who spout rubbish hey like Chappell. 

[Yoda-esque]

Not beef then?

[Lone Wolf]

Chappell hasn't said much wrong tbh..  Contrary to what Langer & others constantly point out 1 & half billion people play cricket Chappell said India is Finally starting to utilize its resources & Talent pool in a good way which is somewhat true but he doesn't knows that Indian selectors & entire process is still mostly non sensical. 

 

We still have a lot of work to constantly produce world class bowlers & we have started to find immediate results by looking at non metro cities.  There is a lot of potential still.  We have barely scratched the surface I reckon. 

 

 

[deathmonger]

20 minutes ago, Soldier said:

I agree with the most part but India actually have plenty of strong physically tough and tall players. Problem is India also have plenty of shorter people too. India is diverse. 

 

In Australia sports is encouraged. In India it's not. 

 

all things that will get resolved as india gets richer. sports is encouraged in first world countries simply because the safety net is great.

[TNAmarkFromIndia]

27 minutes ago, Soldier said:

I agree with the most part but India actually have plenty of strong physically tough and tall players.

They're in the minority when you consider the entire population. Bumrah, Shami, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvi etc. are all 1.78 m or under.

[express bowling]

13 minutes ago, TNAmarkFromIndia said:

They're in the minority when you consider the entire population. Bumrah, Shami, Umesh Yadav, Bhuvi etc. are all 1.78 m or under.

 

 

Both Bumrah and Umesh are either 5'11" or 6'0".

 

The heights stated in Google are often wrong.

 

I am 5'11"+  and I have seen Bumrah from close. He is about the same height as I am.

[deathmonger]

1 hour ago, Lone Wolf said:

Chappell hasn't said much wrong tbh..  Contrary to what Langer & others constantly point out 1 & half billion people play cricket Chappell said India is Finally starting to utilize its resources & Talent pool in a good way which is somewhat true but he doesn't knows that Indian selectors & entire process is still mostly non sensical. 

 

We still have a lot of work to constantly produce world class bowlers & we have started to find immediate results by looking at non metro cities.  There is a lot of potential still.  We have barely scratched the surface I reckon. 

 

 

 

yup, good times are only starting. by the end of this decade i fully expect india to completely pull away.

 

and by mid century cricket to india will be like basketball to usa.

 

a 20-24 team ipl like the american sports leagues etc, the 5th or 6th best xi still better than the rest of the world etc.

Edited February 1, 2021 by deathmonger

[putrevus]

Earlier captains put more stock on line and length .Now the captains and coaches are putting more stock on fitness and speed. But before we think it is a fast bowling revolution, we need to see next group of fast bowlers who can bowl at 140 plus and be accurate also.

 

I don't think we have yet produced bowlers of of caliber like Dennis Lillee , Marshall. Bumrah is there but we need more bowlers like Bumrah.

[ShoonyaSifar]

Title looks to be a misrepresentation of what Chappel has written. He's complementing the system set up by the BCCI to nurture the talent (which he believes has always been abundantly available).

 

We seem to be gradually moving towards a decent fast bowling culture with some state teams looking at nurturing at least a couple of pacers who can bowl at least 135+ in FC cricket. That's a huge shift from the days when even a 1333-134 kmph bowler in televised domestic matches was rare. Still a long way to go for us to start saying the culture has shifted but we are moving in the right direction (primarily aided by IPL)