The Real Problem with the Indian Side

[jf1gp_1]

When it comes to cricket we expect everyone to respect us but never bother offering anyone same courtesy. Pre test series i saw over 10 threads on how mendis will be torn apart by Indian batsman. Guess what not only is Medis MOS but also took record wicket. Dont know about others but i am so disappointed with how sachin reacted to so many review appeals yet all i read is god this god that.

[Chandan]

The 2-1 result in Lanka' date=' is utter cave-in. [b']This after our bowling attack regularly reduced Lanka to manageable totals (only once did Lanka escape to 600) & given our reputation as great players of spin. Granted M&M are a freakish duo. But when an inexperienced Gambhir & Veeru can get off to good starts consistently, there is simply no excuse for our more experienced batters to abjectly surrender, six times out of six. You can blame Kumble, Parthiv, KKD, our pacers, our fielding, our fans etc, but India lost because of its middle order. Plain & simple.

Bumper, Give me just one honest answer: did you watch the matches live on tv? And I don't mean just the highlight!

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[fineleg]

what is ur point to Bumper, Chandan? Is it about our bowling or are you saying that M&M are unplayable by our MO in SL conditions?

[Fontaine]

Sanjay Manjrekar: I think it was the bowling attack that made the difference. In the first innings of this series, Sri Lanka got in excess of 600 runs and that was because the Indian bowling attack wasn't good enough to restrict them to anything around 300. And again in this final Test, it was the bowling attack that made the difference. One of the other reasons was that the strength of the Indian batting was diminished because of uncertainties in the minds of the four stalwarts in the middle order. But the real differentiating factor was the bowling attack. Chaminda Vaas, whoever the second seamer was, Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan were a far better attack compared to Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.

Sanjay Manjrekar: The problem that India have had throughout this series is that their bowlers have been out-performed by their Sri Lankan counterparts. India needed to get an early wicket and run through the tail quickly. But they didn't seem to have the bowling attack to do so. They didn't have Ishant Sharma, while Zaheer Khan seems to be dependent on the pitch for creating pressure on the batsmen. Anil Kumble clearly isn't at his best. Harbhajan Singh, we know, is on top when he is getting the ball to spin and bounce; he is most dangerous when he has ripped through the top order. The Sri Lankan bowling attack looks to be the more potent and that was where India's weakness was shown up in the morning session. The tailenders were able to build substantial partnerships. Prasanna Jayawardene, who has some batting ability, proved to be a difficult batsman to dislodge. Although Kumar Sangakkara was dismissed for 144, India just couldn't wrap up the tail because I don't think they had the potency in their bowling attack do so.

Until the cricket structure puts as much emphasis on bowlers as it does with the batsmen we're going to continue to see results like this.

[msb1991]

what is ur point to Bumper, Chandan? Is it about our bowling or are you saying that M&M are unplayable by our MO in SL conditions?

Nothing to do with your post or the thread, but I'm starting to get to grips with the Indian mocking nicknames... 'Zaheer Khant'?:two_thumbs_up:

[Temujin Khaghan]

The age old discussion of why Akram+Waqar+Saqlain won more matches than Sachin+Saurav+Rahul+VVS. Yes bowling is the key. For sachin a good day means scoring 100 runs. For wasim, a good day means taking 2 wickets in his first spell (thereby cheaply dismissimg two of the rival camp's top order batsmen) and taking another wicket in the death before a batsman like jadeja or robin even started firing. i agree... we need killer bowlers, not artistic batsmen

[sharma]

You dimwit, it was our bowlers who tore into the Australian team. Did you even read the post? When did I even mention disliking/let alone hating any player. God, you're a moron.

just reading the first 5 posts after yours show who is the real dimwit, moron, retard, slowpoke, dumbass, etc, etc... our batsmen are good, they couldnt read mendis, end of story, no need to get all emo about it, every team loses once in a while.

[Bumper]

Bumper, Give me just one honest answer: did you watch the matches live on tv? And I don't mean just the highlight!

Are you saying that in live action, our fab four played differently than in the highlight clips ?:cantstop: How does that alter my perception of their poor outing six times out of six ? Or do you not agree that this has been a poor series for our middle order. For the record, I did watch quite a bit of action live in the first two tests. I didnt see anyone dominate M&M, other than Sehwag. Let me ask you a question. Had there been an instance in our cricket history when the players have ever been at fault ? Or is it all the BCCI, Modi, our domestic setup etc that causes us to lose ? Infact I even saw you blame the BCCI for our world cup 2007 debacle. :-D Lets agree to disagree. I dont let nonsensical performances like this go uncriticized. You, OTOH, always sound like an apologist to me, quickly & unconditionally forgiving our players, regardless of their doing.

[fineleg]

Are you saying that in live action, our fab four played differently than in the highlight clips ?:cantstop: How does that alter my perception of their poor outing six times out of six ? Or do you not agree that this has been a poor series for our middle order. For the record, I did watch quite a bit of action live in the first two tests. I didnt see anyone dominate M&M, other than Sehwag. Let me ask you a question. Had there been an instance in our cricket history when the players have ever been at fault ? Or is it all the BCCI, Modi, our domestic setup etc that causes us to lose ? Infact I even saw you blame the BCCI for our world cup 2007 debacle. :-D Lets agree to disagree. I dont let nonsensical performances like this go uncriticized. You, OTOH, always sound like an apologist to me, quickly & unconditionally forgiving our players, regardless of their doing.

You have articulated beautifully the sentiments I share - Top post :thumbs_up:

[Chandan]

Bumper, Give me just one honest answer: did you watch the matches live on tv? And I don't mean just the highlight!

My point here was in response to your post where you said that "especially when our bowlers were reducing them to managable totals". It was not the classic test series where if news ball was seen through, the good middle order would go on racking big totals. It was just the opposite where scoring with hard and new ball was lot easier than scoring against the little older ball was a lot tougher. Again when the ball became too soft after say 66 overs, it was not that dangerous. But our bowlers DID NOT the advantage of this and could not make the life of Lankan batsmen as difficult as Lankan bowlers made ours! In fact it was so tough in the middle overs that batsmen hardly got time to settle in. Even if they did sometimes, Jayawardene used to play the negative game by packing one side with 8 fielders and letting their bowlers take the ball away from the batsmen. If they kept patient, the runs dried up instantly and one of their spinners started putting pressure from the other end. If they tried to take the bowler on, they got out (Sachin to Vaas caught at slips). If you didn't get to see this difference even after watching the matches live, then I don't have much to say. As for not criticising the players, perhaps you do not read my posts. I do criticisize them but I never feel like going over the top be it criticism or praise. I never felt like going over the moon because we won the series in England nor do I give the players stick left right and centre after losing in SL. Our players performed badly and there is no two ways about it. We batted, bowled, fielded, kept and caught as badly as we had never done in last two years. But what has to be done--sack all the eleven players? If you'll analyse the series correctly and then put your fingers on the culprits I'll have no disagreement. Our worst performer was Kumble and then Karthik/Parthiv,Ganguly and Sachin. We expected a bit more from Zaheer too but he was coming back from an injury and then we got heavily crippled in the third match when Sharma was ruled out. You can say that we could never gather enough steam AND luck to win the series.

[Bumper]

My point here was in response to your post where you said that "especially when our bowlers were reducing them to managable totals". It was not the classic test series where if news ball was seen through, the good middle order would go on racking big totals. It was just the opposite where scoring with hard and new ball was lot easier than scoring against the little older ball was a lot tougher. Again when the ball became too soft after say 66 overs, it was not that dangerous. But our bowlers DID NOT the advantage of this and could not make the life of Lankan batsmen as difficult as Lankan bowlers made ours!

There are several flaws in your argument. I'll break it down, one at a time: 1) All your inferences are plain hindsight & are based on how our batsmen fared during the middle overs themselves. It is a classic fallacy because, you are using the point in contention (MO sucking) as the basis for your theory. 2) Do you really think any of our batsmen came in to Lanka with the pretension that it was gonna be easy for them, against Murali & co in the middle overs ? This was almost a given that when you come to Lanka, you have to face the music in the middle overs. So using that as an excuse, am afraid is lame. 3) Against the same Murali & Mendis, on a spinning track at Galle, I saw Sehwag & Gambhir rake up 167 runs in 30 overs. A good chunk of these overs were bowled by spinners. Even after Gambhir's departure, Veeru continued his domination of the duo, eventually carrying his bat at the end of the innings. At the other end, Veeru helplessly watched a procession go by. Are you saying, it got disproportionately tougher in the middle overs for all batsmen except Veeru ? If they cant bat in these conditions, then am afraid our batting lineup cant be rated as highly. If you tell me, our middle order is out of form & hence sucked, I'd understand. But your middle overs theory, does not justify such a poor showing in all innings we batted. Add to that, out of six innings, Sachin was dismissed thrice by seamers, which drills hole in to your theory that the middle overs (implies spinners) were the toughest to negotiate. 4) Mendis who haunted every Indian batsman, did not dismiss Veeru even once. Any reason why ? Perhaps Veeru's attacking game & decisive footwork, ability to read Mendis off the pitch had something to do with it ? Dravid & Laxman, OTOH were dismissed by Mendis, almost every time. Who asked our batsmen to not attack Mendis enough & put him under pressure ? Perhaps their over cautious & tentative approach had something to do with it. Your theory is akin to one that says, Indian batsmen's failures in SA or Australia are justified because the wickets are bouncy & the bowling was tough to negotiate. These are not valid excuses for failures in an ENTIRE series.

In fact it was so tough in the middle overs that batsmen hardly got time to settle in. Even if they did sometimes, Jayawardene used to play the negative game by packing one side with 8 fielders and letting their bowlers take the ball away from the batsmen. If they kept patient, the runs dried up instantly and one of their spinners started putting pressure from the other end. If they tried to take the bowler on, they got out (Sachin to Vaas caught at slips). If you didn't get to see this difference even after watching the matches live, then I don't have much to say.

You are talking as if, Jayawardene, pulled something out of his hat & completely surprised the Indian batsmen, causing them to fail. This is all part of standard test match tactics. Our MO isnt inexperienced to be taken aback by these strategies. Almost all of these guys have played 100+ tests over a decade. If you are gonna justify our MO's inability to come out of even this much degree of difficulty in six innings, I dont have much to say.

As for not criticising the players, perhaps you do not read my posts. I do criticisize them but I never feel like going over the top be it criticism or praise. I never felt like going over the moon because we won the series in England nor do I give the players stick left right and centre after losing in SL. Our players performed badly and there is no two ways about it. We batted, bowled, fielded, kept and caught as badly as we had never done in last two years. But what has to be done--sack all the eleven players?

Ok, now you are doing a U-turn. So you agree that we batted as poorly as we've ever done ? Then, what are you objecting to, when I state the same ? Why are you giving silly reasons to justify our lame batting performances ? And where did i say we should sack the eleven players ? Infact I want the same MO to play against the Aussies in the BG trophy. A lame performance such as this, deserves criticism. As long as a fan can do that articulately and substantiate it with facts, without abusing the players, its all fair dinkum.

If you'll analyse the series correctly and then put your fingers on the culprits I'll have no disagreement. Our worst performer was Kumble and then Karthik/Parthiv,Ganguly and Sachin. We expected a bit more from Zaheer too but he was coming back from an injury and then we got heavily crippled in the third match when Sharma was ruled out. You can say that we could never gather enough steam AND luck to win the series.

Kumble has been our most consistent performer for several years now. We shouldnt even be mentioning his name in the same sentence as the rest, who have one or two good series, followed by a string of average to mediocre ones. Moreover he is captain and Lankan batsmen arent dodos against spin. So I'll be more kind to Kumble than the rest. KKD & Parthiv arent India's trump cards. We didnt come into Lanka hoping that they will win us games. At best, they were expected to keep alright. They both performed slightly below par in terms of expectations. But we still had the muscle to overcome such limitations. It is because of our MIDDLE ORDER's showing we lost. There are no two ways about it. Our highest total in this series is 329 (thats the only 300+ total in six attempts). Even in that innings, Veeru scored 201. Thats an indictment of our middle order's utter cave in. Enough said!

[DadaRocks]

Life in the past lane India's decline is reflected in the stats of the big four batsmen. The team desperately needs new batting talent, but they may have already left it too late In an ideal world you would want the likes of Badrinath and Sharma to ease into a side where they could soak up the experience of a Tendulkar or Dravid. That's unlikely to happen now, and with Kumble also nearing journey's end, India will face a crisis of Australia-1984 proportions if the seeds of change aren't sown soon http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/364888.html

[cowboysfan]

Life in the past lane India's decline is reflected in the stats of the big four batsmen. The team desperately needs new batting talent, but they may have already left it too late In an ideal world you would want the likes of Badrinath and Sharma to ease into a side where they could soak up the experience of a Tendulkar or Dravid. That's unlikely to happen now, and with Kumble also nearing journey's end, India will face a crisis of Australia-1984 proportions if the seeds of change aren't sown soon http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/364888.html

I have been saying this for over a year now and the articles is right.If we dont give new players chances in the next 2 test series then we could see a real disaster with the "fab 4" retiring at the same time along with kumble and we will be left with young and inexperienced players to man the fort-very trying times ahead for indian test cricket.I hope the BCCI does some forward thinking on this situation.

[fineleg]

I have been saying this for over a year now and the articles is right.If we dont give new players chances in the next 2 test series then we could see a real disaster with the "fab 4" retiring at the same time along with kumble and we will be left with young and inexperienced players to man the fort-very trying times ahead for indian test cricket.I hope the BCCI does some forward thinking on this situation.

BCCI wont. Upto the Maharathis. But typically Maharathis like to keep continuing, and esp Ganguly also wants to be included in ODIs! :eyedance: Atleast RD, VVS, AK have given up ODIs fully, SG Maharathi will keep harping abt ODIs too!

[Chandan]

1) All your inferences are plain hindsight & are based on how our batsmen fared during the middle overs themselves. It is a classic fallacy because, you are using the point in contention (MO sucking) as the basis for your theory.

Point of contention? I agree that MO failed miserably and that is not the basis of my theory!

2) Do you really think any of our batsmen came in to Lanka with the pretension that it was gonna be easy for them, against Murali & co in the middle overs ? This was almost a given that when you come to Lanka, you have to face the music in the middle overs. So using that as an excuse, am afraid is lame.

Where are our batsmen going to find things easy except perhaps in BD and Zim? I think our players (they were not the #2 side on the basis of just the easy victories against only Zim and BD) knew it much before that it was going to be tough for them. So where is the excuse of what? A test team doesn't win a test series without toughing it out in the middle and by this I mean the whole team-batsmen,bowlers, fielders and keeper,not just the middle order batsmen!

3) Against the same Murali & Mendis, on a spinning track at Galle, I saw Sehwag & Gambhir rake up 167 runs in 30 overs. A good chunk of these overs were bowled by spinners. Even after Gambhir's departure, Veeru continued his domination of the duo, eventually carrying his bat at the end of the innings. At the other end, Veeru helplessly watched a procession go by.

You claim to have watched the Galle match live. You must have noticed then, how easy it was for the #2 and #3 of Lanka too, even though they batted in the match's second inning? Our seamers were certainly better than Vaas and Kulsekhara and our spinners bowled to them too. You find a similarity? It was easier to bat in the early overs, but Warnapura and Sanga were not as devastating as Veeru and Gambhit and hence their RPO was much less. But they too found batting easy in those period.

Are you saying, it got disproportionately tougher in the middle overs for all batsmen except Veeru ? If they cant bat in these conditions, then am afraid our batting lineup cant be rated as highly. If you tell me, our middle order is out of form & hence sucked, I'd understand. But your middle overs theory, does not justify such a poor showing in all innings we batted.

Our middle order was out of form certainly. This was not the first instance where we've witnessed a collective loss of form throughout the series after a break. I hope you remember 2004 series vs Lanka at home. But they are good enough batsmen to score useful runs even when out of form. But they weren't allowed to dig in because they didn't get even a tiny bit of liberty from the opposition. I hope you agree that when one is not at his best, he needs a bit of luck to survive. They didn't get that too. I'm especially quite disappointed at Ganguly whose concentration flickered and Sachin who lost patience in the last three innings. And you have to agree about those middle over theories if watched the match live and compared both Lanka's and India's innings watching, not through scores.

Add to that, out of six innings, Sachin was dismissed thrice by seamers, which drills hole in to your theory that the middle overs (implies spinners) were the toughest to negotiate.

Yes. first time Sachin got dismissed to Vaas was a deadly indipper/cutter which only Vaas could have bowled in those conditions. Rest of the two innings were taken care of during negative bowling and testing the batsman patience. If we had an accurate bowler like Vaas who'd have bowled exactly according to our fields, our captain could have employed that tactics. But I've never seen any Indian captain employing negative tactics.

4) Mendis who haunted every Indian batsman, did not dismiss Veeru even once. Any reason why ? Perhaps Veeru's attacking game & decisive footwork, ability to read Mendis off the pitch had something to do with it ? Dravid & Laxman, OTOH were dismissed by Mendis, almost every time.

Even Sachin got dismissed to him only once and that was his last innings in Lanka perhaps. Was he in top form, fully attacking, with decisive footwork and all in other 5 innings? No, he was not very sure. Yet he didn't get out to him when invariably Mendis was bowling whenever he came to the crease. Dravid and Laxman tried to play him classically like one plays the spinner, taking a long stride forward. But the review system didn't take that into account even if the ball struck you 2.5 meters from the stumps. Our bad luck there! You can't say that their technique or approach was wrong or whatever!

Who asked our batsmen to not attack Mendis enough & put him under pressure ? Perhaps their over cautious & tentative approach had something to do with it.

I've never played cricket, but after reading a number of books, I know that Mendis can't be attacked blindly. If one is having difficulty in reading him, he'll always be unsure and that will lead to cautious approach. Now you'll tell me who asked our batsmen not to read Mendis?

Your theory is akin to one that says, Indian batsmen's failures in SA or Australia are justified because the wickets are bouncy & the bowling was tough to negotiate.

There is no two ways about it that it is quite tough out there because the playing conditions are completely different and I do not know how can you blame a player for failure who is visiting there for the first time. Even Australia and SA failed for a long time to get a grip of conditions in India. But their board was smarter and they started giving more exposure to their players by sending them on A tours etc. No failure is justified and to tell you, I had not given the excuses but I had given the reasons for our failure there. If you take it as excuse, it is your choice. .

These are not valid excuses for failures in an ENTIRE series.

I didn't give ANY excuse and the biggest reason you failed to point out was that our bowlers failed to do their task. A series is NEVER won on the back of one century and one 5-fer. You have to do much more there. Since we had just 4 bowlers and Kumble was alarmingly out of form in his favourite conditions, the other three could have done more. But they failed to do so as did the batsmen failed to score a few more fifties and the inform batsmen couldn't use it phenomenally in their team's favour as Mendis did. Hence the failure. If you do not want to go deep, we batted, bowled, fielded and kept much worse than the opposition and hence deserved to lose. If you want to go deeper, you can see the reason for out of form batsmen's failure but there is absolutely no reason for Kumble's failure and fielder's inability! I hope I make myself clear to you. Even if I don't, I'm done with this subject!

[Fontaine]

Unbelievable. We're still going around in circles, over analyzing every single facet of the batting. It's remarkable really. All we can seem to discuss is this constant fixation on four batsmen that have probably less than 3 years (combined) remaining in their international careers. I started this thread to point out that yes these batsmen have been great for us but all of them apart from Tendulkar are the past. We're watching ghosts here people. Ganguly, Laxman, Dravid, these guys are still good players but their best cricket is miles behind them. All that remains is whether these guys go out on a high or will continue to spiral downwards. I don't know the answer to that, and I honestly don't care. I'm looking towards the future. In order to India to become a truely dominant cricket team for years it's going to take a huge commitment to bowling. I've read about test matches when Sunil Gavaskar would open the bowling, and fielders would rub that ball into the ground to take the shine off so our spinners could come on! Since those days we've evolved into a team that has an incredible stock pile of incredible young bowling talent like Sharma, Pathan, Sreesanth, Patel, RP Singh etc. The frustrating thing is, every time there's been a decent wicket that's not a total flat track, our bowlers have stood up and made it count. But then inevitabley we wind up playing a series at home where they are side shows to the batting. One step forward, and two steps back. These are talented swing/seam and fast bowlers who deserve the best support staff, structure and decent domestic pitches to bowl on to truely learn their trade. You can talk about the fab four all you want, I'm talking about our NEXT fab four which very well could be a dominant bowling attack if these youngsters are taken care off instead of being treated as an afterthought.