Is MSD's aura fading ?

[dial_100]

so we are blaming inept bowling on dhoni now?.he should be hailed as a savior for getting us to the number 1 position with this 8th ranked bowling attack.when your best bowler in Bhajji bowls utter tripe then nothing Dhoni does will save us.Dhoni should be given full authority to select the bowlers he wants.we have reached a stage where we might never win another major tournament because our bowlers cant hold up there end.Is it asking too much to bowl a proper line and length?.none of the current bunch can do that it seems.

Well, such things were always blamed on the past captains.... we should be fair. Good captain needs good team to win.... 1 or 2 players and we started losing to pathetic pakistan as well. Point is he is overrated. If you have inform Yuv, Sachin and Raina in the team...with himself in the prime form, it is hard to lose many games..

[vvvslaxman]

No team is consistent folks. Look at SA. They were thrashed by 2 low ranked teams in their own backyard. They had full team. They won the toss in one of the match. These one-off games can be tricky. Indian team was clearly unsettled.

[Bumper]

Lot is being made of India's performance in this tournament. Give it a rest folks! India lost a game, one of the must win games got washed out, then whipped a washed up Windies team. To me this is not a clear indication of a team in decline. We just won a triangular (albeit meaningless) tourney in Lanka after a decade. Not that am excited about that, just want to make sure we see things in perspective. If you take out any team's top two batsmen and its strike bowler it will be reduced to an ordinary team. India lacked that one player (read: Yuvraj) in the middle overs to consolidate the innings in the Pakistan game. Whether we'd have won with Yuvraj in there, nobody knows. But you cant ignore his absence & go "We're supposed to be the no. 1 team anyways". No. 1 is not indicative of anything. To me all the top 5 ODI teams are capable of beating each other on any given day. Have you wondered what Pakistan would have managed without Aamer, MoYo and Afridi ? Or Australia without Lee, Ponting & Hussey ? Dont be deluding yourselves thinking that we've fallen all of a sudden. If you believe so, you guys have to blame yourselves for your unreasonable expectations. I also disagree that this bowling attack has become cr@p all of a sudden. Our bowling hit 'par' in the tournament. Has our bowling descended from its lofty peaks ? Probably yes. But on an average day this is what our bowling unit is capable of. Our batting in the last year and a half has successfully papered the cracks in our bowling. Unless the pitches were helpful, our bowling always let the opponents pile up 300ish scores. It happened in NZ, in SL, in WI. So why is it surprising that it happened again in SA ? This tournament should not change a thing about the way you guys rate this team. If you do then SA is cr@p too and Aussies too were 'this' close to being a cr@p team. Get over it folks. In tournaments like this there is no room for error. So one loss (albeit the only one) has made it look LOT worse than it is.

[flamy]

Nope. But, will be interesting to see how Dhoni copes with this.

[vvvslaxman]

No sweat guys. India has the team to beat any team anywhere in the world. Just we need little rearrangement once the injured players are back. It is a given we are not going find a perfect 5th bowler. Till such time Yuvi/Sehwag/Raina/Rohit should share the burden. Imagine a line up like this Gambhir Sehwag Tendulkar Yuvraj Raina Rohit / Kohli Dhoni Zak Mishra Nehra Sreesanth / Ojha

[patriot]

Lot is being made of India's performance in this tournament. Give it a rest folks! India lost a game, one of the must win games got washed out, then whipped a washed up Windies team. To me this is not a clear indication of a team in decline. We just won a triangular (albeit meaningless) tourney in Lanka after a decade. Not that am excited about that, just want to make sure we see things in perspective. If you take out any team's top two batsmen and its strike bowler it will be reduced to an ordinary team. India lacked that one player (read: Yuvraj) in the middle overs to consolidate the innings in the Pakistan game. Whether we'd have won with Yuvraj in there, nobody knows. But you cant ignore his absence & go "We're supposed to be the no. 1 team anyways". No. 1 is not indicative of anything. To me all the top 5 ODI teams are capable of beating each other on any given day. Have you wondered what Pakistan would have managed without Aamer, MoYo and Afridi ? Or Australia without Lee, Ponting & Hussey ? Dont be deluding yourselves thinking that we've fallen all of a sudden. If you believe so, you guys have to blame yourselves for your unreasonable expectations. I also disagree that this bowling attack has become cr@p all of a sudden. Our bowling hit 'par' in the tournament. Has our bowling descended from its lofty peaks ? Probably yes. But on an average day this is what our bowling unit is capable of. Our batting in the last year and a half has successfully papered the cracks in our bowling. Unless the pitches were helpful, our bowling always let the opponents pile up 300ish scores. It happened in NZ, in SL, in WI. So why is it surprising that it happened again in SA ? This tournament should not change a thing about the way you guys rate this team. If you do then SA is cr@p too and Aussies too were 'this' close to being a cr@p team. Get over it folks. In tournaments like this there is no room for error. So one loss (albeit the only one) has made it look LOT worse than it is.

Excellent post. Bumper, post often yaar.

[Sooda]

^I know Bumper man. Where you been??!!! Hope youre ace. As for OP: cant agree more with the 'main players injured' bit. But some decisions- taking off Nehra in the middle of a raking spell vs Aus, Not bowling Bhajji early vs Pak (not sure it would have made much diff tbh) even team selections like Mishra not playing vs Pak when everyone knew it was a dry pitch... some not so bright choices Im sure he'll learn from.

[Lord]

We were desperately unlucky.i dont think Aussies deserved it much more than us to reach the top 4.they won all 3 tosses.yet struggled to beat windies,got thier asses saved by Johnson.n stuttered yesterday too.we on the other hand lost the two important tosses n still could well have beaten Pak if not for the bad decision that Raina got. about MSD,hes a very good captain but was hailed as the greatest captain too soon,was given a bit too much credit.even in this tourney he was unlucky but made some mistakes,like not selecting Mishra against Pak,allowing easy runs n partnership to build etc.Dhoni has led india to two succesive early exits,nothing can change that blip as same as the joy of having won the T20WC2007.his batting also seems to go down in ICC events.so everything Dhoni touched turned to gold.now i think is the correction time

[saneindian]

MSD was always an instinctive captain, someone who went by his gutfeel rather than being someone who made strategic moves with out of the box thinking. Off late those gut feel decisions have not worked ( Sending Jadeja ahead of Yuvi in that Eng game in the t20 WC, giving the ball to Kohli, sending Kohli ahead of himself and Raina in that chase against Pak etc) and that has made his look like a bad captain. But I still believe , he should continue sticking to his instinct and it will start working again. Imagine had Jadeja clicked in that game or if Kohli had picked up a wicket against Pak or scored some more runs in the chase, those moves would have been hailed as masterstrokes and could have launched two very promising young careers in Indian cricket in a huge way. Yes losing the ICC tournaments has been a major disappointment but that should take nothing away from the achievements this team has had.

[Lord]

MSD was always an instinctive captain, someone who went by his gutfeel rather than being someone who made strategic moves with out of the box thinking. Off late those gut feel decisions have not worked ( Sending Jadeja ahead of Yuvi in that Eng game in the t20 WC, giving the ball to Kohli, sending Kohli ahead of himself and Raina in that chase against Pak etc) and that has made his look like a bad captain. But I still believe , he should continue sticking to his instinct and it will start working again. Imagine had Jadeja clicked in that game or if Kohli had picked up a wicket against Pak or scored some more runs in the chase, those moves would have been hailed as masterstrokes and could have launched two very promising young careers in Indian cricket in a huge way. Yes losing the ICC tournaments has been a major disappointment but that should take nothing away from the achievements this team has had.

exactly,he takes risks that he doesnt need to.wen we won the 2007 world cup,giving last over to Joginder Sharma was hailed as masterstroke by some,but wen it came to giving credit to Joginder,same people called it a fluke,completely ignoring that he had gone for just 13 in his previous 3 overs while taking out Younis.

[spectre]

dhoni has made it clear that not having irfan was a big hindrance in team selection as we could not play 2 spinners against the pakis,it could be inferred from his comments.the best thing we can do is unearth a suitable medium pace allrounder who can be a replacement for irfan before the world cup.we need to play 2 frontline spinners in india . i reaaly have no idea why they dropped irfan,it was beyond stupid.he could not have been worse than RP or IS and we could have used his batting.

This is a very lame comment These bowlers were supposed to do the job, hence they were picked, Now they didnt for sometime now, they should be dropped Irfan was given many chances and he failed, he was taken to cleaners by most teams. When other bowlers were bowling well, he was the guy who was the weakpoint, leaking runs like hell what has he done to merit a comeback, has he shined in domestics picking bag full of wickets or being very economic, after getting dropped Just because the current bowlers are bowling badly, you want to go back to a bad bowler, just because he can score some runs ?? Saying Irfan couldn't have done worse than them means we are just lowering the standard at which we look at our team Let me put this straight, Irfan is NOT an allrounder he used to be, he is mediocre batsman but a horrendous bowler. If he is going to be looked as a yardstick for Indian bowlers, then god save Indian team We need good bowlers to complete a good 10 over spell taking wickets and not some lost allrounder who can get 10-20 runs in the end

[Lord]

This is a very lame comment These bowlers were supposed to do the job, hence they were picked, Now they didnt for sometime now, they should be dropped Irfan was given many chances and he failed, he was taken to cleaners by most teams. When other bowlers were bowling well, he was the guy who was the weakpoint, leaking runs like hell what has he done to merit a comeback, has he shined in domestics picking bag full of wickets or being very economic, after getting dropped Just because the current bowlers are bowling badly, you want to go back to a bad bowler, just because he can score some runs ?? Saying Irfan couldn't have done worse than them means we are just lowering the standard at which we look at our team Let me put this straight, Irfan is NOT an allrounder he used to be, he is mediocre batsman but a horrendous bowler. If he is going to be looked as a yardstick for Indian bowlers, then god save Indian team We need good bowlers to complete a good 10 over spell taking wickets and not some lost allrounder who can get 10-20 runs in the end

oh comeon,picking irfan doesnt mean that he become a yardstick for bowlers.hes a third seamer who can bat well at no .7. whether u like it or not.irfan is our best allrounder.n wat chances r u talking about.after SL series in August last year he was never given a consistent run.if RPS can be picked on IPL performance,why not Irfan. Irfan is not our best bowler but he lends balance to the side allwing the captain to play 5 bowlers n 7 batsmen.he had his bad phases,but who doesnt,u have to more tolerant with allrounders,specially wen u have no better choice.

[yoda]

He did have several brain-fart moments this tournament, especially the game vs Pak. Not picking an extra spinner, not bowling Raina, bowling Kohli, sending Dravid in @ #3, field placements, not to mention his own clueless batting against afridi. A tournament to forget for him.

[Desi Cartman]

So far Im happy with MSD but I think he has favourites. Like RP , Irfan , Y Pathan etc & whenever we do badly he always makes sure that he mentions that we didnt pick a particular player. He has a big say in team selection & if Im not wrong sometime ago he also threatened to quit over team selection. BTW Sreesanth has been kept away from the team since he got slapped by Bhajji

[champ]

He did have several brain-fart moments this tournament, especially the game vs Pak. Not picking an extra spinner, not bowling Raina, bowling Kohli, sending Dravid in @ #3, field placements, not to mention his own clueless batting against afridi. A tournament to forget for him.

dhoni played 3 balls off afridi and u mean to say those were enuf to make him clueless.. players like dhoni, gambhir always try to unsettle the spinners .. this was no different .. dravid should have done this to unsettle afridi and ajmal.. ofcourse dhoni looked ugly while trying to do that.. its all part and parcel of the game. u either succed or fail ..

[champ]

irfan was dearly missed especially in this depleted team...

[ViruRulez]

No. MSD is still a great captain but it is more to do with the team than MSD. However, he has taken a few decisions in the first two matches and he has to retrospect on them.

[Aadhavzone]

Nahh. Dhoni has an unprecedented success rate in ODIS, almost 10 cups in such a short time. He have not lost a single test under him. Besides its just one fricking ODI game that we lost. Aussies and Lankans coming home later in the year - Dhoni will be hailed captain magnificient again. But our bowling does need to pick up.

yaa... what he can do... when bowling s**ks to its core! :protest: :protest:

[Lord]

yaa... what he can do... when bowling s**ks to its core! :protest: :protest:

but he could have used them better.he didnt play Mishra against Pak wen everyone knew wicket was gonna assist spin..n didnt use Bhajji till 26th over.even wen he was used,there was never a slip.easy runs were gifted.he tried bowling against lowly windies yesterday,wonder why didnt he d it against Pak,maybe he could have broken the partnership.oh i remember the wicket was flat thats why. against again his use of bowlers was baffling.Nehra was bowling beauifully n troubling Ponting but was changed after just 4 overs.even Mishy was bowling well but he was removed too after 7 overs n brought back in powerplays.

[Aadhavzone]

mate... bowlers would set positions you know.. bloody bhajji gave almost 20% of Pak runs in that region! dat is his fault... certainly worst bowling attack in the tournament! :omg: RP & Ishant was unbearable! :mad: :whack: Mishra should have come in earlier!, but i think, as many cricket experts say, Bhajji was over-rated, adn he blocked opportunity of Mishra or Ojha! also we were so so unfortunate in batting as well aginst pakis, followed by a call off against aussies :((