Congrats Vijay, Great Ton!Start of many I hope!

[yoda]

If nothing else, this innings has shown that he has the temperament to play the long innings which is needed for tests. No one can deny that.

[cowboysfan]

Just like you say one good innings cannot be considered a success you can also say one bad innings cannot be considered a failure. Is it something to do with CSK vs BRC rivalry? If so.. i leave it to you.

nope.for me t20 has no bearing on other formats of the game.

[cowboysfan]

Pessimistic talk about a promising player. The way he left those bouncers and outside off stuffs from Johnson.. rest of the young cricketers have to learn a lot from him. Johnson has enticed so many batsmen and prized their wickets by throwing the wide stuff. Dravid repeatedly get sucker punched by Johnson with that wide delivery. Vijay exceptionally negotiated that stuff. Hughes is completely devoid of technique Vijay is not. Nothing wrong with his technique. You can extend this logic and say any batsman is crap.

i am not saying he is crap,if i was then i would say he definitely should not be playing in test cricket.

[thevortex]

Pessimistic talk about a promising player. The way he left those bouncers and outside off stuffs from Johnson.. rest of the young cricketers have to learn a lot from him. Johnson has enticed so many batsmen and prized their wickets by throwing the wide stuff. Dravid repeatedly get sucker punched by Johnson with that wide delivery. Vijay exceptionally negotiated that stuff. Hughes is completely devoid of technique Vijay is not. Nothing wrong with his technique. You can extend this logic and say any batsman is crap.

vvslaxman - Vijay looks good. But I hope he does not stay just that. Honestly I would not rate a batsman's performance (especially an Indian one) based on his performance on this wicket. You talk about Johnson's bouncers as if he was bowling on a Perth wicket! Some of those bouncers hardly climbed above stump height. Pujara was an unfortunate victim of just such a delivery. At the same time it was not as if the track were some demon with variable bounce. Vijay is an attacking batsman and he looks very very good and stylish when he is playing his shots. However, it cannot be gainsaid that he stands in the crease flat footed when defending and tries as much as possible to not move his legs too much. It cannot, of course, automatically be said that he cannot survive using this technique. Many a critic fell on their faces when they predicted gloom and doom for Sehwag. Technique is definitely not everything. But where there is not a technique, we at least have to sample the player's performance over time and over a variety of surfaces and bowling attacks. Lets give the youngster some time. He is definitely talented. And he is not a bad fielder to boot.

[Andy]

GG is 3 times as good as Vijay.one lucky knock doesnt convince me.that test series against the saffers is still fresh in my mind.

From when have we started picking players on the basis of Reputation? Wasnt Ganguly dropped when he was failing to live up to his reputation? Hasnt Yuvraj been dropped? Gambhir has had a not so good 2010, he has under performed to be honest. This guy has been beter than Gambhir, so clearly its obvious that he should get selected irrespective of the fact how good or bad we consider a player on the basis of past performances. Talking about Vijay's failure in SA series, The lad scored a decent 32 once in the 3 innings he had played in that series, and Gambhir Failed in all 3 Oppurtunites. So when you talk about Vijay's failure in SA series talk about Gambhirs too.

[Andy]

Vijay reminds me of Wasim Jaffar. Looks very elegant with the bat, plays shots on both side of the wicket and has the temperament for test cricket. On the flipside, he gets caught in the crease quite often. Several times I saw him, sort of go into the back foot, crouch down to play defensive strokes. This is prolly a technical flaw in his batting. If the ball deviates a tad bit, he'd be plumb in front. Once he irons out his flaws, he will be a competent replacement for Dravid, as Vijay i think has the goods to bat in the top 3. But I expect Vijay to struggle a bit before he establishes himself as the no. 3 But good innings from him under pressure. Unlike Badrinath, who cannot scale from domestic leagues to the big league, Vijay has proved that he's got game.

Firstly Badri is a differnt kind of player to Vijay. Vijay is a Stroke Player, much in the mould of VVS. Where as Badri is a Grinder who plays out much time and balls than Vijay does in scoring the same ammount of Runs. Badri never got much Oppurtunity to prove himself. The lad has only played 3 innings in Test cricket and that too against the best bowling line up in the World IMO. Among the 3 innings he scored a Gutsy 50 where most of our Batters failed. Its unfair to drop proven domestic performers after 3 innings. He should have got enough oppurtunities to prove his mettle. Am just afraid, that we dont do the same with Pujara here. And keep backing BS players like Yuvi ahead of this players who have done enough to earn a place among the worlds best Middle Order.

[satishg]

Vijay reminds me of Wasim Jaffar. Looks very elegant with the bat' date=' plays shots on both side of the wicket and has the temperament for test cricket. On the flipside, he gets caught in the crease quite often. Several times I saw him, sort of go into the back foot, crouch down to play defensive strokes. [b']This is prolly a technical flaw in his batting. If the ball deviates a tad bit, he'd be plumb in front. Once he irons out his flaws, he will be a competent replacement for Dravid, as Vijay i think has the goods to bat in the top 3. But I expect Vijay to struggle a bit before he establishes himself as the no. 3 But good innings from him under pressure. Unlike Badrinath, who cannot scale from domestic leagues to the big league, Vijay has proved that he's got game.

Excellent post Bumper and i for one fully agree with the highlighted part. Also Vortex made a very valid point about the short pitched bowling. Anyway i dont want to sound all negative at a time when the guy has got his first 100 but i surely think Gambhir is miles ahead of Vijay and Vijay will have to do a lot more on foreign tracks to convince us that he will be the next quality batter in our line up. He is however ahead of the other guys competing for a spot in the middle order right now. If he tightens his technique a bit, he will be a solid player and i think the sterner tests ahead for him will do that automatically. This century just tells us that he has it in him to score on the placid Indian tracks.

[thevortex]

Bumper - I did not notice your post earlier. How do you draw that conclusion about Badrinath?! He has only had 3 chances and he has made 1 half century. Not sure that your conclusion is valid.

[The Dark Horse]

Yes, he too has some flaws but lets hope he can rectify them in the future.

[yoda]

Agree with Bumper's post. I remember how Jaffer looked a million dollar against Pakistan in 2007 and then Australia happened. Vijay is a typical front foot plonker with NO technique to counter either bounce or lateral movement.

You probably didn't watch the game yesterday then, cause Mitchell Johnson tried bouncing him constantly and came up empty handed. He didn't hook or pull those bouncers, but managed to leave them with relative ease. May be you are referring to bouncy pitches, I expect him to do the same those situations, manage to leave those bouncers unharmed. Regarding lateral movement, that is a problem area for many players, including our top guns. He like others before him has to learn over time cause you rarely get those with the quality of pitches and bowlers in Indian domestics.

[coffee_rules]

^^The bounce is slow and hardly any swing. It's a flat wicket yesterday. But there was pressure. So his composure is good, but still needs testing.

[fineleg]

Good patience, application. Technique: Will be better to evaluate after a year or two in Intl arena.

[Guest Shivani]

Vijay: "It was really special knock for me. I would like to dedicate this to my mom. It was a dream come true for me to play with Sachin. I was just focused on each ball and not try to think too far ahead. In that regard Sachin paaji helped me a lot. He gave me pep-talks through the day. After the tea I got tired; I didn't want to give my wicket away but ended up playing a bad shot. I am trying to just keep things simple and work on my basics; whenever I get my opportunities I want to do well."

:girl_sigh: what a gharelu larka !