The real problem with Indian cricket

[bunny]

In the 70s and 80s, we had a dearth of fast bowling talent. But, in the recent past, we have had Nehra, Balaji, Irfan, Munaf, Sreesanth, RP, PK and Sreesanth who "look" to be more talented than Chetan Sharma, Binny, Sandhu, Madan Lal, Ghavri, Prabhakar, V Prasad and the likes. Barring the odd one out, their on field performances have been pretty much the same. When looking through the last few years of Ranji stats, I noticed every damn decent bowler had a sub-25 average. But, most of these guys fail to deliver in international cricket. There seems to be a huge gulf between 1st class and international cricket. It's almost as if they have been bowling against kids in 1st class cricket. Now, compare the careers of some of Indian greats wrt the number of first class matches played. Gavaskar: 223 G Vishwanath: 217 Kapil: 144 Dravid: 134 Kumble: 112 Tendulkar: 104 Surely many of these were played before they joined the international ranks, and some of these were tour matches, county cricket etc. But the general point is that our current stars arent playing enough first class matches. If we have to be a consistent force in test match cricket, I think we should just scrap IPL, meaningless ODI tours, junk test matches against Bangladesh/Zim, challenger tournaments, etc and replace them with a month (or more) of solid well-advertised high profile first class cricket. Play a challenger kind of tournament among the top 40/50 players of the country on a mixture of flat, spinning, seaming, bouncy wickets. Sab doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani ho jaayega. And it will also make for good entertainment.

[Trichromatic]

Piyush Chawla is the best example.

[rkt.india]

how they will play fc when they play international cricket whole year. even international English bowlers dont play much fc cricket. The time which we play IPL, FC is not possible at that time. In my opinion, we should have a more extended and competitive Duleep trophy, zonal FC matches, in which only the best of the zone plays. Ranji trophy and Duleep trophy should take place simultaneously. The best of the zone 16 squad should play in Duleep trophy against each zone home and away. It means minimum 8 FC matches for every zonal team. Rest of the players should play Ranji and if some one performs extra ordinarily in ranji can be promoted to play duleep trophy in the same season or in the next season or if some one does very badly in duleep trophy that player can be demoted to ranji trophy again. Ranji trophy already has two tier system but that does not look enough too me. This will be a much better idea according to me where we will only see best of the zone playing more matches against each other in Duleep trophy and only Duleep trophy and then A tours should be the criteria of selection. This process will refine the talents and will find more quality in out zonal teams.

[dragonfly]

The real problem with Indian cricket

[Septimius Severus]

The real problem with Indian cricket, TOO much infighting:

[WC2011INDIA]

internal politics in BCCI and cricket team.