No further T20s for Sehwag, Zaheer, Gambhir, Dhoni, Bhajji, Balaji and Rohit please

[Magneto]

We need to field a relatively new T20 team for every int'l T20 match from here on. My XI: Bisla (wk) Rahane Mandy Singh Virat Kohli (Capt) Yuvi Raina Tiwary Ashwin Awana Yadav Aaron/Vinay Kumar Reserves: Shahbaz Nadeem, Yusuf Pathan, Ambati Rayudu (back up wk)

Bisla was a one-match wonder. Far far away from being selected.

[rkt.india]

I meant Sehwag like slogging' date='not Lala type[/quote'] He is playing like Lala nowadays.

[vvvslaxman]

For T20 i would prefer complete overhauling. Apart from world T20, other T20 games are pretty much meaningless atleast at this point. So India should go in with potential players.

[GautiMaan]

Agree guys like mayank,chand etc should get a look in next time

[Sidhoni]

:cantstop: EPIC THREAD!

[King Tendulkar]

Should have played sachin

[vayuu1]

What we need is few power hitters and bring in guys like nechim,shami,Aaron,awana,shabaz Nadeem,are there any mystery spinners in domestic circuit guys if any body knows please mention it and please no joke

[jairamesh]

Just realised Balaji finished as India's leading wicket taker :hysterical: brilliant!

[Ammar1]

I say no further Tontee Tontee for Team India from now :idea:

ahahah that cannot happen

[GautiMaan]

Mini crisis presents major opportunity for India

Since last year's World Cup win, India have lost 4-0 in away Test series twice, have been knocked out in the first round of two one-day tournaments, and have failed to go past the first serious round of the World Twenty20. One of their Test openers has not scored a century in nearly two years, the other will have gone three without one if he doesn't reach three figures against England. Their best bowler's endurance is now under doubt, he has not taken a Test five-for in two years nor an ODI four-for in four, and he is a liability in the field in limited-overs cricket. Their captain's defensive mindset, especially when out of his comfort zone, is well documented. It doesn't help that their coach is a man credited with introducing deep cover in the first half-hour of a Test match. If the board, the captain, the coach and the selectors are not worried, they had better find new jobs. ... If you look closely, though, you will find it was all loaded in India's favour in Sri Lanka. They played on pitches that suited them: dry, and assisting spinners. They didn't have to adjust to new venues, unlike Sri Lanka, who played each of their three rounds at a new venue. Most importantly India played the last match of the Super Eights, unlike Pakistan, who played blind, not knowing exactly what they needed to do. India, on the other hand, knew they needed to restrict South Africa to 121, and still refused to gamble at all. They didn't fail when it rained enough to take the players off for five minutes. (By the way, they had won the toss that night, they knew rain was forecast, and still picked three spinners and chose to bat first.) The failure had actually begun when the selectors picked the squad. The captain was given a side with little energy, little fitness, no pace options, and the outrageous return of Piyush Chawla. MS Dhoni gets some deserved flak for certain moves, but who could he turn to? This is not to absolve Dhoni, though. Especially when he claims four wins out of five as some sort of moral victory, as the "best they could do" but for one bad loss. For, the fourth of those wins was meaningless. When you know all along that you have to beat South Africa by 31 runs to stay alive but you nearly give up trying to do so after four overs, the eventual one-run win should hardly count as a win. It was surreal watching the defensive fields as South Africa inched towards that 122. There was a time when India were 24 runs from elimination with seven overs to bowl, and R Ashwin, India's best chance of taking wickets against a side that struggles against spin, still had three overs left. True to Dhoni's captaincy form over the last year and a half, India hoped, waited, sat back. There were more signs of diffidence. When Dhoni finally made the bold move of dropping Virender Sehwag, he immediately cancelled it out by asking Irfan Pathan to open, seeking the reassurance of a No. 7 batsman in a 20-over game. Elsewhere, three of the four semi-finalists had three of their best batsmen in the top four. They didn't spend their energies worrying what if it all went wrong and what if they were five down well inside 20 overs. They wanted their best batsmen to go out there, bat well and make use of as many balls as possible. India had one of the best limited-overs batsmen in the world refusing to bat any higher than No. 7, while others scratched around wasting precious balls. To loosely translate a Punjabi saying, if you leave the house wailing, you will bring back news of the dead. The openers continue to get a rope longer than perhaps any other set has had, Zaheer Khan's workload refuses to come down, and we don't know if Sachin Tendulkar is committed to going to South Africa in November 2013 Any team is built around three pillars: selectors, captain and coach. At the moment, two of India's are failing and the third we don't know anything about. Except that he is working for a board that opposes one of his ideas, the DRS. Except that he was a master of gamesmanship, and the team he now works with calls batsmen back because it fears criticism from the media. Except that he loved the use of pace but is made to work with trundlers in international cricket while the one proper fast bowler India have plays domestic cricket. How comfortable is Duncan Fletcher with this job? We don't know, and we never might. These are important times. Over the coming two Test series, India are supposed to show England and Australia they too are rubbish away from home. More importantly, they are supposed to rebuild, with 2013 onwards in mind, when they will tour South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia. There have been no signs that the Srikkanth-led panel of selectors and the captain were looking that far ahead. They are all hoping, waiting, sitting back. The openers continue to get a rope longer than perhaps any other set has had, Zaheer Khan's workload refuses to come down, and we don't know if Sachin Tendulkar is committed to going to South Africa in November 2013. Dhoni was a remarkably good leader of a settled team, selflessly taking the back seat and making sure his superstar players got the best environment in which to do their thing. Now, though, that same coolness makes him look like he is going through the motions. He forever gives the impression he is not happy with the squad, with the pitches, with the format. Yet he also seems reluctant to take complete charge. With the team in flux, India need a more assertive and proactive Dhoni, both on and off the field. A Dhoni prepared to make the tough calls, eager to shape his own team, more Imran Khan than Viv Richards. A captain who demands certain standards of the team, one who refuses to carry non-performers. A captain prepared to take on some pressure by asking for the team he wants, and not sulk later. If he can win a match in three days and still criticise the groundsman for not giving his side enough home advantage, surely he can be forceful in selection matters too? He even has a fresh set of selectors, a clean slate if you will, to work with. However, if Dhoni is not willing to be that man, or not capable of it, or if he has lived his shelf life as captain, there are no alternatives India can turn to. Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir will be better off worrying about keeping their places in the side, and Tendulkar is close to retiring. Impressive as his maturing as a cricketer is, Virat Kohli might still be too young for the Test job. We don't know if Dhoni loses sleep over things like the legacy he will leave as captain, but we know that if he can't arrest this free fall, it will offset the World Cup win and the rise to No. 1 in Tests. Dhoni has never given the impression he is trying too hard, except when he is batting perhaps, but the next two-three years are cut out for a captain willing to try too hard.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/current/story/585787.html

[Crookbond]

Those highlighted points are moot because Sidharth Monga fails to take into account the pathetic team we have and we punched above weight in this World T20 contrary to whatever people might want to say. The most pertinent and important point in the article is this

Dhoni was a remarkably good leader of a settled team, selflessly taking the back seat and making sure his superstar players got the best environment in which to do their thing. Now, though, that same coolness makes him look like he is going through the motions. He forever gives the impression he is not happy with the squad, with the pitches, with the format. Yet he also seems reluctant to take complete charge. With the team in flux, India need a more assertive and proactive Dhoni, both on and off the field. A Dhoni prepared to make the tough calls, eager to shape his own team, more Imran Khan than Viv Richards. A captain who demands certain standards of the team, one who refuses to carry non-performers. A captain prepared to take on some pressure by asking for the team he wants, and not sulk later. If he can win a match in three days and still criticise the groundsman for not giving his side enough home advantage, surely he can be forceful in selection matters too? He even has a fresh set of selectors, a clean slate if you will, to work with.

Rewind one month back to another opinion piece by Ed Smith on "The Art of Captaincy"

There is no static "right" personality for a leader. So a central strand of leadership is the ability to catch the mood of the moment. Ian Chappell did this. The restless, iconoclastic atmosphere of the 1960s fitted well with his personality. He might have found it much harder captaining during the more conservative mood of the Coronation tour in 1953.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/581792.html Notice how both points by Monga and Ed Smith converge. MS Dhoni may have been a good captain of a team which requires a "laidback" approach. However, that approach will not work for a team in flux. We need a much more aggressive and pro-active Dhoni now who can make hard decisions. Mind you - he has no incumbent, so rather than asking for a change in personnel (Tests, ODIs) we should ask for a change in attitude.

[GautiMaan]

Dexter we had a good batting unit which we failed to make full use of,that cost us the tourney

[Sean Bradley]

Dexter we had a good batting unit which we failed to make full use of' date='that cost us the tourney[/quote'] Yes we did, The most interesting stat if anyone can pull off, i wont be surprised if dhoni ,yuvi and raina, the power hitters of our team would have faced the least no. of balls in the tournament in comparison to the combined no of balls faced by top 4,and exclusion of yousuf pathan from a sub continental T20 event is just laughable, too many tactical errors, with srilanka in the Final, i take this as it was India's cup to lose.

[Crookbond]

Dexter we had a good batting unit which we failed to make full use of' date='that cost us the tourney[/quote'] Gauti, Good on paper. Apart from Raina - I would not say we failed to make use of anyone. Yuvraj was jittery and Dhoni the less said about him the better. Our batting just failed to click to be honest even against South Africa.

[GautiMaan]

Think of the game we lost Dex,Irfan scratched around for 30 balls,he should have been instructed to attack or get out with more capable guys waiting And why were Yuvi and Nohit sent ahead of Raina who is our best t20 player?clear tactical errors.Dhoni's batting in that game was just pathetic and we still had Bhajji to come

[Crookbond]

Gauti, I mentioned this in some other thread - strategy works only if you have the personnel. Sehwag scored a grand total of 51 runs in 54 balls in the World T20. What did Sehwag do when he came in for Irfan? Well, played an Irfan like innings! So, Sehwag move is hardly a tactical error if you consider the situation back then. Raina as I said earlier should have been sent earlier and btw, there are so many threads discussing this that these discussions have gone nauseated. Lets use this thread (and I believe the article says that too) to discuss the future of the T20 squad. We must also note that we need to maximize our resources - just chop/hack/crack is what our padosis are known for. Lets leave that unique characteristic with them.

[Ram]

If you look closely, though, you will find it was all loaded in India's favour in Sri Lanka. They played on pitches that suited them: dry, and assisting spinners. They didn't have to adjust to new venues, unlike Sri Lanka, who played each of their three rounds at a new venue. Most importantly India played the last match of the Super Eights, unlike Pakistan, who played blind, not knowing exactly what they needed to do. India, on the other hand, knew they needed to restrict South Africa to 121, and still refused to gamble at all.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees..! Sidharth has gotten this completely wrong. He is talking about as though we have been a world beating T20 side that has swept up all our opponents along the way, but stumbled in this WC because of faulty tactics. Barring our triumph in the inaugural edition of the tournament, we have been a very mediocre T20 side in the last 5+ years (for good reasons). In fact, we have been such a poor T20 side, we have struggled to beat even NZ, a team that we have otherwise dominated in the other forms of the game, in the T20 version. Classic case in point was our tour on NZ in 2009 - We beat them in tests, thumped them in the ODIs, yet lost the T20 series 3-0! Same case at home as well. The last time NX played ODIs in India, we breezed past them 5-0. But when they came home this time to play T20, we failed to win a single game! India's poor performance last 3 edition of the T20 WC should be the tell-tale signs that informs people of the real problem afflicting our team. Our T20 team has so many fundamental flaws, its not even funny - Underwhelming fielding, lack of medium pace bowling all-rounders, out of form batsmen, lack of a genuine quick who can nip out early wickets in helpful conditions.. Where does even begin? And to make it even worse, Virender Sehwag, a sub-par T20 batsmen in the 5+ years he has played this game so far, all of a sudden becomes our savior! God help us if we need Viru's help to bail us out in a T20 tournament. Gautam's nowhere near where he was 2 years ago and keeps running himself out in all sorts of creative ways as though he's been threatened by a spot-fixing bookie, Rohit is more like Nohit and Yuvraj's comeback was clearly rushed. If we make up a list of the top 25 T20 players in the world, the only Indians who even have a fighting chance of making that list are Kohli, Raina and maybe Aswhin. Everyone else is either par or under-par. With so many foundational deficiencies in the team, even Mike Brearly's captaincy could not have taken us farther than we went in the tournament.

[GautiMaan]

Gauti, I mentioned this in some other thread - strategy works only if you have the personnel. Sehwag scored a grand total of 51 runs in 54 balls in the World T20. What did Sehwag do when he came in for Irfan? Well, played an Irfan like innings! So, Sehwag move is hardly a tactical error if you consider the situation back then. Raina as I said earlier should have been sent earlier and btw, there are so many threads discussing this that these discussions have gone nauseated. Lets use this thread (and I believe the article says that too) to discuss the future of the T20 squad. We must also note that we need to maximize our resources - just chop/hack/crack is what our padosis are known for. Lets leave that unique characteristic with them.

Okay Dex,just got tired of this rain fecked us argument of Dhoni,we played poorly and deserved to lose that game Coming back to the focus of the article,Dhoni has the chance to redeem himself but for that he and the selectors have to be bold,Sehwag and Gauti are taking their places for granted,time to kick them out and make them earn their spots,and we need to try out some new bowlers,Zak cant be relied upon anymore

[CG]

Mini Crisis?:cantstop:

[Crookbond]

Classic case in point was our tour on NZ in 2009 - We beat them in tests, thumped them in the ODIs, yet lost the T20 series 3-0! Same case at home as well. The last time NX played ODIs in India, we breezed past them 5-0. But when they came home this time to play T20, we failed to win a single game!

2-0 I don't think India has ever played a T20 series of more than 2 matches. http://www.espncricinfo.com/nzvind2009/engine/series/366616.html