Mythbusters

[Guest Hiten.]

Our selectors have good problem to solve i.e to pick batsmen that are all class :D And we say selecting a team is chewing peanuts

[Ram]

Dravid must open for plenty of reasons: 1) He is virtually opening the innings anyways, after the fall of that mandatory free wicket.

Skewed reasoning. Does that mean if the opening bowlers dont pick up any wickets, Anil Kumble should open the bowling ?

2) Dravid is in horrible form & hence it wont make a huge difference whether he opens or bats at no. 1

Essentially, you have given up on Dravid and is willing to sacrifice his wicket , without paying attention to the fact that, he is what is, The Wall, because of his feats at no.3. Dravid is not an opener, it would be naive to make him one.

[novpj]

I agree randomly moving Dravid to the opening slot to make a spot for Yuvrajdoent make sense - we should bite the bullet then and drop Dravid or Laxman. If we dont feel comfortable doing this then it means Yuvi still doesnt deserve a spot. I would drop Laxman and replace him with Yuvraj with an eye on the future.

[Guest HariSampath]

So... we thrust an out of form Dravid...into opening against Lee, Tait and Co in Aus..bcos he will not fit in any other way..can u imagine the damage to India's chances , not to mention Dravid's own career...and what ...IF he does open and fail in the first test?? what options we have then ? KKD ?? PLEASE...so we need to think carefully, and if we are compelled to extend Dravid's career, I am afraid we need to take tough decisions and look carefully at Laxman

[Lurker]

Lurks... see the Sehwag vs other openers thread... and then make judgments http://www.indiancricketfans.com/showthread.php?t=77964

I checked it Hari. Well written, as always. But I have reservations against the very basic premise - Select Sehwag cos we do not have any other alternative(TINA). To me that is simply a defensive manner of selection that will ensure we keep picking the likes of Harbhajan Singh for kingdom come. Look at it this way. How sure was Wasim Jaffer's position last year this time? I would say hardly. Today it is. Same with any of the young guns. No I am not a big KKD fan, or even Gautam Gambhir for that matter but I would much rather bet on KKD/GG coming big at this time than Sehwag. VS simply doesnt exude any sort of confidence. xxxx

[Guest HariSampath]

So ....let me think aloud and afresh now... we have Sachin and Ganguly open routinely in ODIs for long, irrespective of whether Saurav plays an ODI role or plays like in tests...so why not have one of these gentlemen take responsibility of opening the tests now ?? Is this so wrong, considering we have a crisis of selection to middle order and a crisis of quality openers ? If test middle order bats can open for the sake of convenience in ODIs...why not ODI openers do so in tests for sake of team balance...after all the way we say Sachin and Saurav play in recent Aussie ODIs.. Lee and company were pretty much bowling like tests and these two were batting pretty much like tests...just a thought..lets spare poor Dravid...in this form and pressure, he may surely fail and does it mean we bury him totally ?

[Guest HariSampath]

I checked it Hari. Well written, as always. But I have reservations against the very basic premise - Select Sehwag cos we do not have any other alternative(TINA). To me that is simply a defensive manner of selection that will ensure we keep picking the likes of Harbhajan Singh for kingdom come. Look at it this way. How sure was Wasim Jaffer's position last year this time? I would say hardly. Today it is. Same with any of the young guns. No I am not a big KKD fan, or even Gautam Gambhir for that matter but I would much rather bet on KKD/GG coming big at this time than Sehwag. VS simply doesnt exude any sort of confidence. xxxx

First of all , Thanks Lurks. But my point is.. we have SEEN the likes of Gambhir, Chopra and co in quality intl settings and we all know what they are. So have we about Sehwag... and he is not exactly a failure in comparision with GG and co..even at his worst he's done better. Sehwag would NOT be a defensive selection, but an aggressive one...allow me to defer to my better experienced and learned friend Cheeka..." even if Sehwag may not be in the best of forms, we need a player like him to score aggressive big hundreds.....etc"..see the logic ? this is "aggressive" selection..in that we are taking a chance with a tried and tested int'l quality player somewhat out of form now as compared to the KKDs, GG s etc who can't win test matches anyway... I guess u get my drift and Cheeka's reasoning too...

[Bumper]

Skewed reasoning. Does that mean if the opening bowlers dont pick up any wickets, Anil Kumble should open the bowling ?

What skewed about it ? Thats the only way Dravid can play in this lineup. He is out of form & is the worst of our middle order bats for some time now. He doesnt deserve to play ahead of Yuvraj. The fact that Dravid is averaging in the 30s at no. 3 and that he is virtually opening (coming in within the first 5 overs), makes this move all the more reasonable. Dravid himself would prefer to open, rather than being dropped.

Essentially, you have given up on Dravid and is willing to sacrifice his wicket , without paying attention to the fact that, he is what is, The Wall, because of his feats at no.3. Dravid is not an opener, it would be naive to make him one.

He is not the Wall these days. More like a Hole in the batting lineup. Tho, i think he is that one innings away from finding form. As things stand, opening slot and no. 3 are our big liabilities in our batting order. Making Dravid open can fix both problems.

[Bumper]

I agree randomly moving Dravid to the opening slot to make a spot for Yuvrajdoent make sense - we should bite the bullet then and drop Dravid or Laxman. If we dont feel comfortable doing this then it means Yuvi still doesnt deserve a spot. I would drop Laxman and replace him with Yuvraj with an eye on the future.

Yes lets drop our best test batsman of the year & retain others on reputation. If someone needs to make way, its Dravid or Tendulkar

[living]

So ....let me think aloud and afresh now... we have Sachin and Ganguly open routinely in ODIs for long' date=' irrespective of whether Saurav plays an ODI role or plays like in tests...so why not have one of these gentlemen take responsibility of opening the tests now ?? Is this so wrong, considering we have a crisis of selection to middle order and a crisis of quality openers ? If test middle order bats can open for the sake of convenience in ODIs...why not ODI openers do so in tests for sake of team balance...after all the way we say Sachin and Saurav play in recent Aussie ODIs.. Lee and company were pretty much bowling like tests and these two were batting pretty much like tests...just a thought..lets spare poor Dravid...in this form and pressure, he may surely fail and does it mean we bury him totally ?[/quote'] ODI opening is not the same as Test opening. In Odi's you want some of your best players to have a crack at the bowling with the field restrictions, in tests you want to shield your best players from the new ball.....

[Ram]

What skewed about it ? Thats the only way Dravid can play in this lineup. He is out of form & is the worst of our middle order bats for some time now. He doesnt deserve to play ahead of Yuvraj. The fact that Dravid is averaging in the 30s at no. 3 and that he is virtually opening (coming in within the first 5 overs)' date=' makes this move all the more reasonable. Dravid himself would prefer to open, rather than being dropped.[/quote'] Dravid is not even close to being dropped, just in case you havent realized that. And Dravid would definitely not prefer to open. This talk of virtual opener simply doesnt make sense because, as i said, why not ask Anil Kumble to open the bowling if the pacers dont pick wickets ?

He is not the Wall these days. More like a Hole in the batting lineup. Tho' date=' i think he is that one innings away from finding form. As things stand, opening slot and no. 3 are our big liabilities in our batting order. Making Dravid open can fix both problems.[/quote'] Making Dravid will exacerbate the problem, not fix it. And the thing is, he has scored runs in this series. He made vital runs in the 2nd innings at Delhi and made a 50 at Kolkata. The fact of the matter is, Yuvraj will, in all probability, miss out on the first test in Aus.

[bharat297]

As usual a whole bunch of Yuvraj fans get ahead of themselves ... Yes it was a very good innings on a tough pitch with the team under pressure. Yuvraj made a statement and this should be enough to get him into the Test side. Now what? Getting into the Test side is one thing, he has done it before. Now Yuvraj has to keep performing otherwise he will be dropped again. He's wanted this for a while, now that he has got it what is Yuvraj going to do with it? 1 great innings is just that ... it is not enough to secure him for eternity. He seems to be in very good form so there is no reason why he can't.

[Anakin]

Open with RD, and play UV at 6

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Predator_05]

As usual a whole bunch of Yuvraj fans get ahead of themselves ... .

There are no Yuvraj "fans" on here (apart from that one schmuck). Only Yuvraj haters

[varun]

There are no Yuvraj "fans" on here (apart from that one schmuck). Only Yuvraj haters

Yeah you got that right.. he has that cocky sob attitude at times and that doesn't jive with some ppl :P

[Deleted_User_1]

relax' date=' soon he'll be making runs against a chucker, an imitation McGrath, and a Shoaib Akhtar wannabe[/quote'] BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!! :hysterical::hysterical::hysterical:

[Bumper]

:haha: Lage raho ...

Who would you drop, amongst the middle order bats, to play Yuvraj ? Or do you think Yuvi deserves to play at all ?

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Anakin]

Heh, at least now SRT has company for being dropped. Good for RD though, just check out few earlier posts, and you'll see SRT and SCG's names, now look where they are.