So who is going to be our 2nd spinner in overseas?

[sensible-indian]

4 hours ago, Gollum said:

Ashwin is a damn good batsman. Check his batting in 2014 Old Trafford. I am willing to put my neck out and say Ashwin is a better batsman overseas than Pujara.  Jaddu, Saha are mediocre compared to him. 

 

I have seen enough of Vijay Shankar in domestic cricket and sorry to say he is not international class either with bat or ball. His batting is worse than Gurkeerat and Rishi Dhawan. Same with Hardik Pandya. Jayant simply doesn't warrant a place in the team, I find his bowling way too over rated. 

 

Play Ash in all 4 tests at number 6: I guarantee he will be amongst our top 4 run getters bu the end of the series. At his best he can match even Rahane/Kohli in his strokeplay and get a brisk counter attacking 100. That's why I said check the Old Trafford test. England had a damn good bowling attack, pitch was difficult and our batsmen were folding like a pack of cards. Ashwin looked the most comfortable in both innings and the way he covered the line of Anderson and Broad, proper old school test batting.....no fluke like Jaddu's Lord's innings.

The day he turns his pretty 30s and 50s into 100s will be the day we can think of him as a pure bat. Not saying it can't happen but right now, he isn't at that level. He seems to score those 100s against WI but for some reason, misses out against others. Missed out on 4 hundreds in the England series. I would classify as just one series but that's been the trend across his whole career. Yes, he has been tightening up his game over the last year but hard to say what he can do in alien conditions as a number 6.

 

The Old Trafford 2nd innings was a flawless knock but in the first innings where it the ball was swinging around corners, Ashwin was very reckless and lucky. When he played properly, he did well but he was trying to get bat on ball for everything in the first innings. There was a dropped catch too.

 

Agreed about Pandya and Jayant. This Pandya guy right now is a hack who can't bat or bowl properly. He can be kept in LOIs (and allowed to develop) but in tests, its a big risk.

[Pollack]

5 hours ago, Gollum said:

 

I have seen enough of Vijay Shankar in domestic cricket and sorry to say he is not international class either with bat or ball.

Have you seen him bat recently or much before. To me he looks pretty solid batsman with proper balance and movement while batting. Bowling is ordinary and to add to it he is also a trundler.

[Ankit_sharma03]

5 hours ago, Gollum said:

Ashwin is a damn good batsman. Check his batting in 2014 Old Trafford. I am willing to put my neck out and say Ashwin is a better batsman overseas than Pujara.  Jaddu, Saha are mediocre compared to him. 

 

I have seen enough of Vijay Shankar in domestic cricket and sorry to say he is not international class either with bat or ball. His batting is worse than Gurkeerat and Rishi Dhawan. Same with Hardik Pandya. Jayant simply doesn't warrant a place in the team, I find his bowling way too over rated. 

 

Play Ash in all 4 tests at number 6: I guarantee he will be amongst our top 4 run getters bu the end of the series. At his best he can match even Rahane/Kohli in his strokeplay and get a brisk counter attacking 100. That's why I said check the Old Trafford test. England had a damn good bowling attack, pitch was difficult and our batsmen were folding like a pack of cards. Ashwin looked the most comfortable in both innings and the way he covered the line of Anderson and Broad, proper old school test batting.....no fluke like Jaddu's Lord's innings.

Ashwin is a good batsman but Sa is bloody superior bowling attack.....will get him LBW time n again. Then comes saha and he ll go soon to

 

Vijay shankar i worse then rishi n gurkeerat idhar bhi bhaang bhijwaa de bhai

I dnt knw who rates jayant yadav bowling highly here forget being overrated 

 

Ashwin can match rahane n kohli...........kohli avg 60+ in Sa.....yea right

but there is diff btw Playing in eng n SA. For some it might suit playing in eng for some in Sa....

 

[Gollum]

40 minutes ago, Ankit_sharma03 said:

Ashwin is a good batsman but Sa is bloody superior bowling attack.....will get him LBW time n again. Then comes saha and he ll go soon to

 

Vijay shankar i worse then rishi n gurkeerat idhar bhi bhaang bhijwaa de bhai

I dnt knw who rates jayant yadav bowling highly here forget being overrated 

 

Ashwin can match rahane n kohli...........kohli avg 60+ in Sa.....yea right

but there is diff btw Playing in eng n SA. For some it might suit playing in eng for some in Sa....

 

SA attack isn't better than 2014 England or 2011-12 Australia at present with their quota system. Ashwin and Saha can get 30-40 runs easily which is 30-40 runs more than what Rohit Sharma will score. Ashwin specially has never been troubled by seam/swing/bounce. Only spinners and low/sluggish tracks expose him because his game against spin is a work in progress and he relies too much on timing and can't manoeuvre the field.

 

Vijay Shankar is a hack, believe me. Na idhar ka naa udhar kaa, basically just like Rishi and Gurkeerat. Unless he improves by leaps and bounds he shouldn't be played. 

 

Kohli may average 60+ in RSA but in England he is the worst no 4 in the history of test cricket. I am not playing down Kohli, he is my favourite batsman. Just pointing to the fallacy of mocking Ashwin's batting when he has played only 1 match in RSA. Give him a proper run at no 6 and see the magic. At his best he can match any of our batsmen.

[Gollum]

57 minutes ago, Pollack said:

Have you seen him bat recently or much before. To me he looks pretty solid batsman with proper balance and movement while batting. Bowling is ordinary and to add to it he is also a trundler.

His bowling as you said is utterly mediocre. He can never make the side because of all round ability, Ellyse Perry will look more threatening than him. So that leaves his batting. But by no stretch of imagination is his batting good enough to warrant a place in our middle order. Batting wise I think there are at least 10 others ahead of him right now. So he has to improve his bowling to break through. I don't see how that is possible. 

[Gollum]

1 hour ago, sensible-indian said:

The day he turns his pretty 30s and 50s into 100s will be the day we can think of him as a pure bat. Not saying it can't happen but right now, he isn't at that level. He seems to score those 100s against WI but for some reason, misses out against others. Missed out on 4 hundreds in the England series. I would classify as just one series but that's been the trend across his whole career. Yes, he has been tightening up his game over the last year but hard to say what he can do in alien conditions as a number 6.

 

The Old Trafford 2nd innings was a flawless knock but in the first innings where it the ball was swinging around corners, Ashwin was very reckless and lucky. When he played properly, he did well but he was trying to get bat on ball for everything in the first innings. There was a dropped catch too.

 

Agreed about Pandya and Jayant. This Pandya guy right now is a hack who can't bat or bowl properly. He can be kept in LOIs (and allowed to develop) but in tests, its a big risk.

But we don't want 100s from him in those countries, leave the heavy lifting to Vijay, Rahul, Pujara, Kohli and Rahane. If he can get consistent 30s and 40s with occasional 70s he is good enough for a number 6 batsman. In earlier tours we had the likes of Raina, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma, Karthik etc at number 6. They never got 100s, but were specialist batsmen according to team management, experts and commentators. Don't you think Ashwin is an upgrade over those hacks? I sincerely believe Ashwin should easily do better than them. Add to the fact that he knows a thing or too about bowling . I fail to see how he won't be a sure starter in every single overseas test in the coming 24 months. 

 

Before 2008 we had Dada as our number 6 batsman, after him we have experimented with these hacks at number 6 even when we were world number 1. Check scorecards of our matches after 2008, even our overseas assignments like NZ 2009, RSA 2010, Eng 2011 etc. Check which all maharathis were our number 6 then and what were their contributions. 

[Cricketics]

I posted this on your fb post and posting something along same lines here.

 

 

I have been saying this for a while but people were laughing at the suggestion. Jadeja should be first choice as of today. Now people are slowly starting to realize why I said Jadeja should be used as first choice.

 

 

He is bowling better than Ashwin even though there isn't great difference between the two.

 

Important points to consider

- Most teams lose in Australia because their spin bowlers end up giving over 150-200 runs in an inning and are not able to support the seamer like recently Yasir Shah, or in the past, Murali, Ashwin, Kumble etc on many occasions.

- All the conventional spinners have gone for runs in Australia. Weather the great Murali is involved or even a great like Kumble. Point is pacers will win you matches but spinner can not afford to give away 150 runs easily. This makes pace bowlers bowl defensively.

- Jadeja is different. He has ability to restrict runs as he has his LOI skills in his bowling involved every time and he also has ability to spin the ball as you can see he is clearly trying different things in recent series'. There comes a time in the match on these tours to Australia when on day 2-3, middle order Australia bats bat freely against spinners and pile on big scorers attacking spinners and seamers, this is where Jadeja will ensure days are not given up but actually fought against Australia. 

 

 

Picking Jadeja will be the wise choice.

 

Overall, the better bowler during that tour, including the warm ups etc should get the first chance. I am just tempted to play Jadeja ahead. Need to make these big calls sometimes. 

 

 

 

[Jimmy Cliff]

Ashwin.