Four or five?
This, if I may so, Harsha, is nonsense:
"India have drawn matches in the past through a reluctance to play more than four bowlers. Now they have lost one after playing five. You can go wrong being cautious and you can go wrong being adventurous."
India have not drawn matches because they didn't play more than four bowlers. They drew matches because those four bowlers were not good enough to take 20 wickets between them. They didn't lose this match because they played five bowlers. They lost because the five batsmen that were picked didn't pull their weight. I find this obsession with the number of the bowlers idiotic, when its the quality of the batting that should be under scrutiny. You could play 10 bowlers if you wanted, and if all them were trundlers, you still wouldn't get 10 wickets in an innings. Two of the greatest sides in recent test history, the West Indies of the 1980s and Australia from 1995 on, frequently played with four bowlers. A quick look at their bowling line-ups will tell you why they won. The weakness in Indian line-ups has been a lack of quality bowling. Now that we have the makings of a decent bowling attack, our batsmen have gone on furlough. The not-so-subtle message in quote above, that India lost because they were adventurous is off the mark; India lost because they made the wrong decisions given the conditions, and because they batted badly.
"India have drawn matches in the past through a reluctance to play more than four bowlers. Now they have lost one after playing five. You can go wrong being cautious and you can go wrong being adventurous."
India have not drawn matches because they didn't play more than four bowlers. They drew matches because those four bowlers were not good enough to take 20 wickets between them. They didn't lose this match because they played five bowlers. They lost because the five batsmen that were picked didn't pull their weight. I find this obsession with the number of the bowlers idiotic, when its the quality of the batting that should be under scrutiny. You could play 10 bowlers if you wanted, and if all them were trundlers, you still wouldn't get 10 wickets in an innings. Two of the greatest sides in recent test history, the West Indies of the 1980s and Australia from 1995 on, frequently played with four bowlers. A quick look at their bowling line-ups will tell you why they won. The weakness in Indian line-ups has been a lack of quality bowling. Now that we have the makings of a decent bowling attack, our batsmen have gone on furlough. The not-so-subtle message in quote above, that India lost because they were adventurous is off the mark; India lost because they made the wrong decisions given the conditions, and because they batted badly.
posted by Samir Chopra at 9:02 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Samir,
But when did u expect our cricket analysts and experts to write sensibly? They r still stuck in the "India is the world's best batting side" time warp. Yeah sure, it is the world's best batting side but only on flat tracks. The last time our great batting line scored more than 400 was on the sleeping beauty wicket of Faislabad, and even there they contrived to get themselves into a difficult situation, and even there we reached 600 because of the lower order.
If u ask me, i think we have not been fair to Laxman, he is one of the few batsman who can play on bouncy tracks, and so can Kaif. If u look at from last Sri Lanka series, there is one pattern, Indian pitches are not the designer dustbowls of before, they r faster, and our flat track heroes couldnt last on em. Forget Pakistan and England, our batsman struggled even against the pop gun attack of Sri Lanka, and it was left to Laxman to pull em out of a mess in Ahmedabad when we were 91/5 along with the lower order.So i guess its time we stop hyping our batsmen. Get the batsmen who can perform, and those who cant, ask em to please sit at home. If u ask me our batting line up should be like Gambhir,Jaffer,Dravid, Laxman and Kaif. Wont be a bad idea to get Ganguly back, but i guess Chappell's king size ego wont allow that.
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