My take on the squad for the first two one day internationals against New Zealand

The selection committee

Despite of managing more than a decent job for the most part over the past few months (at least!), the selection committee headed by Kris Srikkanth, keeps on repeating at least a couple of blunders, every time it announces a squad for any series. This time too, it was no different for the first two one day internationals against New Zealand. Let’s try and find out what they have done right, or wrong.

The squad: Gautam Gambhir (captain), M Vijay, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Saurabh Tiwary, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R Ashwin, Praveen Kumar, R Vinay Kumar, Munaf Patel, Sreesanth, Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja.

First things first, let’s give credit where it is due. The selectors have done an excellent job by bringing back Yusuf Pathan into the side, which goes to show that they are thinking in the right direction, so far as the upcoming world cup is concerned. To his credit, Yusuf has played a couple of excellent knocks (195 off 138 balls against Haryana and 89 off 42 balls against Gujarat) in the on-going domestic tournaments) and also bowled with purpose(Ten wickets against Uttar Pradesh). We had discussed in an earlier post about his utility in the subcontinent at the number seven position in the Indian batting line-up. Against the Kiwis though, the team management would do well to give him a few opportunities to bat up the order to boost his self belief (assuming he would be picked up for the entire series.).

Gautam Gambhir makes a come back to the one day scheme of things after his injury lay off and this series would give him a chance to get back into rhythm at the top of the order. Murali Vijay Is going to be his partner, which is a really good thing. For Vijay’s sake, I hope that, he grabs this opportunity and scores a few big knocks. There is no dispute in Kohli, Yuvraj and Raina’s selection. Saurabh Tiwary too, deserved to be persisted with.

I am a bit baffled with Sikhar Dhawan’s exclusion though; he was just given a solitary chance against the Aussies and then discarded. This is not going to do his confidence any good. No point picking a player if you are not going to allow him to play at least a few matches to showcase his potential. Dhawan was better off not at all being picked; at least he would have remained positive that way.

Ravindra Jadeja

Coming to the ridiculous part of this selection, Ravidra Jadeja still continues to find a place in the side despite of his indifferent showing in the many matches he has played till now. Nobody in the past decade has found this much backing from the selectors and the team management. Or wait! I get a déjà vu feeling here, was not Ajit Agarkar the blue eyed boy for a long time in the past? He used to be a permanent feature of the side irrespective of his many match-losing performances. We are bent on repeating the same in Jadeja’s case as well. And at least, Agarkar had some amount of skills, which he didn’t use, for reasons better known to him. On the contrary, Jadeja is a clear case of lack of ability. I fail to decipher any apparent reason why he should be persisted with.

Wriddhiman Saha

The second inexplicable case is that of Wriddhiman Saha’s selection, who seems to be a bit of personal favorite of Srikkanth. He had even played as a batsman in a test against South Africa, remember? Agreed, that was a forced choice then, but for limited over cricket, especially when we are in the process of building a team for the world cup, the selection of Saha over Dinesh Karthick is just non-sense. Only a few matches back, Dinesh was considered good enough even as a specialist batsman in the team! Strangely enough, he is out of favor despite his undeniable talent and spirit. I have always maintained that he is an automatic selection, when Dhoni is not there in the playing eleven, irrespective of the format of the game, for I am dead sure, Dinesh even without a bat is a better batsman than Saha, and is not too far behind him when it comes to wicket keeping. And if Dinesh is injured, which is not the case now; the second closest replacement for Dhoni has to be Naman Ojha.

Vinay Kumar

The third unimaginative selection happens to be that of Vinay Kumar, who without doubt is a mediocre bowler, which anybody with the slightest of cricketing sense would know. He proved me right against the Aussies when he was carted all over the park by Clarke and White. Perhaps 22-runs in the penultimate over was okay with our selectors! Make no mistake; he is perfectly capable of replicating that performance any day. To me he is a Praveen Kumar type of bowler without Praveen’s swing and common sense. Would you pick such a bowler even for your club matches? Why not pick an Umesh Yadav or an Unadkt in Vinay’s place, if they are considered such good options to play against the South Africans?

All said and done, if I were to select a playing eleven out of this side, I would go with Gambhir, Vijay, Virat, Yuvraj, Raina, Yusuf, Saha, Ashwin, Praveen, Sreesanth and Munaf. I wouldn’t be too happy with Saha and Sreesanth in the eleven, but in any case would go with them for lack of better alternatives.

Whatever happened to Yuvraj’s test and Laxman’s one-day career!!!

Laxman and Yuvraj are undoubtedly two of the most talented cricketers India has ever produced. If one is amongst the toughest nuts to crack when the chips are down in the test arena, the other makes sure that India doesn’t lose a limited over match as long as he is out there in the middle. Yet, both have a common regret in their careers, that of not being considered good enough for both the formats.

Laxman-Yuvraj in Sydney

As ironic as it is, a super-brilliant batsman of the calibre of Laxman, notwithstanding his phenomenal success in the longer format of the game over a decade, shall never get to play for India in a world cup match, a dream he had nurtured right from the day he had held a cricket bat in his hand. On the other hand, an extremely gifted and highly regarded batsman like Yuvraj, who can send down a few scares to any bowler when on crease, could never cement his place in the longer version of the game, something that is regarded as the ultimate goal of any cricketer. Certainly some bitterness to carry at the end of your cricketing career!

Now, before analyzing the reason, we will have to counter the argument that their individual games don’t suit both the formats. I would defy anybody who says Laxman was not good enough a batsman for the shorter version (one-day matches at least), due to his strike rate, for the simple reason that he was(is) a much more positive player compared to Dravid, who has managed to accumulate in excess of ten thousand runs under his belt in the limited over international matches. Not only that, Laxman was a much more free-flowing batsman and with the kind of wrist work that he possesses, he had got a much better chance of piercing the field as against Dravid at any point of time. He also has six one day hundreds to his credit, most of which he had scored under trying circumstances against the best of bowlers. A phenomenal bowler like Brett Lee pays him this tribute, “I have been playing against Laxman since my under-16 days and nothing has changed. He used to smash me then, and he smashes me even now all over the park.” Steve Waugh paid him yet another after the breath-taking Sydney hundred, “This has been the most blazing stroke-play I have seen in a long long time.” Even though the later  was a test knock, our focus is on the kind of shots that Laxman can play, which makes him an excellent top order player even in one-day matches. And Cricinfo editor Sambit Bal rightly points out that Laxman is the only player who has the ability to play the same ball on either side of the wicket in a manner that would make you believe that there could not be a better shot than what you just saw. So it’s not his game for sure, it has to be something else.

Similarly, if Sehwag can be a phenomenal success in the test arena defying all the logic of technique, foot work or the so called traditional wear-down-the-bowler-over-time strategy, why can’t Yuvraj replicate the same? Again it’s not Yuvraj’s game that is holding him back. What’s it then? Read on, and in case you have another point of view, please put that down here at the end of this post. 

VVS Laxman

Laxman’s lack of success in the shorter format of the game is largely due to his inconsistency in the initial years of his career. He was one batsman who would score heavily in a series and would not go beyond a quick 20 or 30 in another. He never looked out of touch mind you, but more often than not, would play a careless shot and gift away his wicket, at time over doing it beyond the tolerance level of the spectators and selectors alike. His fitness too was not up to the mark those days. The selectors were running out of patience with him, and as it turned out, Laxman’s loss indirectly proved Dravid’s gain. After being kept away from the limited over matches for a good year and a half as punishment due to his over defensive approach, Dravid was kind of cementing his place at number five as a make-shift wicket keeper batsman, and following his phenomenal success against Australia in both form of the game, Laxman was given yet another opportunity to bat at the number three slot. But after playing a few mind-blowing knocks yet again his inconsistency got the better of him. Eventually, he lost out his place in the 2003 world cup squad to Dinesh Mongia, whose only claim to fame was a 150-odd against a lowly Zimbabwe attack. With his kind of limited ability, Dinesh was never going to be in the side for long, and his departure brought Dravid back to the number three slot, which he grabbed with both hands. And with the consistency Dravid showed thereafter, it was hard to dislodge him from there. Then, as you know, arrived younger players like Yuvraj and Kaif, and filled the lower middle order for India. Thus the door was permanently shut on Laxman. So, I feel, Laxman himself is to blame for his failure in the shorter version of the game, where his inconsistency and lack of fitness, coupled with Dravid’s consistency made sure that he was not going to get another look in.

Yuvraj Singh

Coming to Yuvraj’s test place, as it stands today, Suresh Raina is the one who has replaced him in the number six slot, which Yuvraj had earlier managed to inherit after Sourav Ganguly’s retirement. Yuvraj struggled and struggled in the number six slot and finally one fine day, when Raina got the opportunity to bat at that spot owing to Yuvraj’s injury, he grabbed it with a century and a few more strong performances. Yuvraj’s problem lies entirely in his mindset. He somehow can’t seem to take his mind off from the label of an one-day player that was stamped on him by his detractors. He come to the wicket and tried a bit too hard to prove them wrong and ends up being caught up somewhere in between, neither playing aggressively, nor being able to defend with conviction. By trying to defend too much, he ends up ignoring his natural game, which is attacking, and playing a game of somebody else, a situation that any opposition would like to put a batsman into. Then on he becomes a sitting duck for even a part time bowler. His strength is his assured drives of the full deliveries and his brutal pull shots off the short balls. He is the only batsman in the current lot, apart from Dhoni, whom you would not fancy bowling short stuffs. Jacques Kallis, Allan Donald, Brett Lee, Glen McGrath, Waqar Younis, all these fast bowlers have discovered that the hard way. His major weakness lies in his tentativeness outside his off stump at the start of his innings. If he manages to overcome that with a bit of discipline and gets his eye in, he becomes as destructive as anybody you could ever imagine, his high back lift only helping him sending the ball flying out of the stadium. The sooner he realized this better for him. I have always seen him as the Indian version of Kevin Pieterson. Confident to the point of being arrogant, assured on the crease, a rock star in stature just like KP, when in full flow; Yuvraj can just dismiss the bowlers out of their self belief. Any team would love to have an unfair advantage at number six of his caliber.

Unlike Laxman’s one day dreams, Yuvraj’s test career is far from over. With Suresh Raina showing signs of running out of steam, he still can get another chance to prove his true class, only, that would be his last chance.

What Sachin and Rohit have in common....

In a recent post on Murali Vijay, I had incidentally drawn a comparison between the youth brigade of Indian cricket (Rohit-Virat-Raina-Vijay) and the ‘fabulous four’ of the past decade (Sachin-Dravid-Ganguly-Laxman). Even though the occasion was entirely different, I really meant what I mentioned there. I had received some off-line feedback on that article from a friend, which eventually prompted me to elaborate on the topic. While he was fine with the other comparisons, he had kind of taken offence on the Sachin-Rohit parallel. Viewed in isolation, he was quite justified in saying so, but the context in which I mentioned the one-on-one past verses present does need some explanation. In this article though, we would try to address the most controversial comparison of the lot while still touching upon the others just briefly.

Sachin versus Rohit: When I compare the talented Rohit Sharma to the batting legend Sachin Tendulkar, I do not; by any means propose that Rohit is as good a batsman as the little master. Nobody can be, I only mean, if anyone comes even close to be compared with the great man, it has to be Rohit, and logically he is the one who should be batting in the number four position that’s going to be eventually vacated upon Sachin’s retirement.

I have got some strong logic going on this theory, which I have gathered from watching and analyzing Rohit’s batting, and listening to cricket experts discussing the approach of this youngster on the batting crease.

Sachin

If you look closely at Sachin in action, you would be sort of surprised to find the simplest of technique there. The little master just does the basic things right, absolutely no effort to do a copy book act, it looks as if his eyes, head, feet and every part of his body just glide through the motion when his bat meets the ball. How many times have you seen him standing out of his crease to negate the swing, or deliberately trying to move back and across while negotiating express deliveries on lightning quick pitches? Very rarely. Everything just comes automatically to this man. How does he manage to do that so effortlessly? What’s that one thing which separates him from the rest? Certainly not technique, as Sunil Gavaskar, Jeff Boycott and even the contemporary Rahul Dravid undoubtedly are known to have tighter and better technique than him. What sets Sachin apart is the amount of time that he possesses when he plays a ball. He has more time to negotiate a delivery than any other batsman I have seen. Nice and easy on the crease, he is never hurried in his stroke play, executing the most breathtaking shot with the least of fuss. Even the great Brian Lara, with that extra-ordinary amount of natural talent, looked hurried at times. This extra time-factor, coupled with a highly disciplined mind has taken Sachin to a place which others can only dream of. 

And this is exactly where Rohit is blessed. He too has that extra amount of time at his disposal. You would never see him hurried just like his idol Sachin. And this is precisely the reason why he was so successful in negotiating a rampaging Brett Lee on a super quick track in Australia with ease, when everybody else was struggling to find his bearing. That one glimpse of class turned the great Ian Chappell a fan of this young lad from India for ever, as he often asks what a batsman of the caliber of Rohit is doing outside the test team.

Rohit Sharma

Pretty much like Sachin, Rohit too has a simple technique; he looks to plays late, straight and close to his body, right under his nose. He has this lazy elegance that simply oozes class when he is on the crease. Just try and recollect any knock that he has played so far, and you would be reminded of poetry. He doesn’t have the amount of runs under his belt to make people believe in him as yet, but that’s just a matter of time. As you are aware, class is permanent.

Where Rohit lacks is not ability, but application. And he needs quite a bit of that very quickly. So far he has failed not because of short supply of talent, but discipline on the crease. He still features in the current scheme of things only because the Indian selectors have seen what Ian Chappell had seen. But if Rohit doesn’t grab the limited opportunities that come his way with both hands, he is going to miss the bus. Indian cricket is just too competitive.

Now to round it off, we would try to quickly touch base upon the other three comparisons too.

Dravid versus Kohli: I compare Virat with Rahul only due to the mental strength factor. Both are quite different players with Virat being as much aggressive as Rahul is technically equipped. But when it comes to fighting it out there in the middle or batting right through an innings under pressure, both are amongst the best of the best.

Ganguly versus Raina: Natural talent is the common factor here, unless you are mentioning the susceptibility against the short ball, which both these players have displayed. Now, Raina has to manage this weakness of his like Ganguly has done over an illustrious career. The other factor that induces this comparison is that both are aggressive left handed batsmen, who like to stamp their authority on the bowlers.

Laxman versus Vijay: I had already addressed this in a previous post, wherein I mentioned about the sublime stroke play of these immensely talented batsmen. Despite of batting at different positions, they approach the task at their hand with a similar lyrical smoothness that simply mesmerizes the viewers.

To conclude, I must reiterate that all these modern day players have much to prove before their names can even be taken in the same breath as the yester year’s greats, but they certainly have the potential to succeed on the big stage.

And India’s success lies in their success.