I believe myself to be a great fan of gentle man game cricket. not after the India,s world cup triumph in 1983 but beforre that when kapil dev started his career taking majid khan, wicket. Gavaskar,s double century in oval. We used to get up at 3am to listen to comentary on AIR listening to sweet voice of sushil doshi and narottam puri.
I have seen downfall of cricket from gentle man game to businessman game.Instant popularity and hero through one day has brought many cricketers millions of money and certainly bad name when don,t perform. that doesnot hurt me.
What hurt me is the way top classic cricketers like lara, injamam, kumble, may be tendular would be out of cricket.
I still remember the way gavaskar changed his classic style to lofted shots to find his place in team after world cup in 1983.
How many classic shots like straight drive, cover drive, square cut, late cut, hook shots do we find in cricket nowadays. gone those days. how many players leave the ground when he is sure out cought behind. hardly one or two.
all credit goes to one day cricket and how far the game is going to be spoiled by 20-20. god knows.
Really I feal pitty on gentle man game turning into businessman man and spoiling future of greatest players in the world.
I believe myself to be a great fan of gentle man game cricket. not after the India,s world cup triumph in 1983 but beforre that when kapil dev started his career taking majid khan, wicket. Gavaskar,s double century in oval. We used to get up at 3am to listen to comentary on AIR listening to sweet voice of sushil doshi and narottam puri.
I have seen downfall of cricket from gentle man game to businessman game.Instant popularity and hero through one day has brought many cricketers millions of money and certainly bad name when don,t perform. that doesnot hurt me.
What hurt me is the way top classic cricketers like lara, injamam, kumble, may be tendular would be out of cricket.
I still remember the way gavaskar changed his classic style to lofted shots to find his place in team after world cup in 1983.
How many classic shots like straight drive, cover drive, square cut, late cut, hook shots do we find in cricket nowadays. gone those days. how many players leave the ground when he is sure out cought behind. hardly one or two.
all credit goes to one day cricket and how far the game is going to be spoiled by 20-20. god knows.
Really I feal pitty on gentle man game turning into businessman man and spoiling future of greatest players in the world.
RE:Don't U think one day spoiling world cricket
by Ravi chandran on Apr 16, 2007 12:26 PM Permalink
Mr Miserable, why do you keep posting the same message again and again?
In 20-20 cricket you must be agile and alert in the field.But when our oldies will play 20-20 cricket the way the oldies field will be fun to watch. This 3 senior players I mean oldies will bat slowly.They will get support from Indian public saying that everybody was getting out and they wanted to stay till 20 overs.Imagine how many runs these three will score. Tendulkar 10(24 balls) Ganguly 8(23 balls) Dravid 8(24 balls) These three oldies will waste 12 overs for scoring their runs
RE:Oldies in 20-20 Cricket
by bharat on Apr 16, 2007 12:16 PM Permalink
What gives you the confidence to predict that Ganguly will bat slightly faster than Dravid?
RE:[object MouseEvent]
by Kart on Apr 16, 2007 02:19 PM Permalink
Nothin his batting is pathetic.Against Bermuda he was struggling to hit the ball.Iam being lienient to him
RE:Oldies in 20-20 Cricket
by Ravi chandran on Apr 16, 2007 12:19 PM Permalink
I think Jayasurya is the only one with a 50 in 20/20s. Is he a teenager?
RE:Oldies in 20-20 Cricket
by Kart on Apr 16, 2007 02:16 PM Permalink
Jayasuriya is much more fitter than our seniors.His fielding is good.while our seniors struggle to field.He is the fittest at 37 while our seniors are weakest at 33
BCCI has appointed Dravid as the Captain for the next three foreign trips. How terrible it is. I can not understand why the former players are not responding against such a foolish decision. They should realise one thing. Now it self, the true cricket fans are thrown cricket from their heart and if the lean patch continues, then it will be the end of Cricket in India. To be frank, Dravid is not a good leader and he has already proved it by his dubious decisions in the last one year and can any body point out any one day tournament victory in overseas under Dravid's captaincy (Not in the sub continent). I am not critisising him, but his captaincy. And in the last world cup as well as the mini world cup, India's failure is due to his captaincy only. In the Ireland trip, India has to face South Africa and do you remember the outcome of the last SA trip? So, for the good future of Indian Cricket, pls appoint a good captain as Dravid has already proved that he is not suit for the job ...
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by bharat on Apr 16, 2007 12:08 PM Permalink
A highly rated and experienced captain like Stephen Flemming's took the wrong decision to bat first against Sri Lanka. Did any one slam Flemming for this decision with the same intensity as we slammed Dravid for batting first against Bangladesh? Every captain makes good decisions and mistakes. Even Ganguly, rated as India's best captain made substantial percentage of mistakes during the 1st half of his captaincy. (Including the imfamous decision of putting Australia in to bat in the 2003 finals). If you want to put the bulk of blame of India's WC debacle on Dravid, be fair and also credit him for the good performance during the test matches in West Indies and SA. India lost because the team flopped as a whole and cannot be singularly attributed to Dravid's captaincy. The decision to keep Dravid as the captain is 100% correct.
I am neither from Karnataka nor from Bengal. If you want to allege regional biase behind my comments, jolly well go ahead!
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by Ravi chandran on Apr 16, 2007 12:17 PM Permalink
I think, for continuity, Dravid must be there. All other seniors can be axed. Give him a team of youngsters and watch the unfurling of wonderful Team India.
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by Annie on Apr 16, 2007 10:26 AM Permalink
India was ranked at No.7 and going through an extremely bad patch, what did you expect them to do against south africa. But having said that, even I wasn't prepared for the bangladesh episode.
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by RAJESH SREEDHARAN on Apr 16, 2007 10:32 AM Permalink
Well, we are expecting a good performance from the last one year and nothing happened till now... And after the next three trips also, we can expect so... You can see it in the last ICC mini world cup, SA trip and in the last world cup also. And after the early exit from the world cup, Dravid told the reporters that we are not deserved to Win the world cup. How can we expect good from such a captain??? Only the over experimentation cause this failure...
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by Annie on Apr 16, 2007 10:44 AM Permalink
Dravid was only stating an honest fact ( he was still being a bit polite if you ask me , winning the world cup is a long shot, with their performance they didn't even deserve to be in it), had he said anything to the contrary then everyone would have said he is shamelessly making excuses for Indias pathetic performance. Had Kapil Dev himself been the captain I doubt even he could do anything, the entire batting line-up collapsed, I don't see how anyone can defend that.
RE:RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by RAJESH SREEDHARAN on Apr 16, 2007 11:37 AM Permalink
Dear Annie, I think, u r thouroughly mistaken. I will point out some things.. Can u pls reply? !) In the last encouter against Australia, (I think in the tri series in which India, West Indies and Australia participated) Australia beatnen India very easily. And in the Post match meeting, Dravid told to the reporters that "even if we are taking 50-60 more runs, we could not beat Australia". If a Captain is playing with such an attitude, then how can we win a match?
2) Just before the world cup, Dravid was just experimenting. Even if India were having 4 openers, what was the need of Dravid opening the innings in ODI's? He has opened in a lot of matches at that time saying that a player should be able to play at any position. And i do believe that if Sachin has opened the innings which is his favourite position, then he could have given a solid start to the team in the WC . And can u believe. any other team would do such blunders? Will Australia be ready to put Hayden at 4 th place or Ponting to open the innings? 3) If Dhoni was playing in any other team, he would have promoted in the batting order. And u remember, when he played at one down, he blasted two amazing tons and some 50's. But, when Dravid became the Captain, he didn't promote Dhoni in the order. Instead he promoted Pathan in the order. Of course, it was a success, but after that Pathan lost his rhythm in his bowling and lost his place in the team.
And u remember one thing, Steve Waugh lost his place in the one day team after failing to reach the finals in a tri nation cup in which Australia, SA and New zealand participated. After that incident, the selectors thrown him away from the team. I am not blaming Dravid, but we should admit that he is a poor captain...
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by Annie on Apr 16, 2007 12:49 PM Permalink
Ok Rajesh, here it goes:
1) I cannot comment on this because i'm not aware of the series you are reffering to (and since you don't remember the name I can't pull out the stats to check how big a margin it was).
2)Ponting and Hayden are in cracking form, Tendulkar is not. Infact he's been strugling for sometime now, the new ball does a bit,so keeping that in mind you will want to send him a bit lower down the order to see off the new ball so the wicket has time to settle down a bit. Had he been the Tendulkar of old, he could have played any spot, but he's not the same guy anymore.
3) I agree with you here Dhoni is NO.6 in the ODI ranking (and the only Indian in the top 10) he has the potential to play up the order, India/Dravid is under-utilising him, and probably paying for it.
India pays too much importance to it's batting and much too little to it's bowling, Pathan is the byproduct of exactly such thinking, Pathan the bowler was sacrificed for pathan the batsman, and now they are abusing him because it suddenly dawned on them that they need good bowlers too. You know Imran Khan said pathan needed to be protected and used wisely (do you guys remember Balaji, where is he now). But you Indians are obssesed with batting, if you guy could only appreciate the beauty of great bowling.
I'm not saying Dravid is a great captain (he is not), but what other option do you have at the moment and please don't say tendulkar, he has been nothing short of disaster himself.
RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by Vipul on Apr 16, 2007 12:12 PM Permalink
1) Does a statement matter more than the performance ? 2) In australia's case: Hussey, clarke, symmonds all have opened the batting. Whats ur say? 3) Are you the captain or Dravid to decide on the batting line-up.
If you have the guts, then do something urself. Join the indian cricket team. Perform well, then only what u takl holds value. Why are u just crapping around with no sense?
RE:[object]
by bharat on Apr 16, 2007 12:14 PM Permalink
Rajesh, Captaincy or captains inspiration cannot make miracles. It does make a difference in crunch situations. However, for captaincy to make a difference, the team and players must be able to attain a certain level of performance on its own. In the present world cup, the peformance of our players was far below the level at which good or bad captaincy could have made any difference to the results.
RE:RE:Team Indias disastrous run will continue...
by siva kumar on Apr 16, 2007 12:05 PM Permalink
You give 100 matches to a captain. Surely he will perform well in atleat 30 matches. You want this result? Or you want a better result Mr.Kart? What Mr.Rajesh sridharan says is completed accepted.
Cricket must change its dimension, I stongly suggest 20/20 matches will be feature, when the game comes to shorter version...then I am sure other countries like China, Korea, US, Russia and many other countries would try this game and at one stage it will included in olympics. Then there will greater danger to our indian cricket...sure they will loose there way as our great Hockey team. Then Students and employers and employees will save there time by not watching this games for months (like WC). THEN INDIA WILL PROSPER AND WILL BECOME ONE OF THE SUPER POWERS BY 2020 (Kalams dream also)
RE:2020 cricket - for India to become super power
by Ravi chandran on Apr 16, 2007 12:14 PM Permalink
20/20 is a comedy. Who knows, it may come to stay.
I don't think that Shastri can be a good coach, as he doesn't have a proven record as a professional coach. We need professional coaches who can train the team, formulate good strategies suiting the team for various situations, especially while playing on foreign grounds. You may recall that India started winning test matches outside the subcontinent when they were playing under foreign coaches (John Wright and Greg Chappel). Because, they know what should be the composition and strategy to be adopted by the playing eleven under such circumstances (on fast and bouncy pitches). The best choice would be either to bring back John Wright or get Dav Whatmore, who has excellent record in coaching Asian Teams, for coaching Indian Team. Also, dumbing players like Tendulkar, Ganguly, Sehwag, etc. who refused to follow the game plan on the ground would do whole world of good to Indian cricket as it convey the right message to the future prospective players. Performance oriented payment is also a good sign. The current payment system is not good at all. We all know that Tendulkar bracketed in the top grade was paid very heavily for his very poor performances. Let's appreciate Tendulkar for his achievements and scoring abilities, but the selection should be purely merited on current form and performance and should not be based on past achievements.
RE:We need a professional coach!
by Annie on Apr 16, 2007 11:11 AM Permalink
Relax dude, Shastri's only the interim Coach, you'll get the professional coach before long, but Shastri's one cool guy.
RE:We need a professional coach!
by Ravi chandran on Apr 16, 2007 12:12 PM Permalink
Shastri & Sobers have hit 6 sixes in first class matches. Recently Gibbs did so in the WC. None in test matches.
The way things going for India, we will defenitely loose few matches against Bangladesh and Ireland in the forth coming series. Dravid and Shastri will be going for experiments as Chappels way till next WC and may exits from first round again in home grounds. I feel the transition from seniors are not done smoothly, as we have seen Chappel experimented so far with full of youngsters which failed and bring in all the seniors which also failed. India must learn from Oz, how they bringing in young players one by one smoothly into the team GOOD LUCK FOR TEAM INDIA
