***Official*** India in England

[aussie]

No Sehwag, crap. India's bowling attack looking a bit week. England to win the test series easily once we have a bowling attack of Hoggard/Harmy/Freddie/Monty.

 

[Prince EWS]

Give me a break.

Clearly, you have never watched him bat carefully. He has a very good technique for a tailender. By the way, I had not even looked at his average before saying that he can bat.

Agreed about Sreesanth. I remember saying something similar in a tour thread after I'd seen him bat once or twice (and if memory serves, you replied agreeing with me - oh how the tides have turned. ).

He can definitely bat a bit for a tailender - even if his first class and/or test stats don't show it yet.

 

[Perm]

No Sehwag, crap. India's bowling attack looking a bit week. England to win the test series easily once we have a bowling attack of Hoggard/Harmy/Freddie/Monty.

No Sehwag is a good thing, surely?

 

[Perm]

He can definitely bat a bit for a tailender - even if his first class and/or test stats don't show it yet.

I'd say that has a fair bit more to do with mental application than actual technique.

 

[Prince EWS]

No Sehwag is a good thing, surely?

Not for England!

 

[Manee]

That's irrelevant to how good they are as batsmen though. Yuvraj's experience comes from playing mostly ODIs anyway, Laxman is by far the more accomplished Test batsman and probably the better batsman overall.

I think international experience is critical to sustained form with the bat or ball. However I think I was wrong about Yuvraj in Tests, but for his fielding and superior batting in ODIs, he should play in the ODIs.

 

[cricketfreaks]

India Vs England, Not much interesting ............

 

[Fiery]

India Vs England, Not much interesting ............

remarkably blase for a cricketfreak

 

[Manee]

I believe this will be one of the more well contested Test and ODI series of the new millenium.

 

[Perm]

I believe this will be one of the more well contested Test and ODI series of the new millenium.

Test series, yes. ODI series, no.

 

[Manee]

Why don't you think that, I think both teams are equally poor in ODIs.

 

[silentstriker]

The last England-India series (two of them in fact) were well contested. I was surprised how well England did in India, and hopefully India can do the same in England.

 

[PhoenixFire]

International experience wise. VVS has 166 international games and Yuvraj has 190.

If we count a Test as 5 ODIs, then it is more like:

Yuvraj - 266
Laxman - 486

 

[Manee]

The point was that both have a great amount of international experience, enough to class them as proven to play consistantly at international level. The comment was blown way out of proportion.

 

[silentstriker]

Not in one-day cricket.

In cricket, yes.

 

[aussie]

No Sehwag is a good thing, surely?

His style of batting rocks yo. What summer of cricket are we having when their is no Lara, Sehwag, Flintoff, only KP is exciting things ATM. Look Tendulkar better start to crank it up.

 

[Jono]

That Dhoni isn't too bad himself I hear.

 

[sohummisra]

If we count a Test as 5 ODIs, then it is more like:

Yuvraj - 266
Laxman - 486

You rarely bat 5 days in a test match though, as a batsman.

 

[sohummisra]

I feel the one problem the Indian batting may have is it may be too 'boring'. Unless Tendulkar, Ganguly and Laxman display shades of their best batting, I fear that our batting will be a jump back down to the days when test cricket was about securing draws rather than winning games. It does seem like we have picked a 'construction site' type of team for these tours, though. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

I don't really care about the ODI selections because I think it will be a crapfest anyway. I think luck will go a long way in determining who wins the ODI on the given day, especially given the ODI inconsistency of both teams, so I'm not gonna harp over the squad selections.

But the tests are a different matter. Our bowling features Kumble and Powar as the lone regular spinners, and Zaheer, Sreesanth, RP, Ishant and Bose as the pace bowlers. Seeing that Ishant and Bose are basically rookies, and I really cannot see us playing both Powar and Kumble, it looks like Zaheer, Sreesanth, RP and Kumble will round out our bowling line-up.

Given that Sreesanth will probably be injured sometime during the South Africa series (given the past occurrences), we will look at inducting (or re-inducting) one of Ishant or Bose into the team. I would have to go with Bose in that situation as at a decade or so earlier than Ishant, he would have plenty more experience than Sharma, which will no doubt be very helpful. However, this bowling line-up doesn't look to have any sting (not that we were ever going to pick one that was). Unless Zaheer and RP (and Sreesanth, subject to fitness) get it done with the new ball, I see our bowlers toiling and toiling and... toiling.

From the given squad, I would predict the following XI for most of the games: Jaffer, Karthik, Dravid, Tendulkar, Ganguly, Yuvraj, Dhoni, Kumble, Zaheer, RP, Sreesanth. Laxman will replace Yuvraj, maybe, or someone else who will no doubt get injured mid-tour. It's a shame, but we have too many middle-order players to play two specialist openers.

I'm just going to hope that the Indians have a lot of lucky days in the UK and that these days coincide with the days they are playing international cricket, ICC-style, so that we Indians have something to celebrate about!

 

[Richard]

I have a lot of uni work coming up over the next few months and I don't think I'll be able to commit to writing for CW regularly, so I'm out for a while, at least until the Australian summer.

Ah, right - hope to see you back then.