***Official*** India in England

[leepayne]

No, that's a load of crap, they both have very poor test records, and hence when they bat together, the results are poor, simnple as.

I have a feeling you haven't seen too much of either of them, and are laying all of your opinions down to their statistics. That's a bad way to think in my opinion, statistics tell only half the story.

In the 1st test of this series, and to a certain extent against Bangladesh, both openers showed a distinct unwillingless to attack the new ball. With Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman to come, they won't want to waste time, so they force themselves to go outside their comfort areas and hence get themselves out. It's this process that gives them these poor statistics. Put them down the order and they might be better.

 

[open365]

They don't show a willingness to attack the new ball because they are both slow scoring batsman by nature, and they both play stupid shots by nature, put them together and that is the result, jaffer batted exactly the same way when he opened with Sehwag.

 

[leepayne]

They don't show a willingness to attack the new ball because they are both slow scoring batsman by nature, and they both play stupid shots by nature, put them together and that is the result, jaffer batted exactly the same way when he opened with Sehwag.

It's that unwillingness to attack the new ball by nature that forces them to play stupid shots. There's a link there.

 

[open365]

It's that unwillingness to attack the new ball by nature that forces them to play stupid shots. There's a link there.

If there is a link, it's a link as an individual player, not between them and their batting partner.

 

[Pratters]

Slow over rates or not, the rain fell when England needed 1 wicket to win while about 100 runs in the lead and with 40ish overs remaining. All this in a match in which, for mine at least, England outplayed India.

If there was urgency showed at various points, there was a good chance they would have had that 1 wicket and won the match. Outplaying a team does not mean that the team deserves to win.

 

[Pratters]

Regarding whether England deserved to win the match or not: This match was inextricably linked with the weather. The pitch was slow and flat and the only reason the ball moved around was the overhead conditions. The match panned out the way it did because of the weather. So we cannot just remove one aspect of the weather i.e. the rain on the fifth day. This is different from a case where a team is on the verge of winning at the end of the 4th day but is denied due to rain on the fifth day - Here the rain did not influence the way the match developed.

Weather was always going to be a factor in this game. It was not as if there was an earthquake and it became a factor when no one anticipated it to. Given that, a team looking to win should have shown urgency at various points in the game.

 

[Richard]

It's that unwillingness to attack the new ball by nature that forces them to play stupid shots. There's a link there.

Sorry mate, don't see how that makes any sense. If they don't attack, it's because it's their natural style. Hence, they don't feel under pressure due to a slow scoring-rate - otherwise they'd not be slow-scoring players.

Wasim Jaffer isn't a very good batsman IMO, simple as, I've never thought much of him.

There have been many good Test opening partnerships that've been comprised of two defensive players, though. If you're good, you're good, if you're crap you're crap, strokeplayer or stonewaller. Karthik the jury's still out, but manufacturing someone into an opener at this stage of their careers doesn't work all that often, so I'm more doubtful than hopeful. Jaffer, on the other hand, has been around for donkey's years now and has never got much better in that time.

In most eras, anyway, attacking the new-ball was a very bad idea, and it was rare for attacking players to come-off (there were the odd exception - Slater in the 1990s, Greenidge in the 1970s and 80s, Fredericks in the 1970s, etc.) Most of the time, good openers have been defensive batsmen and telling someone to attack the new-ball is rarely a good idea as we don't know how long the current batsman-friendly era will last. I'm quietly hopeful it may be coming to an end even now.

 

[Richard]

Regarding whether England deserved to win the match or not: This match was inextricably linked with the weather. The pitch was slow and flat and the only reason the ball moved around was the overhead conditions. The match panned out the way it did because of the weather. So we cannot just remove one aspect of the weather i.e. the rain on the fifth day. This is different from a case where a team is on the verge of winning at the end of the 4th day but is denied due to rain on the fifth day - Here the rain did not influence the way the match developed.

That's an excellent post IMO, I actually thought the exact same regarding the game at (ironically) your hometown in 2001\02, when we were said to be unfortunate because it rained. Well, yeah, but the same thing that brought the rain was what gave us the chance to be in a strong position ITFP (ie, the fact that there was solid cloud-cover throughout the game).

The only thing we're unfortunate about is that play can be lost due to bad weather, not that it rained when it did. I was seriously annoyed at us failing to win the game, and had it not rained and had we won it'd have been quite fair enough. But, sadly, that wasn't the way the cookie crumbled.

Anyway, criticising Vaughan is crap, and I quite agree with Moores that you can nitpick anything you want to when you just miss-out on a victory. If someone wants to criticise someone, you can find a reason to do so for anyone on the park if you try hard enough.

 

[chipmonk]

Monty lost his mind!
Pti, London

Practitioner of perhaps the most spectacular celebration in cricket, England's left-arm spinner Monty Panesar revealed he almost lost his mind after trapping Sachin Tendulkar in the Lord's Test.
Tendulkar had scribbled "once in a blue moon" on the ball with which Panesar had removed the Indian for his maiden Test wicket in the Nagpur Test last year.

Panesar, however, was not ready to wait that long and trapped his childhood hero plumb in front before bursting into his trademark celebration in the second innings of the drawn Test at Lord's.
"It was as if I lost my mind. I honestly didn't know what was going on. I just started running and it felt like I was flying somewhere.
"The only thing I can remember is hugging everyone. Afterwards, all I could think to myself was: 'Did I really do that?' I haven't had the chance to see a replay of the celebration but my friends told me that I just went crazy," Monty wrote in his column for 'Daily Mail'.
Despite getting Tendulkar out for a meagre 16, Panesar still remains in the Mumbaikar's awe.
"I was just savouring the moment and the reason I reacted like that was because he is such a great player.


"That is the impact he has on people. I would not have run so far and jumped around like that if he was not so good."

 

[Richard]

Oh well, I'm sure The World will still turn.

 

[FBU]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/article2141317.ece

 

[Raghav]

Dinesh Kathik has a big future ahead of him in the Indian team for me. Wasim Jaffer maybe not so much, but he can still play. So there's no basis to say that they aren't very good, or won't be very good in a year or so.

Manee made a great point, you need one attacking and one defensive batsman to open. The attacking one would go after the new ball and take the shine off it, relieving the pressure off the defensive one so when he's comfortable, he can come out of his shell and play his shots.

Karthik and Jaffer are predominantly uncomfortable against the new ball, and so are both defensive, putting pressure on themselves leading to irrational shots and cheap wickets. That's why the openers average only 30 together.

There is no doubt on anyone mind about Dinesh's future. Everyone know that he has got a good future. The only point that was discussed in the last couple of posts is only about Karthick's opening abilities. No one here said he is not good, they only say he is not good as an opener considering the technical flaws he has. Thats what I pointed out in my last point. He is good but he can get more runs batting other than in the opening position.

So, its time for Indian selectors to search for an opener who is technically good.

 

[Dasa]

It's worth taking into account that despite the criticism of Karthik, he has been doing well opening the batting (an average of 55.83) although the sample size is a bit too small to make any conclusive judgement on his opening ability yet. Regarding Jaffer, he does have an overall poor record, but he has been doing well since his return to the team after a four years out of it averaging just under 44 over 13 Tests. Again, the sample size, or the variety of opposition may make it a bit early to be making a conclusive judgement on his ability.

 

[Pratters]

A worrying thing where Karthik is concerned is that he looked out of sorts against the moving ball in both the innings. In the second inning, the clouds had cleared and it was flat and superb for batting on the fourth day which meant that he capitalised. However, he looked a completely different batsman when the clouds came up on the 5th day and was able to add just 4 runs to his overnight unbeaten 56. Jaffer meanwhile was able to tackle the swinging delivery in the first inning which was very encouraging.

 

[adharcric]

Karthik played the South African seamers very well in tough conditions under pressure. As Dasa said, the verdict is not out on either Jaffer or Karthik - Jaffer has shown that he can play the big innings at this level and Karthik has not had this apparent "weakness" exploited yet. This tour should be a massive test as well as learning experience for our openers.

 

[Raghav]

A worrying thing where Karthik is concerned is that he looked out of sorts against the moving ball in both the innings. In the second inning, the clouds had cleared and it was flat and superb for batting on the fourth day which meant that he capitalised. However, he looked a completely different batsman when the clouds came up on the 5th day and was able to add just 4 runs to his overnight unbeaten 56. Jaffer meanwhile was able to tackle the swinging delivery in the first inning which was very encouraging.

An opening batsman's job is to play the moving delivery. If you cant do that, then we need to think of replacement.

 

[shankar]

That's an excellent post IMO, I actually thought the exact same regarding the game at (ironically) your hometown in 2001\02, when we were said to be unfortunate because it rained. Well, yeah, but the same thing that brought the rain was what gave us the chance to be in a strong position ITFP (ie, the fact that there was solid cloud-cover throughout the game).

Yeah, I mentioned the same regarding that test as well sometime earlier on this forum!

 

[shankar]

Weather was always going to be a factor in this game. It was not as if there was an earthquake and it became a factor when no one anticipated it to. Given that, a team looking to win should have shown urgency at various points in the game.

Err...I don't think you've understood my post there. I was saying that one can't say that England would have have won if not for rain because if it had not rained at all the conditions wouldn't have been as bowler friendly and the match would have followed an altogether different route.

 

[Pratters]

Err...I don't think you've understood my post there. I was saying that one can't say that England would have have won if not for rain because if it had not rained at all the conditions wouldn't have been as bowler friendly and the match would have followed an altogether different route.

Yeah... I got it wrong. I was thinking some thing else.

 

[Richard]

Karthik played the South African seamers very well in tough conditions under pressure. As Dasa said, the verdict is not out on either Jaffer or Karthik - Jaffer has shown that he can play the big innings at this level and Karthik has not had this apparent "weakness" exploited yet. This tour should be a massive test as well as learning experience for our openers.

No-one doubts that Jaffer can play big innings, just not when the ball does things. As I say, he's been around for ages now and that weakness has always been apparent. He, indeed, has toured England before and despite swing in that summer (and the next 4) being distinctly hard to come by, he still managed to struggle against it and was replaced by Sanjay Bangar who ended-up doing much better.

He's scored runs since his comeback against attacks that couldn't do much with the ball, and continued to fail against those that could.