Indian overseas tour problems
INDIAN cricket can clearly be placed into two distinct halves – one of which involves matches played in India and parts of the sub-continent and the other, matches played outside the comfort zone, places such as England, Australia and South Africa. What the Indian team does in one half of the cricketing world, which let me clarify is mostly at home, is in no way reflected in the other zone.
It is almost a different game when it comes to playing abroad. And the strangest part of it all is that this has been happening since time immemorial – from much before I started playing cricket (I started playing at 7 and now I am 23) and this is what I find difficult to understand.
It was told earlier that Indians were poor travellers.
How then do you explain the fact that the moment you land at London's Heathrow Airport , you see more Indians – many of them employed there – than anyone else. If we indeed are poor travellers, how did so many of us get there. Also it is not as if we haven't had good results at all, there have been a few but far in between. Indian team won in the West Indies and England in 1971, I remember Kapil's team beating England in 1986 while the present side has had its share of wins and/or draws in England, Australia and the West Indies while all our teams have time and again beaten good visiting sides at home.
So it is not as if we are not good at what we do. The problem then lies in us not doing it everywhere. Why is this so – is it a problem with our system and if so how do we solve the issue? Isn't it time to sit down and think hard about what the real problem is, why are we so inconsistent, why we cannot put out more impressive performances overseas even after the cricketing world has shrunk with more tours undertaken these days.
The one solution I can advocate straightaway is to have more ‘A' team tours to places with more difficult pitches and conditions. Let us send members of the ‘A' team to Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand on a regular basis and take as much care with their itinerary as we do with the senior team itinerary. These tours will help our future cricketers accli matise and prepare themselves better.
Questions and more questions but unless we ask them, there will be no question of any answers coming forth, will there?
2nd Test Preview - My Thoughts
Anyway, moving on to the second Test at Trent Bridge, Rahul Dravid must be in a typical quandary. Does he change the team or stick to the same combination, does he somehow include Yuvraj Singh? Well, one way to look at it is that since the Jaffer-Karthick combination is a stop-gap one, pushing one of the last Test's middle-order bats men to open, thus opening up a place for Yuvraj, may not be such a bad idea.
The good news for the Indian batsmen is that the Trent Bridge pitch is usually a batsman's paradise, unless of course the weather plays its part in providing an edge to the bowlers. The conditions being predictable, both captains should take care not to bat for too long and look to make sporting declarations instead to make the contest interesting.