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***Official*** South Africa in India
- Thread starter ret
- Start date
Arjun
Cricketer Of The Year
Now:
- Sehwag smashes a backfoot drive and Ashwell tries to stop it, sliding, but the ball bounces off him to the boundary, hitting the ropes. Remove the ropes!
- Sehwag then dashes down the pitch for a quick single. Rameez says, "He may pull a muscle- he's not used to running between wickets"- well, actually, Sehwag has been running a lot harder-and better- since he was dropped for a long time.
- Jaffer softly prods one delivery back to Steyn, who threatens to throw it straight back on him.
honestbharani
Whatever it takes!!!
decent start but we will need far far more of this tomorrow.
And I think the fact that India have a lot of "options" without really having any stand out "shoe in"s for some of the spots is starting to show up now....... A lot of these guys are equally good but no one jumps out and suggests they SHOULD be in the side ahead of the others...
And I think the fact that India have a lot of "options" without really having any stand out "shoe in"s for some of the spots is starting to show up now....... A lot of these guys are equally good but no one jumps out and suggests they SHOULD be in the side ahead of the others...
ret
International Debutant
Nice 100 by Amla .... He, along with Boucher, set up a good total for SA .... well played SA
Must say going in with 4 bowlers on such tracks, esp with an all-rounder like Pathan in the line up, looks silly .... Although I have not seen the game, I can imagine how terrible our fielding would have been
If this test ends in a draw then it will be the 3rd straight drawn test in Ind, which questions the type of pitches being offered in Ind, along with the team selection for such surfaces
Must say going in with 4 bowlers on such tracks, esp with an all-rounder like Pathan in the line up, looks silly .... Although I have not seen the game, I can imagine how terrible our fielding would have been
If this test ends in a draw then it will be the 3rd straight drawn test in Ind, which questions the type of pitches being offered in Ind, along with the team selection for such surfaces
Manee
Cricketer Of The Year
The simple solution is to figure out who are the best in particular conditions. For example, I wouldn't go to England without Zaheer Khan and RP Singh but in India, I may prefer to have Ishant Sharma who is very good at long spells. In Pakistan, I would probably have Irfan Pathan because he can bowl for long periods of time with good accuracy - on some of the pitches there, taking wickets becomes purely a biproduct of sustained accuracy rather than any sort of pitch assistance.
The fielding was so horrible that after one paticularly bad miss, the commentator just said "Thats just better not talked about". RP Singh the main culprit.
The pitch is very, very flat and there was almost no swing for the pace men. To be honest, I think it wouldn't make a difference whether you played 4 bowlers or 11 bowlers.
honestbharani
Whatever it takes!!!
it makes sense, and going by that logic, it might have been better for us to have gotten Karthik in so that he can open and keep wickets and allow us to play Pathan... I know Dhoni hasn't done anything to suggest he is worse than Karthik, but I don't think his showing in tests recently shows him to be any better, tbh...... Karthik seems to have improved his batting since the time he was first dropped, at least in tests and Dhoni seems to have improved his keeping recently. But still at the end, they seem to offer the same in terms of balance.....
Manee
Cricketer Of The Year
I wouldn't go that far. Playing the correct bowlers is one thing, but disrupting the batting to do so is a bit much. Dhoni is a far better keeper than Dinesh Karthik and Karthik's keeping has detiorated since he was last a full time Indian keeper.
To be honest, I haven't given the exact players much thought but I would have put Sreesanth and RP Singh in my side for the game as India did. However, I think that after this and the Sri Lanka series, it will be clear who hte best home bowlers are.
honestbharani
Whatever it takes!!!
when did u see him keep? That pitch at Bangalore was horrible and otherwise, in the ODIs that he did keep, he was more than good enough. He was brilliant in that Deodhar Trophy game that I saw earlier this week as well.....
"Far better".... No way, mate... Simply no way is MSD going to be "far better " as a keeper than Karthik any time soon. And as keeper/batsman, I don't mind Dhoni playing ahead of Karthik, he might be slightly better and also, he is the vice-captain, but if you are looking for horses for courses, and we needed to play 5 bowlers here, I don't think it would have been that bad a choice, given that the other options included asking Pathan or Dravid to open...
For me, given the form that Pathan and the fab four have shown, it is a must to play 5 bowlers in home tests, esp. in these conditions and given that, if I was the selector, I would have been more than tempted to "rest" Dhoni and play Karthik as the opener/wicket keeper....... He showed good form as a keeper in the warm up games in Oz and he outscored Jaffar as well..........
ret
International Debutant
Dhoni WKing has improved .... I don't think Karthik is that good as a WK from what I hv seen of him. He appeared a little Akmalish to me, i.e. take regular balls nicely but drop an edge or a difficult deflection
And why remove the strong piece from the line up to strike a balance, when you can achieve the balance by removing someone like Jaffar?
The opening has been one of the issue and I m a bit sad that none of the big 4, with the exception of Dravid on a few occassions, has shown the inclination to open. There have been players who have had to be played in as openers to accomodate them in the side even though they were not suited to do that job, but the experienced guys hardly put their hand up to do that job .... I liked it when Dravid did that in Pak to accomodate Ganguly and then in Australia to accomodate Yuvi
Thats one of the reasons why I respect someone like Sehwag, a middle order batsman, who not only took to opening but also never backed off from doing that in difficult conditions .... Players like Sehwag should be given a longer run when they fail and suppored because they hardly back off from doing the difficult stuff vs those like Ganguly who line up to open in ODIs but drop down the order in tests
and then we have fans who will ask for Sehwag's blood when he fails doing a difficult job but will set streets on fire if someone like Ganguly is dropped, even when he failed and that too doing things with which he was comfortable with
paddy11
Cricket Spectator
Sreesanth is a wicket taker. He will always go for runs on a flat track but he is a strike bowler. I though he was unlucky in the first innings and India should persevere with him.He bowls some magic balls with an insanely good seam position and you need bowlers like him. However pairing him with RP Singh who is equally inconsistent and an inferior bowler imo was a big mistake. Sreesanth and Sharma, when fit, with the two spinners looks a good attack for subcontinental conditions.
honestbharani
Whatever it takes!!!
Karthik is an enormously talented wicket keeper. If you have only seen him during the Bangalore test recently, I can understand. He is great keeping to seamers but Dhoni is equally good. It is against the spinners that he shows his real quality as keeper. He is amazingly good against spinners. Dhoni has improved leaps and bounds and even I will say he is, right now, juz as good as Karthik keeping to the spinners. But there is just no way is he "so much" better... Better, may be, but whatever difference is there between them as keepers, it has to be very marginal, either way.... And I don't think Dhoni's test batting form has been anything to crow about. Suffice to say, had he been playing as a batsman and Karthik as a keeper batsman, he would have lost his spot by now.....Dhoni WKing has improved .... I don't think Karthik is that good as a WK from what I hv seen of him. He appeared a little Akmalish to me, i.e. take regular balls nicely but drop an edge or a difficult deflection
And why remove the strong piece from the line up to strike a balance, when you can achieve the balance by removing someone like Jaffar?
The opening has been one of the issue and I m a bit sad that none of the big 4, with the exception of Dravid on a few occassions, has shown the inclination to open. There have been players who have had to be played in as openers to accomodate them in the side even though they were not suited to do that job, but the experienced guys hardly put their hand up to do that job .... I liked it when Dravid did that in Pak to accomodate Ganguly and then in Australia to accomodate Yuvi
Thats one of the reasons why I respect someone like Sehwag, a middle order batsman, who not only took to opening but also never backed off from doing that in difficult conditions .... Players like Sehwag should be given a longer run when they fail and suppored because they hardly back off from doing the difficult stuff vs those like Ganguly who line up to open in ODIs but drop down the order in tests
and then we have fans who will ask for Sehwag's blood when he fails doing a difficult job but will set streets on fire if someone like Ganguly is dropped, even when he failed and that too doing things with which he was comfortable with
Given that, I would have liked to see Karthik get a decent run as a wicket keeper/opener... Also, you will see that by replacing Dhoni with Karthik, I am indirectly removing the "real weak spot" in our batting order..... Jaffar will be replaced by Karthik at the top and we will get to play Pathan at no.7, which I think is a must in these conditions.....
honestbharani
Whatever it takes!!!
I would still want Pathan in there as back up. You don't want to bowl these guys into the dust by playing only 4 specialist bowlers.
Manee
Cricketer Of The Year
He kept intermittantly in ODIs in 2007 and was very sloppy. He kept in a tour match in England and was similarly very poor.
Jono
Virat Kohli (c)
You will either be laughing your way to the bank, or look like the biggest fool ever.
Talk about being a ****y bastard after one day of cricket in a 3 match test series.
Btw, India yet to lose a wicket, we've had two days of cricket.
Checkmate
School Boy/Girl Captain
I think people are forgetting Dhoni's ability with the bat. On a pitch like this, he could be destructive, and if both he and Sehwag fires in the next day or two, we would have an excellent run rate to work with to win the test (depending on how the spinners go in the second innings).
Also, Sreesanth has clearly put himself ahead of RP in the pecking order in this test. Probably Zak first, and Sharma and Sree tied for second spot.
Also, Sreesanth has clearly put himself ahead of RP in the pecking order in this test. Probably Zak first, and Sharma and Sree tied for second spot.
ret
International Debutant
Agree with Pathan being in and batting at 7, along with being the 3rd seamer
But why replace Dhoni with Karthik? Karthik is NOT a regular opener but you want him to open just coz the big 4 can play from 3 to 6 .... By the same logic as opening with Karthik, why not open with Dhoni? .... Now if opening with Dhoni doesn't make sense to you then why sacrifice Karthik at the top of the order? ok keep Karthik as the wkt but why not open with someone like Ganguly, who has done it in the ODIs ..... Why does everything from the balance of the side to playing non-regular openers playing have to be done so that the big 4 play from 3 to 6? It's more as if the larger issue is not the balance but playing the big 4 in their regular position and then fitting pieces after that
Ppl want to play a specialist opener even though he is not that gr8, why? coz big 4 can play from 3 to 6
Ppl want to replace a good wk and batsman like Dhoni and open with Karthik, why? coz the Big 4 can play from 3 to 6 and a bowling all-rounder can be FIT in to play at 7
Ppl want to open with someone like Pathan, if he is playing in the 11, why? coz the big 4 can play from 3 to 6, even though Pathan can be more useful as a lower order bat
See everything is being sacrificed because ppl want to do things that are best for the big 4, even though it means not playing a bowling all-rounder, opening with a not so gr8 opener like Jaffar, or suggesting things like droping Dhoni [who could open too] and opening with Karthik .... So is the whole excercise of Indian Test cricket to see that FIRST the big 4 play at their respective positions and then everything else happens
Why not start out with someone like Ganguly and say you have been doing well as an ODI opener, we need to play Pathan coz the conditions appear to be tough for the bowlers and easy for batting, so why don't you open the innings in this series? It will also give a left-right opening combination
so why don't you go like this
- Sehwag
- Ganguly
- Dravid
- Tendulkar
- Laxman
- Dhoni [or you can play Karthik, if you wish]
- Pathan
- Others
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