*Official* Group A Discussion - Pakistan, West Indies, Australia, India

[adharcric]

For all those who are happy about this win......as a Pakistani i am also happy but....to be very honest had Raina stayed at the crease this was easily India's game.....he got a tough call from Davis....

Impressive.

Hopefully Dhoni will realize that it's time to bring in Nayar and Mishra. Praveen Kumar isn't in favor right now but he's a better one-day bowler than both RP and Ishant.

 

[Uppercut]

I debated regarding this with you - that a sheet anchor can be useful in ODIs but if you get a stroke player and a defensive player, obviously one would obviously choose the stroke player (they must be of comparable ability of course). Also, I disagree with the Dravid selection as well. Dravid may succeed in making runs but there were other players we could and should have gone to.

I think what we agreed on in the end was that Dravid isn't the ideal sheet anchor. The sheet anchor in the side is now MS Dhoni, who gets a single or two almost every ball and allows the big hitters to get back on strike. Dravid, apart from simply averaging a hell of a lot less than Dhoni, doesn't normally rotate the strike well enough to let the rest of the side bat around him.

India's running between the wickets in general during the past two years has been a class above. If you were to look, for example, at this match in which India beat England comfortably, the notable statistic is that India hit only one more four and one more six than England but still stuffed them by 54 runs. This is an incredible transformation for India, who are stereotyped as a side of lazy stroke makers who don't like running.

Dravid just looks like a massive step back to me. He struggles to get off strike, he strikes at around 65 or 70 even when India are only one wicket down, he puts additional pressure on other players to bear the burden of keeping the run-rate under control and- the clincher- he only barely scores more runs than them. It's a conservative selection that contradicts the "why not?" attitude that has brought India such success for almost two years.

 

[Pratters]

Yeah and agree with all that. Dravid hardly rotates the strike which frustrates the player at the other end.

 

[AaronK]

I have mention this before maybe in some other forums about both Dravid and Kallis.. although, Kallis has improved greatly in recent times.. but i never considered any of them good one day batsman..I might take kallis just because of his bowling but purely as a batsman.. I will never want Kallis and Dravid in my team..afew years ago before a big match between Aus and South Africa Ricky Pointing said in a press conferenace that he doesn't mind Kallis coming in soon and play the whole 50 overs.. in fact he preferes that and his idea was that if he bat through most of the match south Africa won't score more than 250 runs..which is achivable..

 

[Faisal1985]

What i really wish to see is a full strength Indian batting side against the likes of Siddle, Johnson, Lee, Watson on a green top (something like where England was bowling against SL in the CT)......if India passes 215-230 runs,........i say Indian batting passed the test and is the best in the world at this time....To me the Aussie bowling attack is great at this time.....perhaps even better then SA's or SL's at the moment......and that would be a real test for the Indian batting giants..........that would be interesting to see...

 

[Faisal1985]

I have mention this before maybe in some other forums about both Dravid and Kallis.. although, Kallis has improved greatly in recent times.. but i never considered any of them good one day batsman..I might take kallis just because of his bowling but purely as a batsman.. I will never want Kallis and Dravid in my team..afew years ago before a big match between Aus and South Africa Ricky Pointing said in a press conferenace that he doesn't mind Kallis coming in soon and play the whole 50 overs.. in fact he preferes that and his idea was that if he bat through most of the match south Africa won't score more than 250 runs..which is achivable..

i disagree with the fact that Kallis is that slow or comparable to Dravid....Kallis is a killer batsman and yes he used to be an overly defensive batsman in the past and thats why ranked highly in the Tests....but now i think he has changed his very nature of batting style...he comes in and he bats hard and something like Smith/Hayden, where you basically bully the bowler....Kallis is a great batsman....Dravid's time is done.....as an ODI player.....

 

[SaeedAnwar]

For all those who are happy about this win......as a Pakistani i am also happy but....to be very honest had Raina stayed at the crease this was easily India's game.....he got a tough call from Davis....

The biggest blunder Younis made yet again was giving the ball to Umar Gul, that was going to cost us the game after Ajmal and Afridi had pulled things back....Younis should not have thorwn the ball to Gul....

Gul was the biggest disappointment today.....but i seriously salute to the little Gambhir this guy is amazing bro.....simply amazing .........

Finally salutations to Malik and Mo Yo .....what an innings....brilliant....that partnership was the difference in the end .......

you have to the most annoying forumer here, even with this good win you have say these bakwas stupid things about the national team. Yes Younis did make mistake but he quickly realised the todays was not Gul's day and he took him off, after that he made all the right decisions to the end. Try to look at positive things some times instead of of just focussing on negative, I am glad I dont know you in real life.

 

[ret]

I think Faisal summed it up nicely

 

[Johnners]

Disappointing WI got over 200, oh well, real test comes this week against India/Pakistan.

 

[Faisal1985]

you have to the most annoying forumer here, even with this good win you have say these bakwas stupid things about the national team. Yes Younis did make mistake but he quickly realised the todays was not Gul's day and he took him off, after that he made all the right decisions to the end. Try to look at positive things some times instead of of just focussing on negative, I am glad I dont know you in real life.

Winning does not mean that you can not learn something from it.......YK brought Gul back when Riana was looking good....you know what? bad decision!!!.....put Aamir and have him bowl some short stuff to Raina.....Gul was not the right move to counter Raina...After all the brilliance in the field by YK and after superb bowling from Afridi and Ajmal, this was a suicide move.....YK should have understood it from the first Gul's spell that he is not doing good today.......

....if you want to become a better team learn from you mistakes......at the same time i can not appreciate enough of YK's decision to let Misbah go for this game...

Be honest about facts, and be honest to your national team and country...only then you can move forward and become a stronger team............

 

[honestbharani]

I thought Dravid showed his value in this match. I see why people get angry with him and he still seriously has trouble turning the strike over when the field is up, and since he cannot always be positive and hit the boundaries at that time, it is a risk. But I still think he is a better batsman in ODIs than Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli and that is good enough reason for him to be in the team... As long as he was there, we always had a realistic chance of winning the game...


Two stupid run outs and a tough decision was the difference in the end from our batting PoV.. I am in fact happy that our guys managed to put the much better Pak attack to the sword inspite of missing 2 of the best ODI batsmen of recent times...


OUr bowling though is a SERIOUS worry. I would really consider an attack of Praveen, Nehra and Nayyar with the two spinners if we are again playing in Centurion.


But what a knock from Yousuf.. Thought it was much better than Malik's, tbh. What a way to answer critics by these seniors.. Was an awesome ODI middle overs batting clinic.

 

[AaronK]

i disagree with the fact that Kallis is that slow or comparable to Dravid....Kallis is a killer batsman and yes he used to be an overly defensive batsman in the past and thats why ranked highly in the Tests....but now i think he has changed his very nature of batting style...he comes in and he bats hard and something like Smith/Hayden, where you basically bully the bowler....Kallis is a great batsman....Dravid's time is done.....as an ODI player.....

didn't i mention that Kallis has improved in recent years.. then what are u dissagreeing with me about..

Winning does not mean that you can not learn something from it.......YK brought Gul back when Riana was looking good....you know what? bad decision!!!.....put Aamir and have him bowl some short stuff to Raina.....Gul was not the right move to counter Raina...After all the brilliance in the field by YK and after superb bowling from Afridi and Ajmal, this was a suicide move.....YK should have understood it from the first Gul's spell that he is not doing good today.......

....if you want to become a better team learn from you mistakes......at the same time i can not appreciate enough of YK's decision to let Misbah go for this game...

Be honest about facts, and be honest to your national team and country...only then you can move forward and become a stronger team............

I have to agree with Saeed Anwar here.. you r annoying dude..

no.. younis khan brought Gul back becuase he wanted him to bounce Riana out.... as a captain you always turn to your best bowler.. and Gul is Pakistan's best bowler.. he failed because every now and then good players fail to perform.. but Younis tried him at least..

also he had to be used sometimes in a match after the first spell.. we all know how good he could be with an old ball and the ball was old so younis thought maybe he could bowle better considering that the ball was older..but u should be happy your team won dude.. if we go with ifs and buts.. then pakistan shouldn't have scored that much anyways.. Dhoni got it wrong worse than younis when he used his part time bowlers instead of Harbajan singh when pakistan was in trouble during the earlly parts of their innings..

what is wrong with you.. who did you want to drop for Misbah? Malik, yousuf. Umar Akmal..give me a break dude.. the only option younis had was to drop Malik but he realized that with Malik he has a part off Spin option.. it worked better.. Malik won pakistan the match with his innings..

So despite his efforts and success and winning the world cup for your team.. younis isn't being honest here still?

 

[pup11]

Disappointing WI got over 200, oh well, real test comes this week against India/Pakistan.

Yeah, very disappointed with our overall effort yesterday, having said that yesterday batting wasn't easy first up, but Ponting batted superbly in tough conditions, but it was pretty annoying to see the middle order crumble the way it did, also pretty concerned with the way we're playing spin for a while now, and that could be a real problem against teams like India and Pakistan.

Anyways would love to see Clarke stay out of the side for the remaining games as well, but having said that, I'm not too sure about White's place in the side either, when he is batting at 6 or 7.

The other obvious weakness has been Paine's inability to rotate the strike or hit-out in the powerplay overs, which does put pressure on likes of Watto and Ponting, so that's an area that Paine should be looking to work and improve on.

Despite all this bowling remains our bigger concern, think most of the quicks should be concentrating on bowling a slightly fuller length, rather than constantly trying to rattle the batsmen by banging it in short.

 

[pup11]

I thought Dravid showed his value in this match. I see why people get angry with him and he still seriously has trouble turning the strike over when the field is up, and since he cannot always be positive and hit the boundaries at that time, it is a risk. But I still think he is a better batsman in ODIs than Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli and that is good enough reason for him to be in the team... As long as he was there, we always had a realistic chance of winning the game...


Two stupid run outs and a tough decision was the difference in the end from our batting PoV.. I am in fact happy that our guys managed to put the much better Pak attack to the sword inspite of missing 2 of the best ODI batsmen of recent times...


OUr bowling though is a SERIOUS worry. I would really consider an attack of Praveen, Nehra and Nayyar with the two spinners if we are again playing in Centurion.


But what a knock from Yousuf.. Thought it was much better than Malik's, tbh. What a way to answer critics by these seniors.. Was an awesome ODI middle overs batting clinic.

I think Dravid can easily maintain a better strike rate than that, but his role is probably to bat through the innings, which hampers him from being expansive in his strokeplay, and that allows the rest of stroke players can bat around him, so from what I can see he is playing out his role quite well, but in the absence of the likes of Yuvraj and Sehwag, that explosiveness is missing from the Indian batting line-up.

It was pretty obvious that India's bowling was going to be a problem, right from the start of the competition, but Dhoni's tactics so far and some of the team selections have gone on to expose that problem a bit more.

 

[SaeedAnwar]

didn't i mention that Kallis has improved in recent years.. then what are u dissagreeing with me about..




I have to agree with Saeed Anwar here.. you r annoying dude..

no.. younis khan brought Gul back becuase he wanted him to bounce Riana out.... as a coptain you always turn to your best bowler.. and Gul is Pakistan's best bowler.. he failed because every now and then good players fail to perform.. but Younis tried him at least..

also he had to be used sometimes in a match after the first spell.. we all know how good he could be with an old ball and the ball was old so younis thought maybe he could bowle better considering that the ball was older..but u should be happy your team won dude.. if we go with ifs and buts.. then pakistan shouldn't have scored that much anyways.. Dhoni got it wrong worse than younis when he used his part time bowlers instead of Harbajan singh when pakistan was in trouble during the earlly parts of their innings..

what is wrong with you.. who did you want to drop for Misbah? Malik, yousuf. Umar Akmal..give me a break dude.. the only option younis had was to drop Malik but he realized that with Malik he has a part off Spin option.. it worked better.. Malik won pakistan the match with his innings..

So despite his efforts and success and winning the world cup for your team.. younis isn't being honest here still?

exactly Gul is Pakistan's best bowler and younis was right to keep giving him chances specially when the target set by Pakistan was huge and India were still far away from the target

 

[Uppercut]

I thought Dravid showed his value in this match. I see why people get angry with him and he still seriously has trouble turning the strike over when the field is up, and since he cannot always be positive and hit the boundaries at that time, it is a risk. But I still think he is a better batsman in ODIs than Rohit Sharma or Virat Kohli and that is good enough reason for him to be in the team... As long as he was there, we always had a realistic chance of winning the game...

I guess we each just see what we expect to see from Rahul Dravid. I thought he piled too much pressure on the other end to up the run rate, demonstrated by Virat Kohli's dismissal. Shoaib Malik played the batting-through role for Pakistan with a strike rate of 101.58, while Dravid struck at just 73. If you're going to bat through chasing 300, you have to either keep your strike rate higher than that or stay until the very end.

The problem with the tactic for me is, India's hopes become entirely dependent on Dravid staying until the end, upping his run-rate at the death and getting a century, and that's highly unlikely- Dravid's only done it 12 times in 312 ODI innings. No matter how carefully you bat or how few "risks" you take, you nearly always get out anyway.

 

[shivfan]

Fletcher is gunning it, it seems. Him & Gayle (when the real players come back) will be dangerous TSTL.

Yeah, I think Fletcher deserves a decent run in the full team in ODIs, maybe for the tour of Australia....

Needs to work on his fielding and his running between the wickets, though.

 

[Uppercut]

Put it another way. If you're chasing 302 off 300 balls, and someone in the side scores 76 off 103, the rest of the side have to make 226 runs at a strike rate of 115. Big ask. Is that harder or easier than casing 302 at a strike rate of 101? It's debateable. When a batsman hits 76 and it's debateable whether he's helped or hindered his side, he surely shouldn't be in the team.

 

[Pratters]

But where would those 76 runs come from if not for Dravid? India showed in the end it was the wickets in hand which was the problem for them. I think there are alternatives to Dravid but him being in the team is not as bad as you make it out to be. It is not as if others have been stepping up to earn themselves a spot yet. There is a fair argument to drop Rohit Sharma as he has played poorly in his ODI career so far (though I woudn't do it mysef) and Badrinath and Kaif score at the same S/R as Dravid. Then there is Kohli who is just not ready enough right now IMO. It is fair enough that Dravid gets a run, though I would have chosen Badrinath instead. I wouldn't have selected Dravid but he is a proven performer who is arguaby not past it yet. So there are many good reasons for him getting a chance ahead of the Badrinaths and the Kaifs.

 

[G.I.Joe]

What are the origins of the term 'sheet anchor' ?