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***Official*** India in Australia 2014-5

weldone

Hall of Fame Member
After couple of good tour games, every one was wanting Aaron to play instead of Umesh Yadav. Even the management went for Aaron instead of Yadav. I can't believe how short sighted the management can be at times. Yadav bowled well in the earlier ODI series v Sri Lanka. He was clearly some one I would not have dropped for the first test.
I agree.
 

anil1405

International Captain
I think he was out with injury for a while but yea once he was back he was overlooked initially, even in this tour he was overlooked for the first test. Am sure since the test was at Brisbane the've opted for him. Now they better stick with him.

If Bhuvi is back that should give Yadav a bit more freedom to focus on pace.
 

Daemon

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He was injured before and wasn't doing too well domestically on his comeback which is what made them hesitant about picking him for England I think. He was playing A games against Aus A at the time. While that omission could perhaps be defended, he definitely shouldn't have been left out of the first Test here.
 
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weldone

Hall of Fame Member
ya bhuvi+ishant+umesh looks like the best attack now. aaron should never have been in the team in aus. i'd prefer shami over aaron.
 

anil1405

International Captain
Shami has been average for a year now.... one good season of domestic cricket might bring him back to form but thats not gonna happen anyway.
 

Pratters

Cricket, Lovely Cricket
I wonder what the problem with Shami is. He looked like some one who could have developed into a Zaheer Khan kind of bowler for India. Reliable to an extent. It takes a certain level of game readiness to be able to bowl great in tests. Shami lacks that to some extent but it can be developed if he is keen on that as well. I wish Shami develops some how as that will mean some more test wickets for India as he does have the ability to take wickets.
 

Pratters

Cricket, Lovely Cricket
Is there any chance Rohit Sharma will be dropped? I certainly hope we play KL Rahul in the place of Sharma.
 

anil1405

International Captain
Aakash Chopra suggested the same on cricinfo...but the chances of Rohit being dropped AND Rahul batting at no.6 is extremely low.
 

weldone

Hall of Fame Member
Maybe moving Dhawan to six would be an option. I'd just stick with Rohit though.
Ya Rohit should never be dropped unless either Badrinath/Tiwary is in the squad or the pitch is a dustbowl where Jadeja can be useful. In short, people shouldn't even think of dropping Rohit in Melbourne.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
I wonder what the problem with Shami is. He looked like some one who could have developed into a Zaheer Khan kind of bowler for India. Reliable to an extent. It takes a certain level of game readiness to be able to bowl great in tests. Shami lacks that to some extent but it can be developed if he is keen on that as well. I wish Shami develops some how as that will mean some more test wickets for India as he does have the ability to take wickets.
His "problem" is that he's a 24 year old fast bowler who hasn't even been on the scene for 2 years. Expecting any sort of serious development into some sort of reincarnation of Zaheer is ****ing mental at this stage.

Only the truly great bowlers hit the ground running and even the very best have some sort of initial teething problems. Look at the top bowlers in the world today:

Steyn - pretty much the exception to this rule but did get a flogging in his debut series against England
Anderson - in and out of the side for 5 years before properly establishing himself
Broad - spent 4 years bowling too short
Harris - spent years as a hack at First Class level
Johnson - demolished South Africa in 2009 then spend the next 4 years bowling to the left and bowling to the right
Southee - bowled garbage for ages before maturing into a world class talent

Even Zaheer spent ages being average to poor (statistically he's the worst ever Test quick to take as many wickets as he has) and it took a spell in County Cricket for him to really come of age as a bowler.

India have a few promising quicks. They always have done since I've started watching cricket. I know what I'm saying will come as a shock to people who know how little I rated their attack in 2011, but let me run with this. They've always had bowlers who have had the basic tools to become really good Test bowlers. India's problem is their entire system does not seem condusive to nurturing that talent. This isn't an argument about pitches - Pakistan's pitches were always just as bad and the greatest Pakistani bowlers bowled better there than in more traditionally bowler friendly countries - it's about the whole culture that sorrounds Indian cricket. They play an insane amount of One Day cricket, not enough really competitive First Class cricket and there's a lot of importance around the IPL. That combined doesn't make for the greatest conditions to develop Test class bowlers, then you throw in the lack of an experienced spearhead - even when they did have Zaheer, he spent half the time injured. This has meant that Ishant in particular has carried far too great a burden on his young shoulders - he's been relied upon too often to be the experienced leader of the attack when it's clear that he still hasn't properly pieced together his own game. Other bowlers have been chopped, changed, fallen by the wayside, turned out to be absolute idiots, gotten injured - it's utterly useless trying to mould an attack out of that.

This is where someone like the much maligned Peter Siddle has been invaluable for Australia. Did he merit his dropping - absolutely. But I don't think you can overstate the importance of having a dependable workhorse as your third seamer when you're constantly rotating Harris and his only good knee, waiting for Johnson to remember he's meant to be aiming at the stumps and rotating virtually every promising quick under the age of 25 because they keep breaking down with injuries. That's where you need your consistent, solid presence who'll keep the batsman honest (cliche alert) run in all day and pitch in with wickets. This is probably the role Ishant should be in by now, but he's had to contend with leading the attack when he hasn't been ready for it and playing about 17 billion ODIs (at least 16 billion of which were against Sri Lanka). Is it perhaps significant that of the Aussie quicks, Siddle, Harris and Pattinson have played basically **** all ODI cricket between them? Who knows, but like I said, the environment the Indian quicks are growing up in isn't helping their development.

So yeah, I digressed a bit from Shami to "what's wrong with Indian bowling" in general. But expecting a guy 2 years into his career to even begin to resemble your best bowler of the last 10 years and the only world class bowler produced in that time is a ****ing huge ask.
 

Cabinet96

Hall of Fame Member
How the **** do you figure broad spend four years bowling too short
I think for about the first four years of his career he had periods where he bowled too short, rather than it just being a constant thing.
 
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