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**Official** 4th Test at Melbourne, 26-30 Dec 2024

FBU

International Debutant
With roughly 40 overs left, and Jasiwal and Pant at the crease, I would have put money on India surviving with yet another draw. Anyway, well played Australia.
I went to bed when they were batting, allowing one or two wickets with the new ball, and imagining Reddy and Washington winning the game. They didn't last till the new ball. Reddy got 1. After Pant and Jaiswal went the next 5 in went for less than the extras.
 

Spark

Global Moderator
Tbh a lot of people seem to want this - see the discussion yesterday about "intuitive" umpiring.
Chuck Berry on radio this morning with more of this garbage - actually claimed that the wicketkeeper's opinion is more reliable than ball-tracking and is "99% accurate" :laugh:
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
Yeah I can't take this seriously lol. You've been trying to find all sorts of reasons for Kohli being shite with the bat for years. First it was bad luck with umpiring decisions, then it was the mental trauma of rahane running him out at Adelaide (lol) and now it's Ganguly . He just sucks now bro accept it. He's a mental weakling if he lets these things affect his batting to this extent.

A tours getting cancelled means ****all too when the underperformers are all incumbents.
You can blind your eyes all you want to obvious things. And I never said Virat is not to blame for his batting decline. My point is this is bigger than just the decline of one batsman in the team and there is a whole cultural puncture that happened under Ganguly's tenure as the BCCI president that has led us down this road.

And you can bury your head in the sand all you want if that helps. For me, it just shows how important leadership at all levels has to be if we are to get back to those levels of performance again as a team. It starts with reinstating and refocussing on the A program. And I am not even talking only tests or long format. Even T20s. None of our IPL stars play in any other leagues which means they are not exposed to those pitches and conditions. The only way all of this works for us is to ensure a strong A program for all formats.
 

Spark

Global Moderator
I actually agree with you on the A tours thing but it's a complete red herring here. It would be a good explanation if you were looking for one with respect to young batsmen and bowlers not looking technically proficient or mentally prepared for international elite cricket, but it's a really bad one when it comes to explaining why sixty, eighty, hundred Test veterans were/are stinking up the joint for years. It's not as if people only started complaining about that problem, Indian fans have been complaining about it since 2020/21 iirc.
 

OverratedSanity

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I actually agree with you on the A tours thing but it's a complete red herring here. It would be a good explanation if you were looking for one with respect to young batsmen and bowlers not looking technically proficient or mentally prepared for international elite cricket, but it's a really bad one when it comes to explaining why sixty, eighty, hundred Test veterans were/are stinking up the joint for years. It's not as if people only started complaining about that problem, Indian fans have been complaining about it since 2020/21 iirc.
The batting malaise started under Shastri and there's no way I'm holding him responsible for that. We stayed afloat because we still had Shami fit, Ashwin was around and Rohit actually was batting well too (his decline only really started this year). The team can no longer overcome the decline/unavailability of this many players.
 

TheJediBrah

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I actually agree with you on the A tours thing but it's a complete red herring here. It would be a good explanation if you were looking for one with respect to young batsmen and bowlers not looking technically proficient or mentally prepared for international elite cricket, but it's a really bad one when it comes to explaining why sixty, eighty, hundred Test veterans were/are stinking up the joint for years. It's not as if people only started complaining about that problem, Indian fans have been complaining about it since 2020/21 iirc.
Doesn't keeping Virat in the team make India a **** load of money? Would be a brave selector to make the call that costs BCCI millions of dollars
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
The batting malaise started under Shastri and there's no way I'm holding him responsible for that. We stayed afloat because we still had Shami fit, Ashwin was around and Rohit actually was batting well too (his decline only really started this year). The team can no longer overcome the decline/unavailability of this many players.
Not on a tour of Australia anyway. What you need is a refreshing home series against New Ze... wait, never mind.
 

Spark

Global Moderator
The batting malaise started under Shastri and there's no way I'm holding him responsible for that. We stayed afloat because we still had Shami fit, Ashwin was around and Rohit actually was batting well too (his decline only really started this year). The team can no longer overcome the decline/unavailability of this many players.
Big next season for Jadeja I think. I'm happy to excuse this series because conditions are so utterly not in spinners' favour so far, but he looked below his usual self against NZ too. I don't think India can afford him to fall off the cliff quite yet.
 

Spark

Global Moderator
Doesn't keeping Virat in the team make India a **** load of money? Would be a brave selector to make the call that costs BCCI millions of dollars
I don't remember whether it was Bhogle on radio or Shastri on Fox who said it, but he mentioned that as soon as Kohli comes out to bat, their internal viewership tracking metrics go absolutely ballistic, just a huge and obviously identifiable increase every time, including on Fox. So there's definitely a pretty unique commercial complication to it as well, I can't imagine there's another player in the world for which that's a phenomenon.
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
I actually agree with you on the A tours thing but it's a complete red herring here. It would be a good explanation if you were looking for one with respect to young batsmen and bowlers not looking technically proficient or mentally prepared for international elite cricket, but it's a really bad one when it comes to explaining why sixty, eighty, hundred Test veterans were/are stinking up the joint for years. It's not as if people only started complaining about that problem, Indian fans have been complaining about it since 2020/21 iirc.
See, Virat being crap and not being able to work on the one weakness for 4 years is definitely on him, and on the selectors who keep selecting him. I thought it was fine to give him the rope we did till 2022 and he seemed to show signs of his old form in 2023. Unfortunately, he has regressed beyond reason now and is actually in no mental state to be playing at this level, as he has shown in the last two weeks.

My point about Ganguly is far broader in the sense that ever since he took over, he had been intent on taking out some sort of revenge on Ravi Shastri and actively enabled failures for the team in that process. It includes this great build of Rohit Sharma as some world class captain. Lets face it, he is a tailender level captain even in LOs and the only reason we won the WC this year was because Bumrah is a genius, we got lucky with Hardik and Miller, AND RSA got nervous when closing in on a famous win. It is about how he undermined our chances twice and I feel when you create disharmony within the team for your personal gains when you are the ****ing board president, that is as heinous a crime as any when it comes to contributing to the decline of our team. That is all. This includes the captaincy nonsense, the media PR stunts, the A team program sabotage and everything else in between. 🤷‍♂️

EDIT - Funnily enough, the best comparison I can think of is Greg Chappell himself where Ganguly was the victim of very similar nonsense. It took us 3 years and a friggin controversy in Australia to get back on track and maybe that is what is happening right now. I wonder how a GG-MI trio combo will look for us till 2027.
 

OverratedSanity

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Big next season for Jadeja I think. I'm happy to excuse this series because conditions are so utterly not in spinners' favour so far, but he looked below his usual self against NZ too. I don't think India can afford him to fall off the cliff quite yet.
He's fine, he can hold his place as a batsman and he played a great knock in the previous test. As long as the team trusts Kuldeep and gives him a long rope at home and Bumrah stays fit, there's not that much doom and gloom in home conditions.
 

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