Batsmen who could have made it to the Indian test side

[Woody_cloudofsm]

Are you serious?

Firstly for some reason Yuvraj is getting test spots over Kaif (hopefully that changes soon), and secondly, you rate Sriram a better potential test batsman than Kaif? Why?

Kaif is undoubtly the best batsman india has as on offer who is not currently in the test side his midest first class record doesnt mean a thing

hes like hamish marshall michael caughn paul collingwood sumthing special will spur him on to be a great captain of india and a solid number 4 as tendulkar leaves t he game. john wright even said he does not understand how a guy like kaif can ever get dropped.

 

[aussie]

what about that guy Bhardwaj, i remember a lot of hype over him when India were down under in 99/2000 but he failed miserably...

 

[Woody_cloudofsm]

ur taking about vijay bharadwaj he is related to my homeboy rocky bharadwaj who actually lives in sydney he played in sydney in the game where vvs scored his 167 maiden ton has an outstanding firstclass record but so do a lot of indian flat track bullies, never lived up to his hype much like gagan khoda amol muzumdar and jacob martin

all were thought to go on t o become international stars

 

[ramkumar_gr]

There is no point having a decent discussion with ramkumar_gr as it appears that he is clearly anti-Kaif.

OK. I will wait for my turn to prove you Kaif's inabilities , when India gets to chase a big total. And when he gets into the test side,(which i dont think will happen in the near future)
Kaif will himself prove you wrong. India is not a England where people like Mark Ramprakash,Neil Fairbrother plays an unimaginable number of tests with the lowest possible averages.

 

[adharcric]

OK. I will wait for my turn to prove you Kaif's inabilities , when India gets to chase a big total. And when he gets into the test side,(which i dont think will happen in the near future)
Kaif will himself prove you wrong. India is not a England where people like Mark Ramprakash,Neil Fairbrother plays an unimaginable number of tests with the lowest possible averages.

yes buddy, we'll all wait for a long time for that

 

[ramkumar_gr]

yes buddy, we'll all wait for a long time for that

It just happened a month before in the Ind vs SL final and hopefully Kaif will not make you wait that longer.

 

[Jono]

OK. I will wait for my turn to prove you Kaif's inabilities , when India gets to chase a big total. And when he gets into the test side,(which i dont think will happen in the near future)
Kaif will himself prove you wrong. India is not a England where people like Mark Ramprakash,Neil Fairbrother plays an unimaginable number of tests with the lowest possible averages.

Ramprakash was a stupid example because he had a brilliant FC record, yet failed at international level. That's the exact opposite of Kaif!

 

[adharcric]

It just happened a month before in the Ind vs SL final and hopefully Kaif will not make you wait that longer.

In that same series, Kaif was put up some solid scores as well. Besides, its not like the rest of the Indian side exactly erupted in the final. Kaif's averaging in the 70s since Chappell took over, so you can go ahead and argue with that. I know he's not great in teh final overs when you need slogging, but he deserves his place in the squad fully, more so than any sriram or badani.

 

[deeps]

Bharadwaj as i recall was an all rounder, who was talked up alot. Came to australia, and got injured before he managed to really geta proper shot. Never saw him again

 

[ramkumar_gr]

Ramprakash was a stupid example because he had a brilliant FC record, yet failed at international level. That's the exact opposite of Kaif!

But it was the height of stupidity and nonsense that England selectors picked Ramprakash for 50 tests.

 

[Prince EWS]

But it was the height of stupidity and nonsense that England selectors picked Ramprakash for 50 tests.

Be that true or not, it has nothing to do with Kaif at all.

 

[ramkumar_gr]

Be that true or not, it has nothing to do with Kaif at all.

My point is Kaif's averaging under 25 from 7 test matches and i feel enough chances have been given to him. And why i am furious of the fact Rampers has played 52 matches with such a less average is, a player with such poor statistics from Zim or Ban or even NZ is understandable as they dont have a rich pool of resources to choose from. With the privilege of selecting from a very rich pool of players, the English selectors got it all wrong.
Same is the case with India. I see many more talented players like Sriram,Y Goud,Dheerj Jadhav, Venugopala Rao not being given opportunities at test level. To be precise, there are better players in India than Kaif to be picked for the test side.

 

[Sanz]

My point is Kaif's averaging under 25 from 7 test matches and i feel enough chances have been given to him.

How on earth can anyone say that Kaif has got enough chances is really beyond me considering the fact that he first got to play one test against SA then dumped almost 18 month then again got picked for an away series..got dumped for 4 years..and then picked against the best team in the world , came @ 213/5 and was last man out with India's final score being 376. Then again in the next test he was the top scorer in the team with all the batsmen scoring under 25 (came @ 75/4 when out India were 178/8), then in the 2nd innings got out to a freak catch by Gilly. Then again in Mumbai on that mine field of a pitch he came in and scored 25. If you thin 25 isn't much on that pitch then take a look @ the scorecard..not a single aussie batsman was able to cross that mark in the second innings.

 

[SJS]

Agreed averages dont tell you the exact story. Also that someone having against his name does not mean everything. I watched the 50 he scored against Aus in Chennai believe me more than half of his runs came through edges. Kaif's selection to the test side ahead of Sriram and Rao is something which i will never agree.

Ram, you think this is because of anti South Zone bias in the selection panel ?

 

[ramkumar_gr]

Ram, you think this is because of anti South Zone bias in the selection panel ?

May be true to some extent. I always feel the southzone especially TN cricketers have been vicitimised to a very great degree.

Let us take the case of Sriram. Everyone who had watched him will definitely say he is more suited to test cricket than ODIs, but never he was considered for tests. He had done whatever he could do, like 8 duleep trophy hundreds, 28 first class hundreds, hundred against every visiting team, hundreds for 'A' sides, almost everything. Why was he not considered for tests. When players like Akash Chopra, SS Das, Wasim Jaffer all had the privilege of making their entry into international cricket through the longer version of the game, why not Sriram. I dont have anything against these players, but i am just saying the yardstick should be the same for all.

Next is Badani. Badani got into the team after some good words from Sachin for his 150+ in the Ranji final in Mumbai and he was very consistent during his initial stint but later he struggled a bit to be honest, but still he has an average of 33+ and a strike rate of 73 in ODIs. But he was very strangely sidelined in the Aus-Ind-Zim triangular series and Rohan Gavaskar was preferred to him for no reason. And you have written how Kaif's test appearances have been spread over the years. It was far more disappoiting to analyse Badani's test appearances. He played in all the 3 tests in SL where Kaif also played and not much was there to chosse between and his only other test was against Zim and he was sent in as an opener. Dont you think a different yardstick is applied to him?

Then there is this hapless Sharath, who never found the favour of the selectors for some strange reason. when someone like Jatin Paranjpe was selected for the Toronto series, it was just a mockery of all selection policies and Sharath should get every feeling to have got let down by the selectors.

And we all know what happened to T Kumaran on the Australian tour, he was the best bowler in all the tour matches, and he did not get to play in any of the tests, just because of Sachin's preference to his friends and relatives like Kanitkar, Agarkar etc.

And Ramesh was the most successful opener for India after Sehwag i would say.Again he was made to sit on the sidelines for the entire tour of Australia but i have to agree Chopra did really well.

And Robin Singh was never considered when he was in his prime. Whenever Azhar used to mention his name in the selection meetings, it was considered as a joke.

 

[ramkumar_gr]

How on earth can anyone say that Kaif has got enough chances is really beyond me considering the fact that he first got to play one test against SA then dumped almost 18 month then again got picked for an away series..got dumped for 4 years..and then picked against the best team in the world , came @ 213/5 and was last man out with India's final score being 376. Then again in the next test he was the top scorer in the team with all the batsmen scoring under 25 (came @ 75/4 when out India were 178/8), then in the 2nd innings got out to a freak catch by Gilly. Then again in Mumbai on that mine field of a pitch he came in and scored 25. If you thin 25 isn't much on that pitch then take a look @ the scorecard..not a single aussie batsman was able to cross that mark in the second innings.

Sanz, How do you feel now? Dont you think he has been given enough chances at least in the shorter version after having recorded the worst sequence in the ODI history with 4 ducks in 5 games, even a Chris Martin would have done better!!!!!!!!!!111

 

[Jono]

Why are you bringing up the shorter form of the game though? This thread which you created all those months ago asked which Indian players could have made the test squad ahead of the core middle order Indian batsman of the past decade (Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman).

Later you argued that Kaif didn't deserve a test spot nor consideration to even be in the test team. Yet in his last knock he hit a magnificient 91, which as brilliant as Yuvraj has been in the past 3-4 months, probably trumps all of Yuvraj's test knocks until now when you consider the situation, pressure and quality of bowling.

You've constantly laid barrage after barrage against Kaif in both forms of the game, and lucky for you his recent form slump in ODIs has been horrendous, and with youngsters such as Raina coming through, there is no doubt his position is far from definite within the team. However in tests, you can claim he shouldn't be in the first XI (he's not in my first XI, currently I have Yuvraj ahead of him only slightly, which shows Yuvraj's brilliant form has made me change my mind when you refer to my post a few months ago in this thread saying I hoped Kaif would get a spot ahead of Yuvi) but you'd be asinine to claim he doesn't deserve his spot as 1st or 2nd reserve middle order batsman.

 

[marc71178]

Later you argued that Kaif didn't deserve a test spot nor consideration to even be in the test team. Yet in his last knock he hit a magnificient 91, which as brilliant as Yuvraj has been in the past 3-4 months, probably trumps all of Yuvraj's test knocks until now when you consider the situation, pressure and quality of bowling.

It's ironic that he was then dropped after it though!

 

[adharcric]

This is how I'd rank the batsmen at the moment. (pecking order so to speak)

Test Openers: Sehwag > Jaffer > Gambhir
Test Middle-Order: Dravid > Tendulkar > Laxman = Yuvraj > Kaif > Raina

ODI Openers: Tendulkar > Sehwag
ODI Middle-Order: Yuvraj = Dravid > Raina > Kaif > Venugopal

If Uthappa proves himself, I think we'll see Kaif sitting out of ODIs when we go with 5 bowlers.

 

[kvemuri]

badani is very unlucky. It is difficult to understand how players like Kaif are preferred for tests over Badani and Sriram.

Badani is unlucky agreed...but Kaif hasn't played that many tests either and he is unlucky too. Especially to get dropped after scoring 91 in the first test and get dropped, has to be unlucky.