adharcric said:
They didn't get 2 centuries apiece, but they did reasonably well, made decent contributions. You can't blame Ganguly or Yuvraj for the fact that Sehwag and Dravid didn't make runs. Likewise, you can't blame Ganguly or Yuvraj for the fact that our "pace attack" lacked penetration. In fact, Ganguly did get the first wicket.
I'm not blaming any of Ganguly or Yuvraj for not scoring enough runs. I'm just saying that they're not adding much value to the team, even at their best. They didn't make a difference that time, since we're looking at a team victory here. Had one of them bowled a major chunk of overs (as many as any of the bowlers), an extra wicket could have been claimed. Sure, Ganguly took a wicket, but do you expect to have him bowling so many overs in every match? We find Shahid Afridi bowling chunks of overs in nearly every innings, and so does Abdul Razzaq. But not an Indian batsman.
If Dhoni and Pathan had also made centuries and it became a draw, that would make Yuvraj's century a match-saving knock right? But he still would've played the same exact century.
It would make all three centuries match-saving. And what happened to winning?
You're also ignoring the fact that our batsmen played against Akhtar, Asif and Razzaq, and the opposition played against 3 left-arm medium pacers who couldn't do much on this day for some reason. Make no mistake, our batsmen played poorly even though the opposition bowlers bowled well. But take that into consideration when comparing the batting of Pakistan and India.
Yes, the Indians faced three right-arm seamers, with just Akhtar bowling at express pace. Razzaq was bowling as fast as any Indian bowler, and Asif, at the pace at which the Indians should be bowling. The Pakistanis had five batsmen, then Kamran Akmal, then Shahid "slogger" Afridi and Abdul "bits-and-pieces" Razzaq, who scored heavily. The Indians had six specialist batsmen and yet all of them scored in bits and pieces. We're taking nothnig away from Yuvraj's century, it was fantastic, and definitely enough to make an Indian top five, but lack of versatility has weakened the Indian team yet again.
On to the idea of bringing in a "value-addition" like Bangar, Munaf, Joginder, etc.. I agree with you there. This guy needs to be pacy though, unless we have a pacy option like Sreesanth or VRV in the attack as well.
VRV or Sreesanth has to play as a frontline seamer to partner Irfan in Tests. Pace should be a prioirty, since the Indians have been missing it so long. Munaf, though, can be India's answer to Afridi, and should be played as one. Both should make their Test debuts in the forthcoming series against England. It won't do the team much harm. We're not dropping Tendulkar, Dravid, Sehwag, Harbhajan or Kumble here, are we?
