***Official*** England in India

[adharcric]

Why are Harbhajan and Raina riding the ***** seat?

No matter how many catches Dhoni drops, he'll remain the team motorbike ******.

 

[adharcric]

Preferred XIs: 3rd ODI at Goa

England
A Strauss
M Prior (+?)
V Solanki
K Pietersen
A Flintoff*
P Collingwood
I Bell / G Jones+ (realistically, the latter)
I Blackwell
L Plunkett
M Hoggard
J Anderson

India
V Sehwag
G Gambhir
R Dravid*
Y Singh
M Kaif
S Raina
MS Dhoni+
I Pathan
R Powar
H Singh
M Patel / S Sreesanth

 

[Jono]

Awesome stuff from Raina

 

[adharcric]

For those of you that didn't get to see Raina's heroics and the final victory lap by Dhoni, check it out here.

 

[adharcric]

Nice article here on Ramesh Powar. Someone on CW recently called him "tubby". Well keep assuming that he's tubby, sluggish and harmless at your own peril.

 

[honestbharani]

A great escape for India, AGAIN. Now you guys know why we rate Raina rather high. England have won two BIG BIG tosses and have yet squandered the advantage. But I don't think they did too much wrong. Agreed, Ali was rather pathetic, but he had taken 4 wickets last game and he WOULD have been picked even if they wanted to play another spinner. I think India won this game (through Raina and Dhoni) than England losing it, which was certainly the case in the first ODI. Both teams need to do a lot of work on their batting line ups though, if they want to win the WC.


BTW, how nice is it to see some bowling wickets in ODIs. Given the nature of grounds in India (small boundaries, although it wasn't the case at Faridabad and lightning quick outfields), I think having pitches which have a bit for the bowlers is a genuinely good idea. We have already seen how interesting these low scoring matches can be.

 

[irfan]

Thanks for the link Adhar, I hadnt seen the likes of Raina,Powar,Gambhir,Blackwell play before. Now I know the why the portly Powar jokes are warranted!

 

[silentstriker]

The problem with America is stupidity

What's with the hostility toward the US

 

[Pothas]

Priors inclusion is a joke. They want a Gilchrist but he is too crap to keep therefore we have a wicketkeeper batsman opening except he is just a batsman, explain?

he will probably score a brilliant hundred at Goa now

 

[Nishant]

wat do u guys think of Gambhir. a lot of talent squandered? or is he just plain old crap?

 

[irfan]

heheh soz silentstriker, It's just fun to pick on the most powerful nation in the world. Nothing more, nothing less

 

[irfan]

wat do u guys think of Gambhir. a lot of talent squandered? or is he just plain old crap?

He's quite talented and is suited for the ODI format but seems intent on throwing his wicket away to ghastly cross-batted shots, he reaally needs to improve his temperament and discipline if he wants to become a permanent ODI opener. 30 run cameos are not required Sehwag already provides that. I think Jadhav and Jaffer have a better technique and temperament but I;m not sure if they will be an ideal foil to Sehwag

 

[TheEpic]

Team needs to be:

Strauss
Bell
Shah
Pietersen
Flintoff
Collingwood
Jones
Blackwell
Plunkett
Hoggard
Anderson

 

[adharcric]

He's quite talented and is suited for the ODI format but seems intent on throwing his wicket away to ghastly cross-batted shots, he reaally needs to improve his temperament and discipline if he wants to become a permanent ODI opener. 30 run cameos are not required Sehwag already provides that. I think Jadhav and Jaffer have a better technique and temperament but I;m not sure if they will be an ideal foil to Sehwag

Jaffer and Jadhav do have better technique and would be more likely to stay at the crease for long periods of time, but they can get bogged down too easily in ODIs, especially Jadhav. Gambhir is a strokemaker which is what we need for ODIs; the problem is that he keeps on squandering his starts with mindless shots out of nowhere.

 

[adharcric]

Team needs to be:

Strauss
Bell
Shah
Pietersen
Flintoff
Collingwood
Jones
Blackwell
Plunkett
Hoggard
Anderson

What exactly have Shah and Jones done to be retained over Prior, who's scored more than most of your batsmen, and Solanki, who's been in the best form of all in the A-tour?

 

[honestbharani]

He just needs to kick on off his starts but dropping him now might do him more harm than good. I am sure he will be able to kick on. He also needs a bit of luck, at times it seems as though he is getting out to his first mistake. As Ian Chappell always says, it isn't always that way in cricket.

Edit: The above was in reference to Gautam Gambhir.

 

[adharcric]

Agreed. Gambhir seems to be in decent form but just needs some tune-ups with the help of Chappell so he stops playing nothing shots after settling down.

 

[adharcric]

So what do you think the team should be for the final 4 ODIs and the Abu Dhabi matches?

For the final 4 ODIs, I would
a) drop Agarkar for VR Singh
b) retain Venugopal, but possibly add a 3rd opener (Dhawan, Vidyut, Ganguly) to apply some pressure on Sehwag and Gambhir

For Abu Dhabi, it's being suggested that some of the seniors will be rested. Well, the seniors are Dravid, who is captain and unlikely to take a rest, and Sehwag, who needs to get among the runs soon ... so I'm not sure what's going to happen there. We certainly need to send 3 openers to Abu Dhabi though and get some competition going.

 

[TheEpic]

What exactly have Shah and Jones done to be retained over Prior, who's scored more than most of your batsmen, and Solanki, who's been in the best form of all in the A-tour?

What exactly has Prior done to warrant selection in the side at all? He's now played 8 ODI's for England as an opener with a poor average of 23. I see little point of playing 2 keeper/batsman, neither of whom are exactly proficient with the gloves or bat. At least Jones has done nicely behind the stumps recently on this tour and performed reasonably given the circumstances in the last game. However, Read simply must be given an opportunity before too long.

As far as Shah/Solanki goes, yes, it is a tough call. Both have modest averages of around 30 in List A cricket, which is the only form I'm really considering. However, Solanki has now played 46 ODI's, averaging only 27, and considering he has opened the batting on many of those occasions, that isn't really good enough. I've seen enough of Shah to know that 2 failures at this level aren't going to affect him, but if he crumbles again in Goa then there are legitimate calls for the inclusion of Solanki.

 

[adharcric]

What exactly has Prior done to warrant selection in the side at all? He's now played 8 ODI's for England as an opener with a poor average of 23. I see little point of playing 2 keeper/batsman, neither of whom are exactly proficient with the gloves or bat. At least Jones has done nicely behind the stumps recently on this tour and performed reasonably given the circumstances in the last game. However, Read simply must be given an opportunity before too long.

His glovework is far more important in tests than in ODIs. In ODIs, he needs to score runs for England when they're collapsing, not add to the woes by getting knocked over pathetically. Think of Prior as a pure batsman because that's his role right now. This series, he hasn't done too poorly as opener so to punish him instead of Jones would be utterly unfair.