***Official*** England in India

[tooextracool]

Well I (I think) have been able to reverse swing even with a taped tennis ball, This is not something I can do @ will, but it just happens sometimes and trust me I dont bowl anywhere above 60-65 mph.

Reverse swing does happen @ lower speed but it is far easier to pick up the yorkers bowled @ 70-73 mph than when it is bowled @ 85+ mph. Irfan, Mcgrath, Hoggard may bowl reverse Swing, but how many times they pick up wickets with those reverse swing balls ?

maybe not as often as someone using it consistently at 85+mph but Mcgrath has taken plenty of scalps with reverse swing- did so in India and on plenty of occasions against NZ, Hoggard got a fair few at Nagpur(and hes only recently developed the ability to do it anyways) and Irfan isnt exactly a consistent exponent of it. Point though is that its an extremely useful asset to have, even if its not as good as someone who bowls at 90 mph.
and yes it is easier to pick up at low speeds, but when for a spinner who can also get the ball to turn it is very similar to drift and you cant seriously tell me that drift doesnt help a spin bowler because hes bowling too slow.

 

[C_C]

indeed, too many people seem to think that reverse only happens with 85+ mph bowling, yet bowlers like Hoggard, Mcgrath and even Pathan to an extent have disproved that theory by getting the ball to swing bowling below 80 mph. Reverse swing really only depends on how badly the ball has deteriorated.

Not entirely accurate.
Reverse swing obviously depends more on how much the ball has deteriorated than anything else, but speed is a big factor.
You might be able to reverse by having a very deteriorated ball and perfect wrist positioning but mostly what the comms. identify as reverse swing is just late swing.
Reverse swing acts fundamentally like the aerodynamic lift off the plane's wing ( by creating low pressure on one side of the ball due to faster air travel over that surface) and as such, inorder for a ball to reverse, you do need to bowl it at a certain minimum theshold velocity ( unless, as i said, the ball looks like its been chewed by a dog)..else the reverse swing simply doesnt happen.
Which is why the greatest exponents of reverse swing - Waqar and Wasim- were both express pace bowlers and the bowler who does the best job reversing it today are Akhtar and Bond.

 

[tooextracool]

Not entirely accurate.
Reverse swing obviously depends more on how much the ball has deteriorated than anything else, but speed is a big factor.
You might be able to reverse by having a very deteriorated ball and perfect wrist positioning but mostly what the comms. identify as reverse swing is just late swing.
Reverse swing acts fundamentally like the aerodynamic lift off the plane's wing ( by creating low pressure on one side of the ball due to faster air travel over that surface) and as such, inorder for a ball to reverse, you do need to bowl it at a certain minimum theshold velocity ( unless, as i said, the ball looks like its been chewed by a dog)..else the reverse swing simply doesnt happen.
Which is why the greatest exponents of reverse swing - Waqar and Wasim- were both express pace bowlers and the bowler who does the best job reversing it today are Akhtar and Bond.

again i have not claimed that speed is not a factor. speed is not related to reverse swing though, just that hand in hand speed makes reverse swing more devastating. which is why the most devastating bowlers of reverse have been Waqar and Wasim. However that does not mean that slower bowlers- Hoggard, Mcgrath, Bravo etc are incapable of it. It just means that the impact they are likely to have is far less than some others. And i think you do a big disservice to Simon Jones by not putting him in the list of bowlers who are adept at reverse swing today, indeed i'd say hes a far far better exponent of it than Akhtar and Bond.

 

[pug]

I will be very surprised if INdia don't go in with 5 bowlers tomorrow. It is, if anything, hotter in Kochi at this time of the year than it was at Goa. India needs all the bowling options it can get. And of course, the Great ONe can score a hundred or a double if required.

Yup, 5 bowlers.

AB Agarkar, MS Dhoni, R Dravid, Harbhajan Singh, M Kaif, IK Pathan, RR Powar, SK Raina, V Sehwag, S Sreesanth, Yuvraj Singh

But I wish they had taken a regular opener. And what's up with Munaf?

 

[SJS]

What a huge change?

Sehwag.... Sehwag
Dravid.......Tendulkar
Yuvraj.......Laxman
Kaif..........Ganguly
Raina.......Dravid
Dhoni.......Yuvraj
Pathan.....Kaif
...............Pathan


On the left is the Indian batting side side that is playing today at Kochi and on the right the one that played Pakistan in Pakistan a couple of years ago. The change is dramatic. YET the side on the left is confident enough to go in with five bowlers instead of four.

Thats the BIG difference in India today. If we had the bowling of today in the last decade our results would have been different.

 

[pug]

Way to go, Pathan!

 

[pug]

Sehwag.... Sehwag
Dravid.......Tendulkar
Yuvraj.......Laxman
Kaif..........Ganguly
Raina.......Dravid
Dhoni.......Yuvraj
Pathan.....Kaif
...............Pathan


On the left is the Indian batting side side that is playing today at Kochi and on the right the one that played Pakistan in Pakistan a couple of years ago. The change is dramatic. YET the side on the left is confident enough to go in with five bowlers instead of four.

Thats the BIG difference in India today. If we had the bowling of today in the last decade our results would have been different.

Definitely. No longer do we have to make up with the batting what we lack in the bowling. I mean, potentially, we don't have to with Pathan, Munaf, Sreesanth, Harbhajan, Powar, RP Singh n VRV. But with Agarkar playing as one of the 5 bowlers...

 

[kvemuri]

What the hell is wrong with us? why Ajit Agarkar? i mean what the hell is this morbid fascination with him...God I am so angry. They could've gone with Patel as the additional bowler.

 

[pug]

What the hell is wrong with us? why Ajit Agarkar? i mean what the hell is this morbid fascination with him...God I am so angry. They could've gone with Patel as the additional bowler.

I hope this is his bye-bye series and his inclusion is a thank-you-for-your-services.

 

[Sanz]

Prior *gone* , Santh Strikes.

PS:- Today, I am supporting England.

 

[pug]

Prior *gone* , Santh Strikes.

Wrong smiley? Or am I missing something?

Santh's economy needs improvement, even tough its still early stages.

 

[Sanz]

I am rooting for england... I hope I have MArc's approval

KP hammers Pathan for 3 4s in a over.

 

[pug]

I am rooting for england... I hope I have MArc's approval

Hmm... Is this in protest of "you have no idea of how to select a team" or "lets make the series more interesting"??

 

[aussie]

go KP..

 

[adharcric]

I hope this is his bye-bye series and his inclusion is a thank-you-for-your-services.

I hope so too. For the first time, it's a realistic hope thanks to VRV Singh.

 

[adharcric]

Agarkar starts off with rubbish!

 

[kvemuri]

Great start Agarkar..yeah India should make this buffoon captain.

 

[superkingdave]

Certainly looks a decent pitch, Pathan really set Strauss up, you could see the last 2 dismissals preying on his mind. Prior was a poor shot. We need a KP special

 

[ramkumar_gr]

ramkumar_gr - You are on a roll here. Three posts without mentioning Kaif and describing how useless he is, that is something you should be congratulated for.

Almost a substatial chunk of my posts are towards convincing people out here about the inabilities of Kaif and what a mismatch he is and how his selection makes a mockery of merit. I dont have anything personal against Kaif. But the point is, India definitely has got a lot of batting talent, i can name atleast 20 players who are playing domestic cricket in India, and who are way ahead in technique and temparament. No point talking about temparement when you dont have a wee bit of technique. I dont want to be one among the also-rans as if i say something about Kaif now, the point might not be driven home.
You can never call this patch of Kaif as lean, as he never had any consistent form to show. His failures are more of a routine rather than an exception. The natwest knock was something that suited him, where he had more than 25 overs to crawl towards the target, with all the hardwork done by Yuvraj. If if someone calls that a good knock in that situation, those situations come once in 100 matches and the odds of coming good is low. It is just the insane hype from the media about Kaif's fielding that keeps him in the team. Honestly speaking, he had never been a good fielder. I am puzzled to see people out in this forum talks about his temparement, fielding etc. when there was none on display. Seems they also are driven by the media. Yuvraj is a far better fielder than Kaif. And Raina is a class act.

Chappel is talking about Sehwag and Kaif in the same vein which shows him in very poor light.On his day, Sehwag can win matches single-handedly. He says Kaif will be given a fair run. I dont know what he means. 4 ducks in 5 matches is the worst in the ODI history, that means even rank tailenders have done better. The end is not very far for Kaif now.

In Indian cricket, it is who you have as GodFather that matters more than anything else. Otherwise we would not have seen Kaif or a Rohan Gavaskar picked ahead of Badani or a Sriram. Kaif has found one in Greg Chappel and he stays there forever.

 

[ramkumar_gr]

Don't remind him

Wonder where he was after Kaif saved India's butt in the first test!

Went nowhere. Just waited for the things to return to normalcy as it had turned out to be in the ODIs. 4 ducks in 5 innings , even law of averages has taken a back seat. You can continue reading my previous post.

Kaif has done his best to prove the knock in the first test is more of an aberration than anything else. Hope after the ODIs you are very much convinced.