1. Viru
2. Gambhir
3. The Wall
4. God
5. VVS
6. Raina ?
7. MSD
8. Bhajji
9. Ojha
10. Ishanth
11. Zaheer
12. Mishra
13. Appam C***** (Sreesanth)
14. W Saha
15. M Vijay
16. Yuvraj
Well I have also included my playing 11 and yes- I deliberately put Yuvraj at no.16
Some of them are extremely obvious choices and lets not waste time looking at their performances.
There are only two places that are in contention, No. 6 batsman and our second spinner.( I aint happy with Bhajji either in the recent past, but lets leave that there for now)
Raina and Yuvi are in the team and I definitely think Raina should be in the Playing 11 and not Yuvraj.
Yuvraj has simply got far too many chances in tests and hasnt made a huge impact YET. I cant remember one great innings. ( Infact the only good innings I remember is the partnership with Sachin to seal the win against England at Chennai after being battered by Viru)
Also, it gives us a nice ground to TEST raina out. All thats being said about his deficiency in technique and how he cant be a good Test batsman.
I think the slow-low pitches in SL would be the best place for him to start. If he cant do it here, I will start believing that theory, else we can put him through more 'tests'.
Raina I think has amazing temperament and FEEL he will make it big. Raina must get a game !!
Now, feelings aside... Lets look at some numbers.
http://stats.cricinfo.com/indiandomestic2009/engine/records/batting/most_runs_career.html?class=4;host=6;id=2009%2F10;type=season
People we must be looking at
M Pandey 956 @ 59.75 in 16 innings
A Rahane 887 @ 63.35 in 17 innings ( 3 n.o including a 265*)
P Patel 813 @ 58.65 in 13 innings
S Badri 800 @ 57.14 in 14 innings
D Karthik 776 @ 77.6 in 10 innings
R Sharma 718 @ 79..1 in 10 innings ( 309* of 718 came in 1 innings )
Manish Pandey, Boy ! I love him. He was great in IPL 2009, has been great in the Ranji. Great prospect, scores quick. He s young, he can wait.
Rahane and Sharma's figures are massively skewed by their n.o scores, but Rahane has been performing well over a couple of seasons. He doesnt look tight in his technique though, atleast to me.
Badri, Patel and Kartik have been scoring tons of runs in the past few seasons. Very sad for Patel and Kartik that they have MSD in the team. Kartik especially has shown enough to be played as a batsman alone.
The obvious choice for the squad however was S Badrinath. He s a veteran. Has always been knocking the doors, but never got above the Tall Indian Middle Order. But now that it is coming to an end, must be part of the team.
He also played Mendis very well ( while no-one else could) in the ODIs just after the mystery man knocked our top guns in the test series just before in 2009.
Yuvraj VS Mendis on SL Pitches ? I like Yuvraj, I really do - I dont want him to be a national embarassment !!
Raina hasnt played much scoring 292 @ 41.71 in 7 innings with no hundreds and 3 fifties. H.S 98 ( Not very impressive )
Yuvraj has got 158 in 3 innings in the domestic circuit and 195 in 5 innings in Test matches against Bangladesh and SL
The bottomline here is I think the selectors have got it terribly wrong. Neither Raina nor Yuvraj must be in the team on the basis of performance.
However, now that they have been picked, it must be Raina who must play simply because he has been superb for us in the other formats. We might as well give him a try in Tests.
Now on to the spinners, slow low pitches are slow left arm bowlers' paradise. I really hope they play Ojha.
19 wkts @ 29.31 in 8 innings S.R. 65 ( 13 wickets in 3 matches @ 29 in Tests )
Mishra has got 20 @ 37.5 S.R 86 !! (12 wickets in 4 matches @ 54 with a S.R of 105 balls per wicket ) He has really lost it !
Piyush, on the other hand has 36 @ 29.41 in S.R 53 last season
Bhajji - 23 @ 25.7 in S.R 72 ( Thats in Tests, he hasnt played a single domestic game)
Its quite clear here about who needs to play. However,India's top spinners arent just good enough. (Wow an idea for the next post, watchout)
I also assume that Sreesanth is in the team just for entertaining the team and the crowd with his antics. Fair !
2 comments:
I love to say that Rahul 'The Wall' Dravid has scored 909 runs last season with an average of 113.62 :) :)
Come one !! Just few hundreds more to go above Lara and Ponting ( Punter might be difficult to overtake :( )
Nice post machan. Agree entirely on Raina - he did not deserve to go but now that he's there, he simply has to play. But we know fully well that it's not going to happen.
Also believe Karthik should be in the squad. I would definitely no pick up as a specialist batsman, but he adds value because of the multiple roles he can play. Apart from being a w/k he can open if needed or slot in to the middle order in an emmergency. He has to be the backup keeper not Saha - although now that Saha has been picked its only fair to give him a go.
I have not seen much of Rahane - but heard a lot of good things about him. The person you missed out though is Pujara. People have been raving about him and is also apparently got the best technique of the lot. He's been scoring runs for fun in the A tour in England.
The spinners like you said pose a bigger problem. I have seen enough of Ojha, Mishra & Chawla and daresay none of the strike me as great bowlers. I prefer Mishra over Chawla for the simple reason that he's got a much better legbreak. Chawla relies too much on the googly and you will be sorted out at international level if you don't have a good stock delivery.
I reckon your being a bit harsh on Sreeshanth.Like Ishant, Sreesanth should not be playing limited overs cricket for a while. He's inconsistent undoubtedly, but when he gets it to work, he looks good. I thought he bowled beautifully against SL when the came to India last on flat unresponsive wickets. It's also true that we don't have too many options. Apart from Zak, the fast bowling resources are not very impressive. I really do hope Ishant does not go Irfan Pathan's way because amongst the many seamers India have played in the recent past, Ishant on song was most impressive and by a long way at that.
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