Slog Sweep: Humiliated

I'm too depressed to write match reviews for the ongoing series between India & Australia. Instead, I'm going to reproduce here a conversation that I had with a few friends on Facebook. The conversation pretty much echo my thoughts for the moment.

Deepak Srinivasan

India should do a Zimbabwe and get themselves expelled from Test cricket.... we can then play a pentangular with West indies, Zimbabwe and New Zealand and Bangladesh at Dharmashala.

· · · Yesterday at 11:29am ·

6 people like this.

Naveen Kapoor No da...... India should stop playing altogether. This series has so far reminded me only of the 1991-92 series..... I remember vividly a cartoon on the Indian express newspaper back in those days...it depicted a rotating door installed at the Indian pavilion which never stopped rotating during an Indian batting innings because the procession of batsmen continued. None had the balls to stay on crease.
Tuesday at 12:06pm · · 1

Rohit Jaishankar Lol ! It starts at 3:30 in the morning here. I wonder why I waste time watching these morons play. Let's give up test cricket and stick to the IPL where are 'extremely gifted' youngsters can go back to bashing the likes of Parameshwaran & co.
Tuesday at 1:14pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar And about the pentangular series, NZ just beat the same Australian team that is making 'the world's greatest batting line-up' quake in their boots. Not bad for a country of 4.4 Million people. I'd trade a lot of our clowns for some of the Kiwis in a heartbeat. They may not be the most talented in the world, but they atleast play with some bloody heart.
Tuesday at 1:18pm · · 1

Deepak Srinivasan R.Ashwin has a better batting average than virat kohli.. wonder why we even took pragyan ohja on the tour.. 4-0 for sure!
Tuesday at 1:56pm ·

Suhas Cadambi Would have added Sri Lanka to this list except they have just ebaten South Africa IN south Africa. Thilan S'weera the great scoring a century against Steyn and co while our boys struggling to notch 200 against some unknowns. Too funny.
Tuesday at 2:42pm ·

Shashank Singh So faithless, and so fickle...if my memory dose not fail me quite a few of you were raving about the same team India after the South Africa tour...the series is not even half way through...I still have hope a win in Sydney n Adelaide and Australia may either draw or win in Perth.
Tuesday at 3:37pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar Blind faith is pointless. We have more cricketers than the rest of the world put together. More money than the rest of the cricketing world put together and yet we are satisfied with the most ordinary performances. Look at Australia. Their fans & their press have called this the worst Aussie team ever. They set out to win everything and when that's not achieved they see it as a disappointment. That's the kind of attitude we need. This year Australia have beaten Sri Lanka away (something India have not done in over 15 years), drawn with South Africa away, drew with NZ at home and look like they are well on their way against India. This after a transition process that saw them lose almost a squad of fantastic players. Where are we going to be after 2-3 of our cricketers retire?
Tuesday at 3:46pm ·

Suhas Cadambi Very lttle to separate the two sides if you ask me - except for the captaincy. Australia are able to escape from sticky situations thanks to MSD' s limited grasp of test captaincy. I think we're in a situation where all the test nations apart from England have reached varying standards of mediocrity because they have stopped prioritising the longer format. I don't see an obvious way up for India in the short term as the schedule doesn't allow it. But Aus, SL, NZ and the rest are all in the same boat.
Tuesday at 3:54pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar India's problem is going to be retirements. We have relied on 2-3 individuals for over 15 years. Zaheer isn't going to be around for too much longer either. Where are the replacements?
Tuesday at 4:06pm ·

Shashank Singh I don’t think so we are that bad...our bowling has been good. Agree Dhoni needs to get a better grip may be...but who are we to judge..the guy has played more days of cricket then all of us have watched n played....the only thing that i think needs to get sorted is Gautam gambhirs approach. think he is still too stuck in ODI or T20 mode..if he and Viru can survive the first 20 overs of every innings, its game on. Something that even Ganguly pointed out today. 20 over of gambhir stayin in mean the ball is not new for middle order and 20 overs of Viru mean 100 on the board.
Tuesday at 4:15pm ·

Suhas Cadambi I will be very surprised if both Dravid and Laxman stay on after this series. We will not have any overseas tours till Nov 2013, what more is left for them to achieve? Need to start experimenting as soon as this series is over.
Tuesday at 4:22pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar Yep our bowling has been a bright spot, but the batting problems IMHO is not restricted to GG. If your looking long-term, we need a team that can adapt to all conditions. GG has averaged under 30 over the last 2 years and that's a long time to keep failing. Sehwag is obviously a fine player but if you look at cold hard facts then his record does not stand up to scrutiny away from home. His average in NZ, SA & Eng (arguably the most seam bowler friendly destinations in the world) is in the mid 20's. Sure he's played some glorious knocks away from home, but his record suggests that he does not do it anywhere near often enough unlike his record at home where he is simply phenomenal. Kohli is playing his 6th test and has had 5 poor ones. We can go on about how gifted he is, but sooner rather than later he needs to start repaying the team's faith. Dhoni is another bloke who averages under 30 outside the subcontinent. This does not mean they are all rubbish - but the facts are that Dravid & Tendulkar in particular and VVS to a lesser extent have scored the bulk of India's runs away from home. You cannot win abroad consistently when you rely solely on half your batting line-up.
Tuesday at 4:28pm ·

Suhas Cadambi I think we need to accept that the glory days are over and move on. The team should be slowly rebuilt and we should stick with a core group of youngsters..Kohli, Sharma, Yadav.. even if they don't do that well to begin with. A couple of years of mediocre results is OK by me if we are able to establish a young competetive side in that period.
Tuesday at 4:46pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar Fair enough. But what are the chances of that happening? Our guys will kick butt at home only to have the same problems when they tour abroad next. Ban the IPL and get them playing domestic cricket in England. We've seen Zak's transition after his stint in England, no reason why it cannot work the same way for the others. Doubt they will learn much playing for CSK or RCB.
Tuesday at 4:53pm ·

Suhas Cadambi Yup, the chances of that happening are slim. Which is why I'm hoping RSD and VVS decide to retire after this series. IPL is here to stay, we should be thankful that international cricket is surviving at all. But yes it is critical that some of these guys play county cricket in the off season. Regarding GG, he did well in SA last year. Some good coaching will put him right.
Tuesday at 5:01pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar Yeah, I do agree with regards to GG. He showed plenty of spunk in SA. What's annoying though is that this weakness was obvious to us sitting here watching cricket on TV. I had even blogged about how he had to get rid of this tendency to angle his bat towards the slip cordon on bouncier wickets. Should he have not got his 'coaching' done before the series started? I agree to a large extent with regards to the seniors stepping down, but I'm not sure whether we should completely ignore short-term gains. With test cricket as a whole coming under pressure from all the other stuff on TV, India losing consistently over 2 years could be the worst thing to happen to test cricket in India.
Tuesday at 5:18pm ·

Suhas Cadambi We're playing pretty much only at home for the next 2 years, so i don't think we will lose consistently. In any case, once the big guns and above all SRT decide to call it quits, I think the popularity of cricket as an intl sport will go down. We'll just have to hope the admins have the good sense not to put all their money into the IPL. Test crickets' audience is pretty stable I feel but is definitely the monority.
Tuesday at 5:35pm ·

Naveen Kapoor Cold hard facts....hmmm..... cold hard facts state that we suck on bouncier pitches. Cold hard facts state that there have been only 2 countries...apart from THE NETHERLANDS and IRELAND where teams have posted scores in excess of 400 in an ODI inning. And thats India and SA (8 OUT OF 10 INSTANCES). SoShashank Singh..... it answers your question on why people were raving about our performance in SA... simply because the pitches there suite our style of batting. Back in early 90's...the pitches in SA were bouncy...now they are more conducive to seam but in general the ball comes on to the bat well.

Cold hard facts stare in our face ..... our work ethics are nowhere close to what they were when Gary Kirsten was incharge.Duncan Fletcher in my opinion is trying to maintain status quo with the big guns of the team.... not trying to fiddle too much. The discipline or the lack of it is there for all to see. We have good bowlers no doubt, Pattinson is no better than Ishant Sharma. Its just the application that is different. Was just reading an article about Craig McDermotts role in the current aussie set up.Where is our bowling coach...wait a minute...do we even have one coz my memory fails me. We havent had a bowling coach in ages.... but Gary was managing fantastically. Who is this Eric Simmons anyway???

Discipline has never been our strong point. What the F*** is Zak doing with a belt around his back. Does he even deserve to be playing at this level.... he has the skill... where is the bloody fitness??? Brett Lee battled multiple surgeries on his ankle to return to the ODI fold. Agreed....Aussies are blessed wth sportier genes...but we can't be so bad.
Tuesday at 5:50pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar ‎Naveen Kapoor - not sure I agree about South Africa. South Africa is the country where batting has been extremely difficult even for non subcontinental teams. In fact, if you look at India's record away, their worst record is in South Africa where they have really struggled to cope with the bounce. Tendulkar apart, nobody in this Indian line up has a decent record in SA which shows how difficult batting has generally been there. By contrast, most of our guys have decent records in Australia where the pitches tend to be flat. There's a lot of bounce but not as much seam movement as you would have in ENG / SA.
Tuesday at 6:14pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar I agree with the fitness part completely. One look at Zak / Yuvi on India's tour to England, showed us how seriously our team takes its fitness routines.
Tuesday at 6:16pm ·

Suhas Cadambi The overall fitness of our players isn't great, but it's a lot better than what it used to be. My feeling is the players are doing all they can to keep fit (except for sitting out the IPL) but the punishing schedule eventually takes its toll. Australia themselves have enough problems with injuries.
Tuesday at 6:30pm ·

Rohit Jaishankar I'm not sure if it is actually any better than it used to be. OK, India never did have a great pace attack, but the likes of Srinath / Prasad / Agarkar never broke down anywhere near as much as some of these guys. I'm not even sure if you can blame excessive cricket - how many matches have the likes of Sreesanth / Aaron etc played recently? The other issue is of course the continued refusal to address fielding woes. Have you seen Ashwin field or run between the wickets? Or for that matter Sharma / Yadav / Sehwag / Zaheer ... this being in addition to an ageing senior line-up whose fielding skills have certainly deteriorated in the last couple of years.
Tuesday at 6:44pm ·

Badri Lokanathan Been monitoring this discussion and I don't get one thing. I expected fitness and fielding standards to have improved with the proliferation of limited overs cricket. Sounds like that hasn't happened. Why?
18 hours ago ·

Badri Lokanathan Btw, innings defeat in the making at Sydney.
18 hours ago ·

Rohit Jaishankar Yup, the only question seems to be innings and how many. MSD seems clueless and our bowling is back to doing what it does best - bowling rubbish. What a hammering !
14 hours ago ·

Suhas Cadambi This is depressing. Trouble is our test strategy has revolved around the batsmen posting tall totals and the bowling wearing the opposition down. Our bowlers can only do so much in the absence of scoreboard pressure. I'm not ruling out a strong recovery in the second innings, but have to hope Perth and Adelaide are either batsman-friendly or complete greentops, else we're cooked.
12 hours ago ·

Rohit Jaishankar Recovery in this test is next to impossible. The lead's stretched to un-manageable proportions and there's just too much time left. The best we can hope for now is for the team to show some fight. Given the way our batsman have been batting, I don't think we will even compete on a green top. India has taken a giant step backwards this year. Losing is acceptable - losing in this manner is not ! This is humiliating.
12 hours ago ·

Rohit Jaishankar ‎Suhas Cadambi If Gambhir flops again in the 2nd innings would you drop him? What about Kohli? I'm not entirely convinced by Rahane, but he does have mountains of runs in domestic cricket, so at the very least he should have a better temperament then some of the others. Think Rohit Sharma opening is an option?
12 hours ago ·

Suhas Cadambi I'm not a fan of sticking middle order players in the opening slot (despite the success of Sehwag), so ideally Rahane would not be opening, and certainly not Rohit. Having said that Gambhir is out of sorts and given the state of the series I'd be willing to try Rahane (making him clearly understand he is only a short term opening option). Kohli..well I don't think swapping him for Rohit will change our fortunes much, the big 3 still have to do the bulk of the work.
10 hours ago ·

Suhas Cadambi But this is exactly why I would like Laxman and Dravid to step aside when the series is done. We can finally give Rohit/Kohli/Rahane an extended run instead of having them fight out for that no.6 spot.
10 hours ago ·

Rohit Jaishankar Rahane was apparently an opening batsman before he started playing down the order. If Kohli fails, then Rohit certainly deserves a go IMO. Pujara is another bloke whose been unlucky to miss out. He was #1 in the pecking order. There are also definite question marks with regards to MSD's captaincy.
9 hours ago ·

Badri Lokanathan Basically India's famed batting lineup has failed them. Even if MSD's tactics seem questionable, what alternatives are there after putting up a measly total on a decent wicket? It is unfortunate that test openers like Jaffer and Chopra have fallen by the wayside - Gambhir clearly needs a break. Dravid seems the only one capable of hunkering down for 20 overs and even he failed.
3 hours ago ·

Badri Lokanathan I do not believe India will reach 250 if AUS makes 600+. The batsmen will be mentally and physically spent.
2 hours ago ·

Rohit Jaishankar I agree. IMO the problem that India face is the lack of skills amongst the younger players to play test match cricket. Like Dravid in England, I think Sachin has looked absolutely brilliant in this series so far, but is constantly under pressure because wickets have kept tumbling at the other end. Look back at any of India's landmark victories outside the subcontinent and 90% of the time there would have been an innings of substance by Dravid / Tendulkar. As I've mentioned before, you cannot perform consistently away from home when your relying on half your batting line up to provide all the runs.
about an hour ago ·

Rohit Jaishankar I think Jaffer / Chopra were poorly treated. India have always gone for style over substance. They even dropped Laxman at one point to accommodate Yuvraj Singh. We all know how Yuvi's career turned out !
about an hour ago ·