Well here goes my article after a long time and its on my fav sport cricket. Well as you guys know the excitement of Cricket WC(World Cup) 2007 is surrounding everyone, I thought why not write somethin on Indian Cricket Team fr the WC.First heres the team:
Opening Batsmen: Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Virendar Sehwag, Robin Uthappa
Middle Order: Rahul Dravid (Captain), Yuvraj Singh, Sachin Tendulkar, Virendar Sehwag, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Dinesh Karthick
All Rounders: Irfan Pathan, Virender Sehwag, Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Wicket Keepers: Dinesh Karthick, Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Fast Bowlers: Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Sreesanth
Spinners: Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh
Fielders: Yuvraj Singh, Ajit Agarkar, Dinesh Karthick
Now there are only fifteen players in the team. Dont get confused as I have some players who qualify for more than one position. Now I will comment on this selection one by one in the order I have written them.
Opening Batsmen:
Indian opening batsmen are Worlds best, there are no two ways about it. You wont get any better. On one hand you have the best odi batsman Sachin with 40 tons, on other hand you have ganguly who is arguably second best odi batsman in the world then sehwag on his day is the most destructive odi batsman and uthappa is what sehwag was 6 years ago. In simple words this is the best and it doesnt get bigger than this. Full marks to this for the selection team and India should be proud of this. I will rate our opening batsman 9 on 10.
Rating: 9/10
Middle Order:
The middle order isnt the worlds best but is definitely one of the more solid ones in the world. Leading the middle order would be Rahul Dravid with his impeccable stokes and his calm poise. I think dravid is the backbone of the middle order. If grapevine is to believed he is gonna bat at no-5 which I feel is perfect for him with our array of batsman. Yuvraj singh is a gifted batsman and his calm attitude could help us as well. Sachin is going to mostly bat in middle order if we go by recent matches. Sehwag in middle order could also be handy in some situations. Dhoni has won us many matches and could surely be another one to watch out for. But now the weakness, except yuvraj and to some extent I suppose Dravid none of them are good runner between wickets. In simple words pathetic. They make 3s into twos, twos into ones. As they say only indians can do it. Most of Indian spectators when we lose a close match, blame a one bad ball by a bowler or a last minute dropped catch or last minute bad decision by a skipper. But actual reason for most of our odi losses are not these. Its this running between wickets. Now if I remember little, there was one priceless player called Mohd Kaif who unfortunately doesnt seem to be in good books of Chappell and dravid plans. Can there be any better runner between wickets and for a team like India who have all these pathetic runners whom I dont want to name but they are so they are needs Kaif badly in this middle order. And this is what makes this middle order much weaker than it is stats. Thus my rating is bit low for them.
Rating: 7/10
All Rounders:
Do we have something called as allrounder? Oh we never did for like past 10 years and all we had atmost were batsman like sachin, jadeja, sehwag, ganguly, yuvraj etc trying to fill in tat 5th bowler slot. Still there are sehwag, sachin, yuvraj, ganguly to do the needful with sehwag being the best among them for his ability to bowl at death. Who can forget his impeccable bowling at death against SA at ICC Champions trophy 2002. Now there was one guy touted as next kapil Dev and still possess excellent average in both bowling and batting. Then why isnt he the next big star in the team but rather is fighting for his place. Frankly speaking chappel and dravid are hellbent on destroying his career, he was a bowler who can bat a lot better than traditional indian bowlers. He started as bowler with excellent form then played some good innings with bat then Mr Chappel and Mr Dravid say you should bat at no-3. What does pathan do, he bats lot better but his bowling takes a dip then Mr Chappel and Dravid say you were a bowler who can bat a bit and thus eventhough your batting average is ecellent your bowling su*** so get out of the team and go play ranji trophy cricket. Boyyy I call this cheating. Either you call him a batsman or a bowler or aallrounder. Basman bats at 1-6. Allrounder at 7, bowler at 8-11. If he is batting 1-6 then he is a batsman who can bowl a bit and can have real bad days.. If he bats 7 he is supposed to do both. If he bats 8-11 then he is a bowler whom you shouldnt ask if he doesnt bat. I hope chappel and dravid go back to ranji trophy and learn their lessons and then think about teaching pathan. Seriously they need it more than pathan. Actually we have good set of allrounders but our management makes it worse than it is. Thus my rating is 6 for this.
Rating:6/10
Wicket Keepers:
This could a quiz question for the WC 2007. Which is the only team in teh WC which has two specialist keepers? Answer India, Correct answer!!! and you win cash prize of 1 lakh ruppes and free ticket to India vs Srilanka match in the WC 2007. Seriously why do we need two keepers coz Mr Dravid doesnt need to keep for even one match. Being captain, cant he even do this small thing. If at all dhoni gets injured then karthick can reach carribean in 3-4 days which means losing one match which could be filled in by dravid. Thus this points to a question why do we need two keepers. Coz Mr Dravid likes Dinesh Karthick. Come on man gimme a break. If you say that you selected karthick as a middle order batsman then again kaif with his skillset is much better option than karthick. Dhonis keeping is decent and his batting extraordinary. But having two keepers mean I have to reduce the rating by one point and give it 7 instead of 8.
Rating: 7/10
Fast Bowlers:
Seriously I feel this set of fast bowlers are the best India has ever had in the world cricket in past 15 years. I have followed Indian cricket team for past fifteen years and seriously its only off late that I can proudly say that we have great fast bowlers. On one hand we have the great upcoming swing bowler Pathan then we have zaheer who with his experience is damn good. And now I want to dig a little on Indian media. The Indian media highlights zaheers WC 2003 as his performance in the finals, its another maater tht none of them bowled well tat day and only he gets highlighted. But why Mr Media do you forget he was Indias highest wicket taker in WC 2003 and he was the best in the show overall. I call it ridiculous. Jdge him by overall performance and not just one match. Also Munaf patel is good upcoming fast bowler along with sreesanth. Ajit Agarkar with his so called all rounding abilities still gets to find a place in the team though I seriously dont know when will he ever make it permanent. He has been around for nearly 10 years now and still is 2nd or 3rd fast bowler and isnt leading paceman. In indian terms this fast bowling set deserves 10/10 fr its sheer ability but as am talking relative and overall, I will give it 8/10. Not to forget we were the best set of fast bowler in last WC 2003 too. Nehra, zaheer and srinath were excellent. But I think this set is more durable with munaf and sreesanth as youngsters.
Rating: 8/10
Spinners:
Again this is one of the best set we have ever got. One with so much experience behind his name that he has done it all seen it all in Anil Kumble and another a really established spinner and the best hope for future in Harbhajan Singh. Seriously cant think of any better combination in any other team but I think we could have done with Ramesh Powar as well which would have given us more options with his batting abilities and also his form. I would have dropped a fast Bowler for it probably sreesanth who doesnt yet fit into odi scheme. But what it is what it is. So we gotta live with this two legends and I give them 7.5 coz though they are most talented in the world, they have done anything special of late.
Ratings: 7.5/10
Fielders:
Everone knows it we have the worst fielding set in the world may be along with pakistan. Then of late we had good set with people like kaif,yuvraj and raina. Now only one remains who is also not 100% fit. Other two are dropped for I dont know what. Raina is bit understandable as he is youngster and needs some time in ranji trophy but I would have had kaif in my team anyday. People say about his batting ability but what about his running between wickets, runs saved and his continuous encouragement. Please gimme a break with your selection, you couldnt seriously have told him to go back and correct your technique in ranjis. Please he has seen it all and been for more than 7 years that his strength and weakness are well known and who doesnt have weakness. Everyone has it. If you were to believe me, even sachin does. Sachin cannot score bundaries when is 85-100 even when he has 40+ tons and its a fact. With all this I would have had kaif for dinesh karthick anyday. Now with the set we have, one of the worstwe had in recent times. Why cant people remember it was kaif who instigated the collapse of eng vs ind in tht WC 2003 match and who knows if tat runout would have been affected eng could have won tht match and our whole WC 2003 could have been different. Thus with just one good fielder who is also not 100% fit, I will give it 4/10.
Rating: 4/10
Overall:
Overall our team is very good on paper and will win WC 3 times in a row but unfortunately cricket is not played on paper and is played on something called as cricket field and will require every other thing like strategy,captaincy,fielding,running between wickets, pressure, team skills etc to name a few and all this couts fr 50% and skillset counts fr 50%. With even our strong skillset even if we get 50/50. Our other abstract factors are so bad tat we mite just not do too well. My prediction for this team get to super eights and struggle to get into semis by losing very closely. Also this would have been my team which would have atleast qualified semis:
Dravid
Sachin
Ganguly
Yuvraj
Robin Uthappa
Sehwag
Kaif
dhoni
pathan
powar
kumble
harbhajan
zaheer
agarkar
munaf
two changes frm present team:
1) Kaif fr karthick
2) powar fr sreesanth
