Team India Needs To Strengthen In Pace Attack For Wc '07, Disscussion abt indian cricket team with the World Cup in mind Options

[tracknest]

The issue is not of all rounders but good cricketers. This Indian team is beautifully balanced for one dayers. Even Harbajan is no muck with the bat and Agarkar and Pathan have shown that they too are very much in business. indain team need to look for motivated players who not only have skills but are willing to raise their hands when it is needed.

Most wicket keepers in the past have being good batsmen. Alan Knot, Rpd Taylor, Kirmani, Ian Healey, Wasim bari, Ian Smith, Moin Khan and now Dhni and Kamal all are pretty good with that bat.

Fielding, fielding and fielding....if the Indian team can further improve in this aspect of the game then they can be world beaters like Australia.

Fielding and fitness are related and players from the subcontinent have always fallen short in this aspect but hopefully in the presence of Greg Chappel all this will change.

[vishwa88]

The issue is not of all rounders but good cricketers. This Indian team is beautifully balanced for one dayers. Even Harbajan is no muck with the bat and Agarkar and Pathan have shown that they too are very much in business. indain team need to look for motivated players who not only have skills but are willing to raise their hands when it is needed.

Most wicket keepers in the past have being good batsmen. Alan Knot, Rpd Taylor, Kirmani, Ian Healey, Wasim bari, Ian Smith, Moin Khan and now Dhni and Kamal all are pretty good with that bat.

Fielding, fielding and fielding....if the Indian team can further improve in this aspect of the game then they can be world beaters like Australia.

Fielding and fitness are related and players from the subcontinent have always fallen short in this aspect but hopefully in the presence of Greg Chappel all this will change.

Talking of fielding, we shud not deny the fact that Indian fielding standard is improved quite a lot. Two outstanding fielders are Yuvraj and Kaif. Others like Sachin, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Dravid, Pathan, Agarkar, Karthik, etc arent bad fielders. Infact i don remember Sachin, in particular, misfielding or dropping a catch. India does have some slow movers like (Lax)man and Ganguly. Infact i feel his attitude and fielding capability was one of the deciding factors in his exclusion.

[pradeepvishwakarma]

As every circketer know how to ball and how to bat but, this doesn't means he is a perfact allrounder..
His/her performance should like allrounder like ...Mr. kapil dev,Mr. Manoj Prabhakar....etc

[unni]

It will be interesting to see how "our" (HF members') team-selection modifies during the course of this thread. Even as it is, between December and April, there are changes.

Based upon promise and recent performances, only 10 names automatically come to mind:

Dravid
Uthappa
Raina
Yuvraj
Pathan
Dhoni
Powar
Harbhajan
Sreesanth
Munaf Patel

Add Sehwag and Kaif and Agarkar, for old times' sake!

Dunno anything about Venugopal Rao and R. P. Singh, but if their names are added, it is exactly the squad selected for the ODI's against West Indies!

That Laxman is not in the ODI team to West Indies is a sure indicator that he is not in consideration of the 2007 World Cup. I watched him scoring a very responsible ODI century, playing all his shots along the ground before reaching 100, and winning the match for India. At the time of a Hindustan Times report last year, he had the best ODI average among the Indian batsmen! Yet he does not find a place, at the age of 31. Similarly, Kumble is not in the reckoning for ODIs.

Even the automatic selection, Sachin Tendulkar remains a question mark, depending upon his performance after returning from injury.

If Uthappa lives up to his promise, at least one opener slot will be filled, and hopefully Sehwag will return to form. Reportedly, Dravid said he knew little about Uthappa --- a player from his own state! Just goes to show how much international cricket is being played, how much the players are away from home, and how they've lost touch with domestic cricket.

[unni]

On the subject of all-rounders:

I guess, the simplistic definition would be "a player who can bat as well as bowl". But then, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi "could" also bowl, and infact once captured the wicket of Colin Cowdrey, the great England batsman! But that did not qualify him as an "all-rounder"! Every batsman bowls in the nets --- one exception was Vengsarkar.

It would be a harsh requirement that a player should be worthy of being selected either as a batsman or as a bowler in order to be termed an all-rounder. Very few cricketers in history would measure up to such a yardstick. Garfield Sobers did. (If I'm not mistaken, he was originally selected as a bowler --- at the time he scored the record 365!). According to cricket archives, Keith Miller of Australia was another. Perhaps Vinoo Mankad.

In more recent times, Ian Botham, Imran Khan and Kapil Dev were considered great all-rounders, but the team's reliance on them for their bowling perhaps did not let them realize their batting talent to the fullest extent.

In the present Indian team, Irfan Pathan seems to be the closest to being an all-rounder, with Ramesh Powar reputed to have the potential. Some of the batsmen are just part-time bowlers, and not authentic all-rounders in the category of a Mohinder Amarnath or a Madanlal. There was a time when the Indian team was packed with all-rounders, Umrigar, Borde, Durrani, Nadkarni.

Interestingly, a Roger Binny or an Abid Ali or a Robin Singh would not qualify for the team solely on the strength of their batting or their bowling. Yet, their value was heightened by the fact that they could both bat and bowl. And such all-rounders with modest reputations have made stellar contributions either with the bat or ball.

The posts about wicket-keeper/allrounder reminds me of the days when the Indian team had no opening bowlers and went in with only a spin attack. Let alone part-time bowlers, non-bowlers would be "conscripted" to get the shine off the ball. On one occasion, Skipper Pataudi threw the ball to Buddhi Kunderan to bowl the opening spell. Although he was a wicket-keeper, Kunderan was in that team purely as a batsman, while Farouk Engineer kept wicket. Subsequently, Pataudi gleefully confessed that at that time he had no idea what Kunderan bowled!

It has just been reported that Dhoni bowls in the nets, that if someone else could keep wickets for the 20 middle overs, Dhoni could be asked to bowl in ODIs! The coach went on to say that he considered Dhoni an all-rounder!


This post has been edited by unni: May 8 2006, 06:50 AM