7 bats and 4 bowlers or 6 batsmen and 5 bowlers?
Team India find themselves in a quandary over team selection on the eve of the first test against Bangladesh. And irrespective of which direction they choose, it will be a case of overkill.
Bangladesh may be competitive and able to hold their own over a 100 over period, but sustaining those levels over 450 overs spread over 5 days is a whole different ball game altogether.
Given that, do we really need 7 batsmen when 6 could more than easily do the job over 2 innings?
And do we really need 5 bowlers when 4 bowlers in tandem with Tendulkar, Yuvraj ( possibly) and Ganguly ( probably) could share the bowling work load? And given that two, if not three, of those 4 bowlers are going to be spinners?
How much firepower does India need to front up against Bangladesh?
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As regards Karthik, Dravid is a better captain in Test than ODIs, but I am not convinced he is a brave captain. Given the antagonism in the dressing room over the last season, I do not believe Dravid will sit out any of his "seniors" and play Karthik as a specialist opening bat. He would rather don the mantle of opener himself.
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My team for the first Test ( in batting order)
KKD Karthik
Wasim Jaffer
VVS Laxman
Yuvraj Singh
Rahul Dravid
MS Dhoni
Ramesh Powar
Rajesh Pawar
RP Singh
VRV Singh
Munaf Patel
5 bowlers, 5 batsmen, 1 keeper.
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Thursday, May 17, 2007
Overkill
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7 comments:
You took RP Singh over Zaheer? Any reasons for that?
And Rajesh Powar over Kumble?
And Yuvraj over Sachin and Ganguly?
Could you please give reasons or your thoughts behind these.
Chandan,
Thanks for the question ( I was hoping someone would ask)
Two reasons
1. If this is the best XV in India, then we can pick and choose any of the Xv in the playing XI to get the job done.. Do we really need the "brands" to play Bangladesh? I mean, is Bangladesh really that good a test side?
2. A poke in the eye to the BCCI and the BCB.. Let them market a series when India fronts up a team without any "brands", should be fun..
Now what is this "brands"?
And don't forget, they came periliously close to beating Aussies while Aussies were playing with all their "brands".
So, taking the opposition lightly is the worst mistake to make at this time.
What do you say now?
Chandan,
By that logic, Jason Gillespie scored a double century against this attack so are we overestimating them by having our marquee names playing ?
No way are we overestimating them. But underestimating them would be the worst mistake.
As far as Gillespie is concerned, I hope you remember how he had helped Australia in reaching 445 with Waugh in the kolkata test 2001, when other brands were simply flattened.
Also batting on that minefild in the 4th inning at the Mumbai test 2004, which player had frustrated our bowlers the most, after the high Aussie brands had fallen?
I suppose you underestimate people a lot. I hope our players don't do this!:)
Chandan,
If Karthik, Jaffer,Laxman, Yuvraj, Dravid and Dhoni are not good enuf to be competitive against the BD bowling attack, we need to pack our toys and go home.
If Powar, Pawar, Rp Singh, VRV Singh and Munaf patel between them are incapable of bundling the Bangladeshis twice over, we should stick to playing the Associate leagues.
If India requires Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly and Anil Kumble to be competitive against Bangladesh, we are in a worse mess than we think we are.
And didn't the same thing happen? Had Sachin and Saurav not been there, can you imagine what would have been the score of India?
And both these batsmen played sensibly. The moment they tried to take some risk, they were gone, as was Dravid earlier and Karthik as well.
Will our bowlers be that desciplined? I doubt!!
We are in the worst mess. I don't expect RP Singh and VRV Singh to cause any trouble to Bangla batsmen on this track.
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