Cricket Talk

I feel this would be the right time to resume my Cricket Talk. Indian team has redeemed my loyalty by winning the Twenty20 world cup.

Dravid quits from captaincy, in my opinion it is a blessing in disguise, or even call it a Boon. Do not get me wrong here; Dravid is a great batsman but he is a very poor captain. According to Sanjay Manjrekar on Cricinfo talk, “an Indian team captain has no power, and the entire selection committee and the board members influence the final eleven”. More over the Indian team captain is often put under tremendous pressure by the press. Unable to face the music Dravid resigned. With such politically mooted board and without the top 4, this T20 world cup victory is something to cherish. This format is so cruel that we cannot predict the winner. Though the depth in Australian lineup is phenomenal, I feel Australia cannot dominate in T20 like they do in other 2 formats. If Australia fails in few more T20 games, it would be matter of time for Cricket Australia to complain against T20 format. I feel no team would dominate T20.

A lot of celebration is still happening in India while the Team under the new captain is all set to face off the real World champ, Australia. Symonds mentioned yesterday that Indian celebration is going over the limits, who are you to set the limit Mate? … Trash talking is used by Aussie to pump them up. During T20 semi final I heard Hayden talk to Uttappa. Uttappa was playing few defensive strokes, and Hayden (sarcastically) congratulated him for playing great defense, Uttappa replied “if you say so I am honored”. It is always fun watching the Australians compete.

The (New) Indian Captain Dhoni walks in with lot of expectations. In my opinion, his wicket keeping is well below par. 50/50 is more of a mind game and needs a cool cat CEO. I wish the board gives him a lot of time to settle without worrying about win or loss. Till now I was worried that who will replace the top 3, Dravid, Sachin and Ganguly. Frankly, the recent T20 exposed our bench Talents. I was surprised by Rohit Sharma, Pathan Brothers. RP Singh’s remarkable improvement, finally Zahir khan now has some support. I pray that Agarkar is never selected again. Sreesanth is a good bowler but comes with a truck load of attitude, which can be good and bad. He should concentrate more on his bowling consistency.

The new bunch should be groomed to take over from the seniors. Instead of chasing the top guys, BCCI should create a transition plan [you are welcome to laugh; the word plan is an unknown to BCCI]. The senior players should slowly groom the juniors and make the transition smooth. Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly are in form and been scoring runs in one day format. They are invaluable assets, so is the Intel P4 chip, there is a point in time to change to dual cores [All rounder] and we are at this point. The next few series will decide the future course for Indian cricket.


Ps: During my trip to India I was following various cricket talk shows. Ex-cricketers were riding horses inside a big fat pot. I heard Ajay Jadeja comment about Indian Team fielding. According to him Indian fielding is at the lowest even average fielder like "Dinesh Kartik" looks great on the field. After all Dinesh Karthik took the best catch of T20, while Jadadeja was banished from cricket for fixing matches. Krish Srikkanth on CNN-IBN bad mouthed the new ICL to a great extent and bluntly quoted it was as money making tactics, question to him – does BCCI work for charity? And the next day BCCI floated their league similar to ICL. Poor Crushed opps Krish Srikkanth changed his stance once again and stated – ICL or BCCI – everything is good for the players and the game.