You select a third rated team for the tour of Australia and blame some poor middle class family guy for bribing exhorbitant amount to get a place in not so important team. And what next, every believes what the selectors say. Shame!!! Great going guys, sit inside A/C room and earn huge amounts for doing nothing.
The selection of a national cricket team in India is not as easy as Prem leads us to believe. Being a selector is a thankless job and calling whoever holds the selectorial position blind is easy without understanding the nature of the job. Yes..Murali is an excellent bowler. So it seems, based on his recent performances in one day internationals. Is he proven in Tests? Not really! Is he way above Harbhajan and Kumble so as to leave one of them out? No. The fact that Harbhajan single handedly won the home series with Australia should make him an automatic choie. So is Kumble. One can only imagine what could have been if he didn't have to sit out the series with an injury the last time around. So the question boils down to should we take three spinners down under, where the conditions are favourable to pace bowling or not. Horses for courses, remember? It doesn't mean he's worthless, just unlucky to find a position in the team. Now, there are other ways to include him at the expense of others by shifting the balance of the team but it will be just that! So, for once why don't we keep faith in the selectors and hope the team that they selected plays to its fullest potential.
I always thought Kirmani was pro-India than pro-somebody but looking at the way he has let an old player, Kumble, who hardly performed during the current TVS Cup tri-series, over young, attacking and penetrative bowler like Karthik defies logic. In fact Karthik did better than even Bhajji in the final at Eden Gardens. His first 8 overs were excellent never gave the batsmen any width or room for strokeplay and put them on the defensive from word-go, not that his last 2 overs were bad but personally I think he was tired and wasn't as good. Ponting was absolutely clueless to the ball that left him and that cost him his wicket after giving some valuable catch-practice to Laxman. It is really sad that Murali Karthik is not on this tour he can easily replace Balaji, a pathetic gangling bowler who hardly troubled the Kiwis, or the 'old war-horse' Kumble, prefer he replaces the latter. My advise to Murali is wait a season or two if you still don't succeed switch for a career in the movies! Rgds Ravi
Hi Panikar, I read your columns regularly and really feel that you have a great idea to portray what people like me hardly get a chance to!!full credit to you!!
About Myself: I am working as a Software Engineer at Los Angeles for the last two year and follow cricket on a regular actually crazy basis....and I was watching the TriSeries final from 1 am our time to morning 9 am and did that for the whole tournament on the net!! My Opinion: My comment here comes right after the frustration of the Final Tri Series...How about this Indian Team... Lets pick 11 pure batsman in our team..yeah now the question is who will bowl the 50 overs...yeah this is the answer...Let Tendulkar,Ganguly(Opening Bowlers),Badani,Yuvraj,Sehwag(Third,Fourth and Fifth) and ofcourse the sixth bowler can be J.P Yadav--assuming he is in the team as well. Anyways Australia is going to get above 320!!so lets bat them out in every match....so once in a while when the bowlers do come good as they did in the finals..we are always safe!! :-)....Just a thought!!! Hope you will come up with more sincere comments from the heart and keep us alive..and keep the readers just aware as u do... Regards Vinod Moorthy
Good to see your writeups on circket again. You put it very well. I think urgent thought needs to be put into doing away with selectors totally. I think this is possible if efforts are made to develop an unbiased algorithm to allot points to all domestic players based on their performance in each department of the game in the domestic tournaments and based on certain crucial factors agreed upon by experts in the game. The bottomline should be that the top 20 point holders using this scale should reflect the true top players in the country and the captain should be given the choice to pick his 16 from this. I agreen with Ian Chappell that there is no need for a coach. If we have a captain with strong leadership qualities we don't need a coach.
Keep writing on circket. And a belated welcome to USA.
Your analysis has been right up to the mark.These selectors seem to have some vested interests.Some of the wriiters of the opinion column seem to have more brain and logical attitude than these blind men who are paid to do a job.Why Sanjay Bangar was so badly left out? He had played superbly in the initial matches against Kiwis and was rudely left out or dumbed for no fault of his own! Why he was not considered for tour of Australia ia another surprise! He is such a useful bowler, very good filedsman and an explosive, respsonsible batsman! Of course the blind men cannot see as Prem says! If Bangar had played instead of Salvi at Kolkata , may be India would have won the final! But some people perhaps do not want India to win and disappointing the millions of cricket fans is the cruel game being played by our much hyped team and the selectors!
I'm not sure if I quite agree with the selection bashing.
1. Salvi's inclusion in the final It just seemed logical that Salvi play the final. For the tri-series, the "fast bowling" options India predominantly had were Zaheer, Agarkar and Nehra. Now try playing a selector, and you know that picking 2 out of these 3 is nothing short of a lottery.. I mean, each one on their day, can bowl on all sides of the wicket, bowl no-balls and wides and what not. They are wonderful when they click, but can look awefully bad on their bad day! Salvi had the reputation of being "steady", and the selectors had to try something different. It just so happened that the match they decided to try was a "final".
2. Karthik's non-inclusion for the Test series Its true that Karthik bowled wonderfully well in the one-day matches. Does that qualify for an automatic selection for a Test side? NO WAY. For some reason, Karthik has never performed well in any of the 3-day matches against any of the visiting teams - the latest one being NewZealand. So, the selectors do have a reasoning behind that.
India loses its matches, not because of poor selection, but because its not as good as what we think it is
i agree with you that kartik must hv been included in the squad to australia. it shud be remembered the aussies hv a general weakness against spin and more so with left arm spin. take all the past touring teams to australia and you will notice that left arm spinners hv troubled the aussies more than anyone else.....vettori from new zealand and raymond price from zimbabwe.
