The 3rd test match was a display of some pathetic cricket by India.Its surprising to see a cricket team which boasts of the best batting line up not go for a win. It vindicates the thoughts of some ordinary people like me that Sachin Tendulkar cannot win us a match on his own. He is a great cricket and a very humble human being but surely not a match winner. How many matches has he won us in comparison to say Steve Waugh.If the stats are to be believed tendulkar has the lowest win % each time he has scored a 100.Hell, even VVS Laxman for that matter has won a few matches.Each time India loses a match such comments are common and the Indian cricketers have started to take this as an alibi, saying that each time we lose people start talking about our performance. Yes, its true but wasnt the 3rd test the worst display of cricketing sense. If 9 people (after sehwag) cant play out 60 overs or half a day, it just shows thier cricketing skills and basic intelligence.
I am sorry, but the priority has to be on other sports now. Who on earth is interested in Sehwag statistics which have been pretty boring. I think we should concentrate on other sports as well and try to sponsor a sports encouragement program or chat session and make people more aware of what is going on in international sports and be more innovative than that sick game called cricket. No offense but we need to diversify as a country in what we play as games.
RE:lacklustre article
by Yogesh Hasabnis on Mar 31, 2005 07:27 PM
Dear Friend,
Nobody is forced to watch cricket in this country. People like it and so they watch it. If you don't like it, you are free to watch the NBA league or the X sports. People in this country have also supported other games many times like tennis and badminton when Prakash Padukone and Vijay Amritraj were performing well.
RE:lacklustre article
by Sriram Vanamamalai on Mar 30, 2005 06:36 PM
If you wanna look at other sports there is a section called Sports in rediff.com do not come to cricket section. Moreover you baffle me with this reply after reading through the article knowing very well that this is about criket. Grow up Dont just write a letter because you have to comment.
My dear friend Sehwag is not answerable for loss of Match but Ganguly is. Sehwag has played only in this series and not always. Sehwag second inning Avg. is just 20. This tells the story. About the pressure see every one is pointing to Ganguly and not to team. This pressure what plays in mind on main players. Till now there is no responsibility on sehwag, team has given free hand to him to play like kid. But you expect the Dravid to handle pressure. He failed in one match and evryone is behind him. So many people are writing about defensive tatics, team was expecting this media hype that's the reason they went for draw and not for win( To avoid this satituation but they failed). We need to understand that we the people are putting too much pressure on our player.
Unless we stop highlighting personal achievements rather than team achievements India will continue to shine on the individual level. I would suggest you put the blame squarely on the team for a disastrous performance or collectively praise them for a good show!
I think you cannot exclude the Tendulkar factor who has shown a great comeback after his injury with 3 fifties and scores in the late 40's and 90's. Tendulkar plays the "real" test cricket. Which is playing slowly and holding the middle order lineup. Sehwag is a gifted player who just goes out there and does some sensible whacking. His thinking is what differentiates him from players like Afridi and Flitoff that he doest get out on 40's or so. He stays tere and gets big 100's for India. But to say that Sehwag has been playing alone and the rest of the Indian team is not playing well enough is not a correct statement. Dravid just hit 2 centuries in one test match. It is afterall your first 4 batsment that should be doing bulk of the scoring, and indeed they have.
it was the combined wisdom of the batting stars that led to to indias defeat.in their own back yard and on home wickets the greatest after don pushes and plods.plays afridi as though he is the greatest spinner.sachin is good when conditions favour him.put him under pressure and he fails miserably.how many times has he taken india out of trouble? after sewaghs exit the indians should have played normal cricket.instead the great sachin on a good batting wicket conceeded maiden after maiden to afridi,allowed closing fielders to put pressure on him very poor criceting sense from a man who has 10000 test runs under his belt.losing is not bad but the way india lost is shameful.kumble showed how to bat sachin and co showed how one should not bad under pressure.very poor approch from a master blaster and a genius.add to that gangulys poor captaincy on day 4 failing to devise a plan to check run scoring by pakistanis pathetic performance on a good wicket against a very ordinary bowling attack
I, as an ardent cricket fan was hurt by the Indian team's spirit on the last day of the Bangalore test match. Then again rises the question, "Do the Indian players know that cricket is a team game or do they play only for records?" It seems that the Indian team with the exception of Sehwag does not want to fight for a victory. It has to come easy or they just give up. My heart goes out for Sehwag and Kumble who play for the team. How disappointing must it be for them to see the Cricketing God Sachin Tendulkar play out 98 balls for 16 runs!!! Sachin should look back at his fighting innings on his debut exhibition match which Pakistan won but still made him a hero. My frustration is why does the Indian team not realise that their fans want to see them fight, play the game in the right spirit, play to win as a team and not for personal records. I can give you 100 instances where the team was hailed high by the fans for playing the game in the right spirit, even tough they might have lost. Australia has always been my favorite team not because they win most of their games but because it is a delight to see them fight even in losing causes. Kudos Pak for playing the game in right spirit
Right now it does seems that he is the only one left in the team with a positive attitude. In the banglore test in top and middle order only he was batting with a positive attitude.... rest of the so-called master batsmen were being defensive and gave the impression that they were playing to save their wickets (they failed in that too!) Even kumble batted better way then them. Shame on so called greats.
Going down without a semblance of a fight is something cricket lovers will find difficult to accept. It was abject surrender by our team by withdrawing into a shell after the openers left. I am sure our team has learnt from this match and will not let down players like Sewag in future. Let's not write off Sarav and Lakshman yet. But we must admire the way Inzy and his boys came back in this series. The ODIs will be sure crackers !
