My emphasis is on the omission of out of form players. Leaving out Tendulkar, Sehwag, Harbhajan & Ganguly may look awful but is crucial for teams success. They are past their prime & retain only a little of their earlier class. These players had their hey-day & the country amply acknowledged & rewarded them. If excluded now, they or their fans should not complain. Pick the final 16 based on 'the-then'form & performance from Dravid, Laxman, Gambhir, Jaffer, Utahappa, Yuvraj if injury heals fully, Dhoni, Badani, Pathan, Mongia, Kumble, Murali, Dinesh, Piyush, Pawar, Zaheer, Sreesanth, Agarkar, Balaji, Nehra & VRV.Singh. Agarkar, a genuine fast bowler & a utility batsman was never allowed to settle. He should be given a reasonable run. Laxmans batting earned him international esteem, along-side domestic cynicism. BCCI rightly named him as Dravids deputy. He will be a worthy successor. BCCI should, be resolute to stem the rot & in doing so, not worry about the ground swell of hostility. Failure of BCCI to show the nerve would be the failure of Indian cricket. All that we can do then is to fold hands in prayer & say Oh! God! Help save Indian Cricket from this decay & ruin!!!
RE:How to go about for 2007 World Cup!!!
by DLN. Sastry on Dec 18, 2006 07:53 PM
Mr. Abhishek Dwivedi,
Ever since Ganguly staged his come back coup & landed in SA, he appears to be hell-bent, to prove you, me & all his other dooms-day prophets wrong. Such display of gallentry by anyone in these turbulant days of Indian cricket is a welcome sign. And a sensible performance or two, -though by no way outstanding, by Tendulkar prove a point, which you high-lighted. He is no longer energetic & breezy with the bat, but his class & experience still count. Same can not be said about Sehwag, despite his passable 2nd innings contribution with bat & in fielding of the 1st test. No one should be entitled for a place in the national team with just a modest performance, after a dozen+ failures in a row--that too when many other youngsters are waiting in the wings. He has to first take a year-long break & earn his return to international level by re-establishing his worth in domestic cricket. But let us wait & see how the selectors think & act. After all the present committee appears to be sensible. It is responsible for the revival of Indian cricket, can see who are reliable performers & who are not, & knows about the public out-cry for ousting the team's black sheep.
RE:How to go about for 2007 World Cup!!!
by Abhishek Dwivedi on Dec 14, 2006 09:33 PM
Mr. DLN. Sastry, I agree with you, but in slightly in different way. You suggested one way out for 4 diff people. I will rather modify it a bit. For Tendulkar, he should not play all the games that India plays. He should play 2 out of 5 onedayers and 2 out of 3 tests. Or he can just play tests and no onedayers. He still has fire but it shows only occasionally now a days. For Sehwag, he should be rested for 6 months and he should concentrate to regain his form and natural cricket. Same for Harbhajan. But he should more concentrate on developing more armours in stock.More wicket taking deliveries. He has become more of a one day player. He gives less runs but take almost no wickets. Sehwag and Bhajji still has fuel but lost the direction. And...Ganguli..he should concentrate on Running.....Runnig his resturant. He has played for such a long period with his (well known)technical faults that its diff for him to remove it quickly. It will require him to start with a fresh mind to remove his technical shortcoming and become again what he was once. And that seems very very difficult. I will like to have your or anybody's view on what I said here. So all replies welcome. Thanks.
RE:How to go about for 2007 World Cup!!!
by Amitabha on Dec 15, 2006 03:49 AM
Dear Sir Sastry, most of what you said sounded intelligent till you mentioned someone called Agarkar as 'a genuine fast bowler and a utility batsmen' who was not given enough chance. Wake up Sir, we are talking about the next world cup. Tendulkar, Ganguly, Sehwag are all past their primes for sure, but their primes were glorious and even if they pass it, they still add weight and value to the team. Agarkar is someone who never had any prime and thus has always been a spent force for a long long time. Talking about chances, I feel he has been given undue chances for being a Mumbai cricketer in Tendulkar's captaincy days as we were used to having 5 players always from Mumbai. And his performance has always been as steady....PATHETIC. His utility as a batsmen has been repeatedly proved by his ducks and struggles not only in the Australian continent, but everywhere else as well. An occasional sixer doesnt make him a utility batsman, we even saw Maninder Singh hit Imran Khan for a six!!
RE:How to go about for 2007 World Cup!!!
by DLN. Sastry on Dec 15, 2006 08:35 PM
Dear Mr. Amitabha,
May be you are right. During the last ten years there was a period of more than 3 years when I was indisposed to watch cricket, and some of the incidents you referred about Agarkar might have occurred then. I also missed to mention the name of RP. Singh as a promissing cadidate for selection. He should definitely be in the reckoning.
With regard to Tendulkar and other past masters, their performance will only decline with time & our hanging on with them will only deprive the upcoming players, fair opportunities, and BCCI, chances to experiment and build a strong team for the future contests.
Don't hold yer breath - going by their 'valiant' efforts to date, there's little danger, if any, of them breaking their losing streak anytime soon, at least, not on this trip, anyways.
