Skip to main content

Its not just the batsmen, silly!

Post the inevitable and ignominious exit of the Indian team from the T20 World Cup there has been a lot of talk about how the batting, seam bowling and the IPL let the team down (an examples here, and here). While I agree with those to a degree, a glaring factor was also the lack of effectiveness of the spinners, especially when compared to their counterparts on other teams. The table below compares the spinners of all the teams in the Super Eight.


The Indian spinners bowled the most overs but gave up by far the highest runs per over and per wicket. When spinners from NZ, SA, WI do better than you its time for a re-think. Moreover, if you take out Harbhajan's figures from here things would have been much worse. But then that's what you get when you use part-time spinners to bowl eight overs in almost every game. Ravindra Jadeja and Piyush Chawla should not have even been in the squad, not just in hindsight but because Irfan Pathan would have given the squad better balance and Amit Mishra is the better leg spinner.

The batsmen on the other hand did not do as glaringly badly relative to other teams as the table below shows -


That doesn't mean that there aren't any batting selection issues. Yuvraj Singh appears a prime candidate to be dropped from all forms of the game for at least a year and Yusuf Pathan doesn't warrant being picked outside the sub-continent. The former has an attitude-cum-fitness problem and the latter is just not good enough for international cricket (much like Kieron Pollard which goes to demonstrate the inadequacy of the standards of the IPL). Virat Kohli and Irfan Pathan deserve a run in the side (the latter's exclusion from both the Indian and India A teams is baffling to say the least).

My 20 (to pick 15 from) for the ODI World Cup would be -
Batsmen - Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Raina, Rohit, Kohli, Pujara, Badrinath
Wicketkeepers - Dhoni, Karthik
Bowlers - Zaheer, Nehra, Praveen, Vinay, Harbhajan, Mishra, Ojha
All-rounders - Irfan, Yusuf, Nayar

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of backward selections and England's future

A couple of interesting selectorial decisions recently by England and India (and actually as its turning out Australia as well!). For once I think the England selectors didn't panic and showed the right thinking by not picking either Key or Ramprakash for the Oval Test. And luckily for them, both Bell and Trott have performed well enough to vindicate the decision. India on the other hand have actually gone the other way bringing Dravid back to the one-day squad. I'm a bit ambivalent on that one. While the decision to leave out Rohit Sharma and retain Raina was certainly the right one, bringing back Dravid is questionable. It would have been a bolder decision to pick someone like Kohli or Rahane who both played really well in the Emerging Players Trophy recently, mainly because Dravid is quite unlikely to feature in the 2011 World Cup so why bring him back now? As for the Aussies, they will certainly be regretting not picking Nathan Hauritz for the Oval. A defensive decision if...
Post a Comment
Read more

Happy New Year .....

....well almost......its only 2 months in to 2009 so I guess its not terribly late for the first post of the year :-) The end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 has been quite engrossing primarily because of the tussle for supremacy between Australia and South Africa. And its interesting how once again, the Aussies are showing that the biggest mistake 'pundits' can make is to write them off. But I am jumping way ahead. The series in Australia was a real cracker and it was great to see the Springboks actually delivering so well on their abilities for once and not choking at the big moments. And in Steyn, Amla, de Villiers, Duminy and Morkel they have some real stars in the making and should be a strong team for some time to come. Australia's struggles on the other hand were not surprising after their performance in India. The same guys, i.e. Hayden and Lee continued to underwhelm and with the inexplicable selection of Symonds made things worse for Ricky Ponting. They were a l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Et tu?

As a single sport website, I think Cricinfo has brought about a revolution and the fact that they were bought by ESPN is testament to how highly valued they've become. Their editing and approach to articles/opinion has been refreshing to say the least and even though they seem to have had a lot of editorial staff movement they've usually maintained very high standards. Off late though, both in their headline styles as well as in actual content, there seems to be an occasional slippage of standards and an inching towards the modern media sensationalism which is a bit of a pity. This piece  by Siddharth Monga is a classic example. Granted that the last two press conferences by Dhoni and Sehwag  indicated clearly that the captain and his deputy did not agree on this aspect of selection but "discord", "dissent", "public sniping" feels rather presumptuous and heavy handed. Yes, it is a team sport but there is no reason why everyone on the team needs ...
1 comment
Read more