Thursday, February 15, 2007

Indian WC Squad - An Analysis

Firstly, Sehwag should have been dropped. No player (apart from Agarkar) has been given as many chances as Sehwag. We already have enough talented openers in the team. Uthappa has proved himself on Indian pitches and rightly deserves to be checked out here.

Secondly, Harbhajan should have been dropped. No one has lived so much based on pure legacy and absolutely no form.

Ramesh Powar definitely deserved a chance. He has been unlucky.

Kumble's case is curious - a wonderful player at heart, gives 200%, but wickets have eluded him on foreign pitches - Having said that, we have not nurtured Piyush Chawla as he should have been to be the next frontrunner leg spinner to play for India. That means, we have to pick Kumble for he is the only quality leg spinner in view today and has a good experience of playing on Caribbean pitches.

Ganguly has been batting like he is on a song and that deserves an auto berth for him in the world cup.

Tendulkar the cricketer deserves a chance more than Tendulkar the batsman, which is sad, but true. His experience and support to Dravid and team apart from his current (inconsistent) form will be useful to the team.

Dravid the batsman is back, but Dravid the captain is still lacking the killer instinct required for ODI's. Yes , yes, I know he has scored 10,000 runs 2 days back and has become the only 6th player in the world to do so, but sorry, for ODI's you cannot be conservative in anything you do - you MUST play to win, you must be aggressive in your field settings, you must have plans and backup plans ready - just to WIN. Sadly, Chappell has not been able to put this quality in Dravid (yet). He should learn fast, for a team to win a world cup, you need a capable captain who breathes for victory for sure.

Kartick has been excellent in the chances offered to him and absolutely deserves a place based on his current form. However, Dhoni is the man to watch for in this World Cup is what I have to say - so the selectors have done well by picking both of them - Dhoni will set the WC on fire - is my prediction.

Zaheer has been wonderful on form and has to be the first choice for a fast bowler. Pathan too is a great team player to have in the team and will surely fire on the Carribean pitches. Agarkar has been bowling well off late and deserves a place in the side based purely on current form. Munaf Patel has developed well and he too, deserves to be on the bus, ship, aeroplane - whatever. Sreesanth's is a curious case - erratic bowler, may not be the best choice for the WC - Ranadeb Bose could have been given a chance here.

We are left with Yuvraj Singh who was batting as wonderfully as he has ever been able to before the injury struck him - he , too is an automatic choice.

I think that the selectors should have included VVS Laxman for the stability and solidity in middle order. He has been playing well. And heck, who knows, if we run into Australia in any of the stages, they might actually be scared. ;-)

Having said all the things above, if any one of you have still managed to hang around , here is my WC team for you:

Robin Uthappa
Saurav Ganguly
Sachin Tendulkar
Rahul Dravid
VVS Laxman
Yuvraj Singh
Dinesh Karthick
Mahendra Singh Dhoni
Anil Kumble
Romesh Powar
Zaheer Khan
Irfan Pathan
Ajit Agarkar
Munaf Patel
Ranadeb Bose

More about India's WC chances in the next post!

2 comments:

Cuckoo said...

I completely agree with you. See my views here.

Ranjeet said...

Hi Cuckoo,

yes, I read about your views when I visited your blog a couple of days back.

I agree with you on most of the views, however, I must say that of late, Kaif has not been justifying his place. There was a time when I was a strong Kaif man and would always say that Yuvraj should sit out instead of Kaif, but now it is reverse, yuvraj has matured amazingly and kaif has failed to do so, he has forgotten the winning ways, however, his fielding still is the best.:)