Friday, November 30, 2007

Curious Case of Kartik!

Dinesh Kartik continues to baffle the team, selection committee and an average Indian cricket fan.

Not long ago, he was the toast of nation when he outscored everyone on the English tour - In fact, he was the leading run scorer for India in Test Matches this year! Not Rahul Dravid, Not Sachin Tendulkar, and not Sourav Ganguly. It was Dinesh Kartik who led Indian batting in test matches till this Pakistan tour.

Suddenly, at home, he is struggling to find the runs that came so easily to him on foreign pitches! He has failed in 3 innings as an opener against Pakistan (the third failure came today morning). Not only that, Jaffer is suddenly batting well and so is Gambhir. And almost everyone has forgotten Kartik's superb batting in England and is baying for his blood.

The other day, on the radio program after Kotla victory, a caller called in to ask what is Dinesh Kartik doing in the team!!! And the so-called 'experts' replied that 'Murali Karthik' is not in form and deserves to go!! I almost braked the car in disbelief. Radio experts apart, everyone is talking about how he should go. People are talking about how Jaffer and Gambhir should go on the Australian tour.

I think that Kartik should be persisted with. He is one person who gives his 100% and he has batted well in English conditions, although he is not clicking at home. Mostly we have had cases where a batsman makes double and triple hundreds at home and fails badly on foreign pitches. We had many such cases like Raman, Jaffer, Kambli etc. Jaffer himself was a big failure when he toured Australia last time. And believe me, he was technically as sound with the bat last time as he is today.

I would want to take Kartik and Gambhir to Australia more than Jaffer.

7 comments:

Sanju said...

Yo... Ranjeet ... I have finaly arrived in the world of Narcissits...blog writers. Still tinkering around but can ply.
Thanks for inspiring me.
Sanjeev

Cuckoo said...

I agree with you here. Karthik's case somehow reminds me of Md Kaif.

Ranjeet said...

Yes cuckoo, in fact in those days I used to genuinely belie ve Kaif was a better player than Yuvi!!! But he spoiled too many chances given to him.

Cuckoo said...

Talking about chances... no one got as many as Virender Sehwag and he is still getting them. :-)

What a luck !

Ranjeet said...

Cucko, I agree with you - The cases of heroes of one time like Sehwag and Pathan becoming liabilities to the team are truly sad!

Unknown said...

I think parthiv patel deserves a chance..he is in tremendous form...and i am sure his keeping would have improved over the period..

what say?

Ranjeet said...

Hi Niru, I agree - Parthiv is in good form and I'm sure his keeping wud hv improved. But the problem is that India has too many keepers and we dont need him as a keeper when we hv Dhoni in the team. As a batsman, he will need to fight with others for the slots available.