The Curious Case of Indian Cricket

Fenil

PC Cricket Leagues Legend
Joined
Jan 1, 2011
Finally Ricky Ponting retires from ODI cricket after getting sacked from the team. One would think it would hurt Australia much but in fact it was the thing that BCCI would have never liked to happen at this stage when the calls for the retirement of their senior team members is getting louder and louder and Ponting's retirement only added fuel to the fire.

The seniors fell miserably against the Australian pace attack in the Test series and subsequently most fans have started thinking that the best of the legends like VVS (Laxman), Rahul (Dravid) and Sachin (Tendulkar) is long finished. Of late, questions have been raised over the commitment of Sachin Tendulkar and that he is only playing so that he can reach the milestone of 100 International centuries. Even the captain (Mahendra Singh Dhoni) has shown signs that he isn't happy with Sachin and some others playing in the team and want them to be replaced as soon as possible.

Many former cricketers have also come forward and asked the seniors to retire with their head high while they can. You would expect BCCI to take similar steps like Cricket Australia and show the door to the non-performing seniors. But this is BCCI which is known to take many bewildering steps in the past on many occasions and with 3 out of 5 national selectors having no cricket background, things are not expected to change anytime soon. Interestingly, Kapil Dev, one of India's former greats who have been criticizing seniors for not quitting the game was himself given a lot of time late in his career to break the World record of most test wickets of Sir Richard Hadlee of New Zealand. Kapil's form was so bad that he was able to pick only 11 wickets off last 10 innings and in the last 105 ODIs he played, he failed to score a half century. Thats not it, he didn't pick more than 3 wickets in a game in his last 50 matches. In his last 25 ODIs, he averaged a meagre 11.50 with the bat and 43.31 with the ball. His last 5 wicket haul in an innings came 2 years before he finally retired. This shows the incapability of BCCI to call their seniors and tell them its time for them to end their illustrious career is not new.

Things haven't changed much even now. While BCCI isn't really acting towards sacking the seniors, it is also retaining the non-performing youngsters like Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja who have failed miserably. Perhaps the selectors should look forward and give more chances to the likes of Manoj Tiwary and Cheteshwar Pujara in the interest of the team. Instead, the captain and team management are trying to edge out the inform Gambhir with the non-performing seniors in the name of rotation policy and bad fielding.

Their lethargic attitude has resulted in the situation where no youngsters have got enough exposure and grind of test cricket so that they can replace the big guns quite smoothly. This in turn is only hurting the team. Its time BCCI have some former cricketers, rather than politicians on the pivotal positions of the body as they are more capable and interested towards the betterment of the team.

One wonders if this uncaring attitude of BCCI towards the team goes on, for how long could the old horses, especially Sachin Tendulkar carry the team on their shoulder and if Sachin Tendulkar finally scores the much awaited 100th ton, one wonders will he still carry on and prolong his career to get 50 ODIs century milestone?
 

Atharv

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hmmm . Nice article , but I don't agree with most of it and I think there might be some correction .

If I am not wrong it is mandatory for national selectors to have played Ranji Trophy matches(I think 25 is the minimum) for their states and also the chairman of selectors must be a former international test match player. So saying that 3 selectors have no cricketing background is false.

Views of most of the media/cricket "experts" in general and Kapil Dev's in particular must be taken with a pinch of a salt, there is not much substance in them .

The so called "youngsters" have had enough exposure . Choosing non performing Raina and Jadeja over Sachin, Sehwag and Gambhir is ridiculous. Sharma showed the initial burst in 2008 CB series but not much to show after that till recent couple of tours.He has played close to 80 matches and should have cemented his place by now.
Maybe Sehwag could be dropped. He has been getting out in a very callous manner.
The problem is not Sehwag, Sachin and Gambir but M S Dhoni's biased selections. Because one of the top three used to fire in the past this biased selection was not an issue. But with top order crumbling Dhoni's biased selection is causing problems. Dhoni seems to be playing favourites here and that seems to have cost India a place in the final .

Now, clamour for Sachins retirement is bizarre . Bradman played till he was 40 . Was Bradman dropped after the bodyline series ? His average plummeted to 55 (it was in excess of 100 prior to the series, I think)after that series . Couple of more Bodyline tours and it would have been interesting to see the GREAT MAN's average .

Sachin is playing good cricket , better than most of his team mates , he is fit . There is no need for Sachin to retire from

any form of International cricket in the near future .

:thumbs:

Good writeup , Fenil .
 
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