Bevab
Staff Member
- Our starting spinner is Kuldeep, the guy who's currently tenth in the ICC rankings. Our starting keeper is KL Rahul assuming he is fit. You're not accepting of either of these facts because you have a fierce dislike for the latter and because you believe the former simply cannot be.
- The Kiwis most certainly don't have a 'settled' team. You could make arguments for all of Southee, Henry, Boult, Ferguson, Sodhi, Milne and Santner to be in their main XI based on form or reputation. Their best bet at replacing the Kane shaped hole should he miss out is Mitchell, which leaves them vulnerable at five. And if they do include Kane, you'd be criticising them for including someone who hasn't played any cricket since March or is that type of scrutiny only reserved for the Indian team? Finn Allen still looks to be extremely raw in T20Is let alone ODIs.
- You're considering/taking bilaterals and these continental competitions as serious fixtures when most of the cricket fraternity has stopped doing so, especially the bigger sides and there lies the fundamental flaw in your argument. You say they should have had an intra squad domestic tournament to figure out who is in form and who isn't. Now tell me which would be better; an international game against the likes of Shaheen and co or domestic bowlers like your favourite Mukesh Kumar to figure out if someone can play well? Bilaterals white ball games have ceased to be meaningful fixtures for a long time, I can only assume that we're attaching increasing importance to it because otherwise the lack of a trophy hurts even more.
- England have played 32 players since 2022 in ODIs which is the same as New Zealand, another side that you claim to be settled. India has played 36 players in contrast. The devil is in the details however in this instance as India have played 38 games in the same period compared to New Zealand's 29 and England's 18. So England have played just four less players than India having also played less than half of the games India have the same period. The only reason you won't consider or get drawn into this is because it shows you're biases. Yet again I repeat that many teams have issues and the only reason you don't hear about them or bother with them is because none of them have a terminally online fanbase on social media that throws the toys out of the pram the moment any sort of decision is taken.
- The captaincy argument is utter drivel at this point. It was due to a combination of a freakish workload necessitated by the post COVID scheduling, injuries and rotation. We were playing two different series at the same time at one point, are you suggesting that the same bloke captain via teleconference for both of them? Since that game in question was in 2020, no we did not have five captains prior to that one either. Clarke is the worst example you could bring up given Bailey was deputizing for him over half of the ODIs played during that WC cycle.
- If you argument is that we should select Kishan over KL because of the former's Pakistani knock then I don't mind that. The management may not do that given a fit KL is better than Kishan when in form and they'll select a team based on said faith but extending the same argument to Bumrah is quite ridiculous when we don't have anyone who can do his role instead. There is one player who can do that but he's been out for longer than Bumrah and is only now back in the team too. For all your talk about the last T20 WC, we also struggled because we didn't have anyone capable of doing Bumrah's job out there. Pakistan in contrast got to the final and were competitive because they had Shaheen who despite not being fully fit was doing the role only he could do. When he bowed out of the final, the game turned on it's head and they lost. If anything we should be carefully managing Bumrah's fitness and workload so that he can do something like Shaheen did for Pakistan last year.
