My thoughts after watching the last 2 days and reading all the posts from those days, and sorry for the long post, I'm just way too tired when I'm watching the cricket to get my thoughts out.
Jadeja's batting - I get the feeling his batting has actually regressed since he's become a regular for India... there was a time when I believed Jadeja was a better batsman than a bowler, and even in the shorter formats where he seems to do both roles equally well, I get the feeling his batting could and should be better, maybe I've read too much into his domestic numbers and am expecting things unheard of, a #7 all-rounder with a Test batting average of 40 and the bowling average of 30.
Ashwin in place of Binny - Call it misreading the pitch, but when pundits fail to read the pitch right (Nasser Hussain claimed this pitch would have some good carry), I almost question how you can not side with the captain that's in question and I recall hearing Andrew Strauss on commentary say the pitch was quite hard, obviously there's nothing underneath and it ends up giving you the illusion of it being a nice hard wicket, so in hindsight or if Dhoni got to dig right into the wicket, he'd pick the extra spinner 10/10 times.
Specialist pace bowler in place of Binny - though they didn't have much of a bat in the 1st innings, playing a specialist pace bowler (Aaron, Pandey, Pankaj) who can't chip in with runs in either's place would be the wrong way to go, without that last wicket partnership between Bhuvi and Shami, we're looking at a score of something below 350, which would've most certainly been below par, yes we need to be able to take 20 wickets to win a Test match (the more I hear this, the more I want to burn down trees), but not at the expense of the opposition being able to put our batting under pressure easily.
Dhoni's thinking behind Binny in place of Rohit (as I assume it to be) - What you get with Rohit is a specialist batsmen and with Binny you're getting neither a batsmen or a bowler, a bits and pieces player, which is slightly offensive looking at his FC record which would suggest he's a proper all-rounder, but you always get anomalies in the Indian domestic system. You pick him ahead of Rohit if your biggest concern is not letting the game slip
so much while you give your front line pace bowlers a rest, and considering our pace bowlers are some of the most flimsy in the international game, their workload needs to be kept in check, especially with there being 5 Tests played over 42 days. Still think Rishi should've been picked in his place as far as the squad was concerned though.
The pitch - We can debate whether Dhoni misread the pitch or whether he read it right and it played games with him, but this is still one hell of an opportunity to go up 1-0 in the series and watching Jadeja at Durban, I'm convinced we have the right sort of spinner to get something out of this wicket, and England, precisely don't, and with the pitch expected to get slower and slower, and batting expected to get worse and worse (not harder), I don't see the England pace bowlers putting England in a position of victory. Sick pitch though, neither serves the batsmen or the bowlers (till someone extracts some turn).
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Damn, that could've easily been 5 different posts, so this is how you feel eh @
SaiSrini.
