India Team Discussion

[zwarrior]

Hope Manish Pandey does well in the upcoming series. Would love to see him to be a regular in the team and bat at #4(which I highly doubt).

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

Hope Manish Pandey does well in the upcoming series. Would love to see him to be a regular in the team and bat at #4(which I highly doubt).

His inconsistency doesn't please me. I have rated him highly in the past though.

 

[zwarrior]

His inconsistency doesn't please me. I have rated him highly in the past though.

Ya, true. But he needs to be given a good consistent run at a particular spot. Moving him up and down every match doesn't help. I am a little biased towards him but I somehow feel he is a very good #4.

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

Ya, true. But he needs to be given a good consistent run at a particular spot. Moving him up and down every match doesn't help. I am a little biased towards him but I somehow feel he is a very good #4.

But I think Iyer is also a good option. We can even give Vijay Shankar some more chances at that spot.

 

[SaiSrini]

Iyer needs more chances. To me, he is a potential captaincy candidate. The way he has led Delhi Daredevils this year in IPL, shows a lot of promise. How they will juggle between him, Pandey and Shankar is something that the selectors and team have to manage. Shankar is still the candidate to play in that middle order and will only grow with experience. If Manish Pandey can replicate his new found consistency into international cricket, then we will have multiple options for that middle order that has haunted India for two ICC tournaments in a row now.

 

[LiveLoveABD]

Kohli and Shastri back to blowing their own trumpet!! No.7 to No.1.. As far as I am concerned, we were SF in the 2015 WC and that is where we finished in the 2019 World Cup but with the best bowling attack India has ever fielded. We won the CT under MSD, we were runners up under these two morons. I am not at all up for trolling the team for stupid reasons but this is them trolling us with these stupid numbers and rankings.

 

[SaiSrini]

Just as we heard a few days back that Kohli's opinion will not be heard regarding the head coach selection, Kohli goes on to publicly give his opinion in the pre-departure press conference that "he would be happy to see Shastri reappointed". And he also goes on to say that he has not been contacted by the CAC yet and he does not know if he will be contacted by them (IMO, a subtle hint that he wants to be contacted).

TBH when a captain is asked such questions, he should keep quiet and say "I cannot comment on this until the entire process is completed". To me, Kohli now knows that a negative perception has spread among the public about his backing of Shastri. And subsequently after the WC defeat with the news coming in of the CAC not planning to ask Kohli for his opinion, I believe he has used this press conference pretty cleverly to influence the members. If I were the CAC, I would actually go ahead and pick someone else now.

 

[LiveLoveABD]

The press conference before leaving for the Windies was a proper public mockery session. I'm all for the thwacking of the ridiculous rift rumours but the bragging of being number 1 in limited overs and the laughing at certain questions shows how out of depth Shastri and Kohli are. They actually defended the middle order rut they refused to resolve before the World Cup and the fact that Kohli admitted that Rohit played ahead of Jinks in a test match based on ODI form against Sri Lanka should tell the whole world what a farce this management is.

We might pull through on skill level in the years to come, but we are tactically and practically doomed in terms of leadership.

 

[SaiSrini]

The press conference before leaving for the Windies was a proper public mockery session. I'm all for the thwacking of the ridiculous rift rumours but the bragging of being number 1 in limited overs and the laughing at certain questions shows how out of depth Shastri and Kohli are. They actually defended the middle order rut they refused to resolve before the World Cup and the fact that Kohli admitted that Rohit played ahead of Jinks in a test match based on ODI form against Sri Lanka should tell the whole world what a farce this management is.

We might pull through on skill level in the years to come, but we are tactically and practically doomed in terms of leadership.

Well said. To me, the problem squarely lies at the leadership level. From a skill level, we have the resources to make playoff or semis of tournaments and win the odd test series (with the help from opposition as it was in Australia's case) but the thing is, we will almost always come up short at crunch moments because of the leadership and it is becoming clear where the malaise lies and yet the people who matter think its not the issue.

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

leadership level

The word leadership is undefined.

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

I think Shaw was really unlucky there!

 

[Bevab]

Great, more of KL Rahul then to look forward to!

 

[LiveLoveABD]

Great, more of KL Rahul then to look forward to!

I don't know how you rate KL but I have an immense rating for him. I have seen him bat days in a Ranji Trophy game on a green top and I have seen him shred bowling attacks in T20's. It shows the range and spectrum he has as a batsman. From the moment he has returned to the squad after his Coffee episode, he seems caged and batting for numbers and himself. Again, this is a management level problem. Frankly, I'd tell him that he can just be free in LOI and he will figure his route like Rohit Sharma did and trust me, Rohit was much much more a complicated case than KL is. In tests, just tell him to bat and give him a rope to hang himself.

 

[Bevab]

I don't know how you rate KL but I have an immense rating for him. I have seen him bat days in a Ranji Trophy game on a green top and I have seen him shred bowling attacks in T20's. It shows the range and spectrum he has as a batsman. From the moment he has returned to the squad after his Coffee episode, he seems caged and batting for numbers and himself. Again, this is a management level problem. Frankly, I'd tell him that he can just be free in LOI and he will figure his route like Rohit Sharma did and trust me, Rohit was much much more a complicated case than KL is. In tests, just tell him to bat and give him a rope to hang himself.

I used to rate Rahul very highly and believed he should have played ahead of Rohit in ODIs once because he would have been a lot more consistent. Not sure if this video has been posted here already but if it hasn't, do give it a watch. It explains everything wrong with Rahul in recent times very well.

Rahul at the moment has serious issues with judging the line of the ball to me, all of his dismissals in tests have been due to ugly drives or poking at the ball that you ought to leave. It's clear that he has had a massive decline too, his batting average has dropped from nearly 45 to an average 35 now. It is one thing to persist with him when you either have no other options or you can afford to because of the strength of the batting lineup. India is blessed with plenty of openers right now who are knocking on the door for test selection now though. It took Vijay-Rahul being the worst test opening pair in history to introduce Mayank without any match practice straight into the Australia series. Had Mayank not played and scored those consecutive 50s, India wouldn't have won the series for me. It is clear that Rahul hasn't been well managed either, he didn't play in the first test vs South Africa for no reason and his own technical issues are something that ought to have been spotted and corrected by a competent coaching staff.

The Koffee episode most certainly hasn't been the reason for his decline, he started playing poorly in tests right from the South Africa series (in 2017-18) and hasn't been able to shake it off since then. His only notable contributions apart from those incredibly vulnerable 40s that he occasionally makes by sheer luck are a century in a dead rubber game on a comparatively easier batting surface in England and the fifty versus Afghanistan. Added to that, he starred in the T20 series vs Australia which was right after the Koffee episode and was very good in the IPL playing an unfamiliar role. I don't rate him very highly in ODIs as he hasn't really shined in List A cricket before unlike Rohit who was a monster in domestic cricket, but he is absolutely vital in T20s as he is one of the few players in the T20 team who goes after every ball aggressively instead of 'building an innings'. He definitely needs to be dropped from tests if he hasn't fixed his technical issues, someone else deserves a chance (it was Vihari playing as a makeshift opener in the Australia series for example) and Rahul also needs to go back to Ranji Trophy and get his issues corrected. I have more trust in the staff of Karnataka and India A to sort him out than Shastri and co.

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

I used to rate Rahul very highly and believed he should have played ahead of Rohit in ODIs once because he would have been a lot more consistent.

Lol, okay

But Rohit the opener is lot more consistent then Rahul. Since 2013 Rohit has hardly failed. Infact India has relied on his runs since 2015. There was a time where Rohit completely used to outplay even Kohli. But it's Kohli's sheer determination and hardwork that has put him right up there. Rohit is better than Ross Taylor in last 2-3 years. His number of runs and his average along with his strike rate is a good example of that. Also Ross Taylor hasn't played much against quality opposition in recent years apart from England. He has always done well against England scoring 4 hundreds against them since the series he play in 2015 right after the WC. But against Australia or South Africa he hasn't done well. And against India he has looked miserable apart from scoring a 100 at Tauranga in the 3rd ODI of the series played earlier this year that too was in a losing cause. While Rohit has won few matches single handedly for India in the same period. I am a big fan of KL Rahul but he was never ahead of Rohit Sharma the opener.

That's all I can say.