Indian tour of South Africa, December-January 2010/11

[SaiSrini]

I am not too disappointed with the day's play considering that I thought India would be crushed too easily. It has been a really tough wicket to bat on, and Steyn-Morkel really got a lot of movement off the pitch and conditions. 20-30 more runs in the day would have been great, but again we have lost 34 overs in the day due to rain and bad light. So I am satisfied with the effort so far.

@ shravi: I completely disagree with you on Vijay. He is not just a flat track bully. He has the technique to survive and prosper in challenging conditions. He is pretty new to such conditions when playing international cricket, and the more he plays, the more he is going to get better. Today he showed good patience to try and see off that new ball along with Sehwag and they almost succeeded in doing it. As Sid said, maybe a year with Gary could work really well for him.

 

[shravi]

I am not too disappointed with the day's play considering that I thought India would be crushed too easily. It has been a really tough wicket to bat on, and Steyn-Morkel really got a lot of movement off the pitch and conditions. 20-30 more runs in the day would have been great, but again we have lost 34 overs in the day due to rain and bad light. So I am satisfied with the effort so far.

@ shravi: I completely disagree with you on Vijay. He is not just a flat track bully. He has the technique to survive and prosper in challenging conditions. He is pretty new to such conditions when playing international cricket, and the more he plays, the more he is going to get better. Today he showed good patience to try and see off that new ball along with Sehwag and they almost succeeded in doing it. As Sid said, maybe a year with Gary could work really well for him.

I see more potential in Abhinav Mukund who has succeeded outside India with the A team and Emerging players tours.

I am not too disappointed with how we performed because at least we showed some grit and determination. It's a shame that nobody had the conviction and/or ability to go forward. I thought Dravid was just starting to look good for a while but I think his downfall was brought by Laxman. Laxman was very poor in rotating the strike and Dravid went 17 minutes without even facing a ball for a while and in fact, within that time period, for about 30-45 minutes, Dravid must have faced something like 6 balls. It must have made it very hard to maintain concentration and it's an area the team management should look at.

I shake my head when Tsotsobe gets a wicket. He just seems like a very sub-par bowler to me and nobody should be giving their wicket to him.

Steyn was just terrific. I have no words to describe how good he was and is. He is a special, special bowler and will go down as one of the legends of the game.

 

[Adarsh]

True. Tsotsobe is useless, I think he prospered from the fact that Steyn was doing so well, so they tried to score against him. And yes, Steyn is amazing. He's got great control for someone who bowls at his pace. His line and length is deadly. He needs an inswinger though...well I guess he doesn't need it because he's already ripping through attacks but an inswinger would make him complete as a bowler. At the moment he's damn close to being a complete bowler.

 

[shravi]

True. Tsotsobe is useless, I think he prospered from the fact that Steyn was doing so well, so they tried to score against him. And yes, Steyn is amazing. He's got great control for someone who bowls at his pace. His line and length is deadly. He needs an inswinger though...well I guess he doesn't need it because he's already ripping through attacks but an inswinger would make him complete as a bowler. At the moment he's damn close to being a complete bowler.

He does have one, he just doesn't use it very often because he feels his out swinger is a more wicket taking threat, and fair enough. As a right arm bowler to a right handed batsman, an in swinger should be used more as a surprise delivery as an in swinger is more likely to get the batsman bowled or caught behind. An in swinger could get an inside edge but there is less chance of those carrying to the keeper. It also brings in the LBW but on South African pitches, I think it's wiser to go for the caught behind because the bounce will always plant some doubt in the umpire's mind. He did bowl one or two in swingers as surprise deliveries as opposed to his stock delivery (out swinger) to Vijay today and he was pretty late on them.

What impresses me about Steyn is that he doesn't look to bowl 6 wicket taking deliveries per over. He has a set plan and he's damn good at executing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYAH-fj0_ac

This comes to mind (even tastier in HD).

 

[War]

I see more potential in Abhinav Mukund who has succeeded outside India with the A team and Emerging players tours.

I am not too disappointed with how we performed because at least we showed some grit and determination. It's a shame that nobody had the conviction and/or ability to go forward. I thought Dravid was just starting to look good for a while but I think his downfall was brought by Laxman. Laxman was very poor in rotating the strike and Dravid went 17 minutes without even facing a ball for a while and in fact, within that time period, for about 30-45 minutes, Dravid must have faced something like 6 balls. It must have made it very hard to maintain concentration and it's an area the team management should look at.

I shake my head when Tsotsobe gets a wicket. He just seems like a very sub-par bowler to me and nobody should be giving their wicket to him.

Steyn was just terrific. I have no words to describe how good he was and is. He is a special, special bowler and will go down as one of the legends of the game.

Indeed ha. India are lucky it isn't Fridel De Wet backing up Steyn/Morkel.

 

[BackwardPoint]

True. Tsotsobe is useless, I think he prospered from the fact that Steyn was doing so well, so they tried to score against him. And yes, Steyn is amazing. He's got great control for someone who bowls at his pace. His line and length is deadly. He needs an inswinger though...well I guess he doesn't need it because he's already ripping through attacks but an inswinger would make him complete as a bowler. At the moment he's damn close to being a complete bowler.

Have you ever seen him bowl?

 

[stefan]

I was surprised the selectors stuck with lopsy and didn't bring either mcclaren or parnell in for him this test. India gifting him wickets has probably giving him time till the end of the series.

 

[SaiSrini]

I agree on Steyn. He is just an awesome fast bowler with great control and probably one of the best fast bowlers I have seen in my cricket watching life so far. Donald was lightning, but Steyn is a storm. Wish India gets a bowler like Steyn with that pace and control. And yes, I was stuck with disbelief seeing a guy like Tsotbe taking the wicket of someone like Sachin Tendulkar.

On Day 2, Dhoni is still in there and Harbhajan has shown that he can bat pretty well (he has got good starts in this series so far with the bat). We still have Zaheer Khan who can hang around for quite a bit too. Ishant has also shown that he can hang around for sometime too. So ideally, we should be able to put up another 80-90 runs (if not more) before we fold up our first innings. That would mean a total of 265-280 which is more than decent on this wicket batting first.

P.s: One of the commentators was discussing about the difference in pace btw the SA and Indian pacemen in the first test, and he startlingly said that Zaheer's comeback in this test evens things up as far as pace goes. As if Zaheer is an express fast bowler in the league of Steyn/Morkel. On average, Sreesanth or Ishant can be faster than Zaheer (unless Zaheer gets into that deadly rhythm)

 

[sohum]

Yes you won a test series in the windies in 2006 when they were the worst top 8 test teams of the last decade. Give India a medal, since that was such a unbelivably task.

You also want credit for winning in NZ - the second weakest top 8 nation of the last decade. This too another difficult task for touring teams.

Im surprised you dont want credit for winning in Bangladesh.

Plus you want credit for winning in a test in SA 2006/07, since winning one test overides that fact that you lost the series.

Haha, you are hilarious. You are basically arguing for me right now. I said that you don't give credit for any Indian victory and you are going about proving that while maintaining your consistent tone of shock and awe.

LOL, great stuff. Keep it up, it's entertaining!

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Regarding the match, can Dhoni win a damn toss? Maybe we should send someone is as the representative of captain since looks like Dhoni has no luck going his way right now at the toss.

 

[BackwardPoint]

I was surprised the selectors stuck with lopsy and didn't bring either mcclaren or parnell in for him this test. India gifting him wickets has probably giving him time till the end of the series.

Lucky that he got Tendulkar, Tsotsobe should be the last in the pecking order for the 3rd seamer.

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[/COLOR]Regarding the match, can Dhoni win a damn toss? Maybe we should send someone is as the representative of captain since looks like Dhoni has no luck going his way right now at the toss.

Lets just ignore the shockingly poor batting from Sehwag and co. It's all about the toss.

 

[War]

I was surprised the selectors stuck with lopsy and didn't bring either mcclaren or parnell in for him this test. India gifting him wickets has probably giving him time till the end of the series.

Ye lopsy is going to play out the series at this stage. Once the conditions remain like this throughout this test & in cpaetown. The Saffies could carry him since Steyn/Morkel will most likely continue to own India's top order.

S Africa will have to forced into a position in future series as it was vs England last winter, where by a team get on top of/negates the threat of Steyn/Morkel & exposes Lopsy - as ENG did with Ntini last winter. Only then will SA will be forced to axe Lopsy.

 

[Cricketman]

Toss has played a huge factor in modern test cricket. Too huge, in my opinion...

14 out of 15 is simply crazy. Anyone feeling mathy (Zorax? ) and want to calculate the probability of that happening?

Hell, i'll do it. Probably wrong though....

.5^14 = 6.10351562 ? 10-5

.00006 chance of calling it wrong 14 times in a row! Once again, probably wrong

 

[used2bcool]

Seriously, the Indian batters should feel insulted if they give wickets away to Harris or Tsotsobe. Both of them are nothing bowlers.

And WTF was that catch to get rid of Laxman? I mean how lucky does Lonwabo get to pull of something like that?

 

[SaiSrini]

[/COLOR]Regarding the match, can Dhoni win a damn toss? Maybe we should send someone is as the representative of captain since looks like Dhoni has no luck going his way right now at the toss.

Yeah sad it is! And it hurts us a lot. Hope Dhoni corrects that bad luck with some good luck with the bat. We need atleast a 50+ score from him here if we have to get to a good first innings total.

 

[sami ullah khan]

I watched the scorecard and was amazed to see that all the batsmen got starts and no one went onto play a big innings. This is something the coach and the captain must address.