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India Squad Discussion

Cevno

Hall of Fame Member
BCCI ‏@BCCI 42m

Team India for #CT13 : MSD (Captain)/Dhawan/Virat/Raina/Dinesh Karthik/Vijay/Rohit/Jadeja/Ashwin/Irfan/Umesh/Bhuvi/Ishant/Amit Mishra/Vinay

Interesting selection for English conditions. Just Bizarre.
 
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Daemon

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Irfan Pathan and Vijay are pretty stoopid selections.

At least they got rid of Dinda.
 

Cevno

Hall of Fame Member
Umesh Yadav is pretty bad in ODI's as well. Dunno what Shami Ahmed did to get dropped ?

Rohit keeps getting chances based on IPL too. Dunno how long him being mediocre in ODI but not getting into tests will carry on? Rahane dropped too.

Also, why have they selected 3 spinners in the squad. Are they expecting rank turners in England or gonna play Jadeja as batsman ? :confused:
 

nsniks

State Vice-Captain
Dont have much hope from India in this competition. Dont think we will make it to knockouts
 

Daemon

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It's so weird. Gambhir's piling on the runs in the IPL and they don't select him, yet they pick others based on their performances in the same tournament. No Pujara is dire as well.
 

Cabinet96

Global Moderator
Urgh, there are so many things I don't understand about that squad. Yadav over Shami Ahmed? Vijay over Pujara, Gambhir or Rahane? Irfan Pathan ahead of someone else?
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
yeah.. would have thought PK might have had a shout as well. Weird side. Surely at least Vijay should not have been picked over Rahane.
 

Arjun

Cricketer Of The Year
Umesh (good strike rate), Ishant (good balance of strike and economy) and Bhuvan (good economy rate) will be the seam/swing/pace attack, with Vinay as backup. Ashwin and Mishra for spin. Irfan's presence is the least of the team's worries, as he won't get a game- he may figure only in the practice matches. The Champions' Trophy winds up quickly anyway. Vijay's selection is a disappointment- IPL success apparently doesn't translate into top-flight international success, but they've picked an IPL failure. Likewise Jadeja, whose heroics are good for comic books but actual on-field action is left to Dwayne Bravo for CSK- has been poor with the ball and average with the bat. Mishra, Ashwin and Harbhajan have been ahead of him.

These two should have been replaced by better specialist batsmen, but the Indian batsmen in this IPL have been poor, bar the usual suspects (Kohli/Raina/Rohit/MSD/KKD/GG/SD- even Yuvraj, Rahane, Tiwary, Uthappa and Mandeep have struggled)- and Kedar Jadhav. I wouldn't mind giving Kedar Jadhav loads of chances the way Jadeja got, but not in the Champions' Trophy.

We may see Rohit as pinch-hitter opening with Dhawan, with Kohli-Raina-KKD-MSD to follow. Can't go wrong. As long as they keep Jadeja and Irfan out of all the games and the blokes picked do a good job, they can win.

Shami Ahmed has not played much active cricket, although KKR management are to blame for that- imagine giving Kallis and Bhatia four full overs each time, when he could have handled it. The lack of active cricket is possibly why he missed out, but surely, we, the CW community, can manage teams better than these film stars who own them.
 
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Scaly piscine

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Yes Raina bowled ahead of Jadeja in one of the most recent matches - Jadeja didn't bowl at all. He shouldn't be in the 15.


Also, why have they selected 3 spinners in the squad. Are they expecting rank turners in England or gonna play Jadeja as batsman ? :confused:
Remember the games are played at Cardiff as well, which is in Wales.

You can expect slow and low ****efests at Cardiff. If they bother to have enough groundsmen around who can be bothered to cover the pitch when it rains.

Edgbaston tends to be on the slow side, not as flat as it used to be.

Oval tends to be flat.

But as ever a lot will depend on the weather.
 

Cabinet96

Global Moderator
The fact that it's these three grounds that have been selected mean the Sub Continent sides have a much greater chance than many would have you believe. They're no Eden Gardens but they're not quick or seam bowler friendly pitches. They're generally slow and flat ones, and they may turn. It would certainly be much tougher for the SC sides were the games at Trent Bridge, Chester-Le-Street and Headingley.
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
The fact that it's these three grounds that have been selected mean the Sub Continent sides have a much greater chance than many would have you believe. They're no Eden Gardens but they're not quick or seam bowler friendly pitches. They're generally slow and flat ones, and they may turn. It would certainly be much tougher for the SC sides were the games at Trent Bridge, Chester-Le-Street and Headingley.
You mean the selectors might have stumbled upon a combination that is better suited to the conditions this time?
 

Arjun

Cricketer Of The Year
Flat decks mean trouble for the Indians as a team. Their bowlers are weak on flat decks, so much that their batting has to cover a lot of ground to stay competitive- and their batting isn't particularly good on flat decks either. Nobody in this side has that breathtaking impact that a Gayle, ABdV, Watson, Hussey or Warner have. I'd prefer wickets that have something in it for the bowlers, seam or spin.
 

Arjun

Cricketer Of The Year
You mean the selectors might have stumbled upon a combination that is better suited to the conditions this time?
It's not a terrible squad, because they have a lot of bases (if not all) covered- their two best spinners (or at least two of their best), five seam options of which four are in form, four bowlers who can also score runs, six out of seven in-form batsmen, and even a backup wicketkeeper (but we wonder what he'll do in the outfield), so let's just hope the right folks get a game.
 

Scaly piscine

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Flat decks mean trouble for the Indians as a team. Their bowlers are weak on flat decks, so much that their batting has to cover a lot of ground to stay competitive- and their batting isn't particularly good on flat decks either. Nobody in this side has that breathtaking impact that a Gayle, ABdV, Watson, Hussey or Warner have. I'd prefer wickets that have something in it for the bowlers, seam or spin.
Not really.

Indian bowling is ****e, so they'll hope for pitches that negate bowling. Like when India won the 50 over World Cup, which made the game about 90% batting, 6% bowling and 4% fielding.

Cardiff will champion anti-cricket - the flat hardly spinning rubbish. Mickey mouse medium pacers.

The other two pitches will likely just favour proper cricket. Whilst they may be on the slow side (most English pitches are) you can still typically play all the shots, trust the pace and bounce.

I would say picking seamers who are skilled at extracting movement is the most important thing. If you bowl straight up and down up front you'll get carted.
 

Cabinet96

Global Moderator
I think you're both right to an extent. The more bowler friendly a surface, the less bowling quality matters. It's on the flat pitches that the trump bowlers really made a difference. Obviously India not really having one, means their bowling suffers more than others when the pitches get a bit flatter.

That being said, I think pitches like these help the Indian batsman far more than they hinder the bowling. Going up to Durham against the Saffa's and they could have been toast, but I'd back most of them to get big runs in this comp. Dhoni in particular could be unstoppable at the death facing cricket balls that are only 20 overs old on good batting decks.

The media will portray none of the Asian sides to have a chance because conditions will be seamer friendly, but they're wrong. The Asian sides will have a much better chance than they think, because the pitches aren't seam bowler friendly at all.
 

Contra

Cricketer Of The Year
Not really.

Indian bowling is ****e, so they'll hope for pitches that negate bowling. Like when India won the 50 over World Cup, which made the game about 90% batting, 6% bowling and 4% fielding.
The 50 over world cup didn't negate bowling, apart from Bangalore (which is generally flat), all other grounds had enough it it for the bowlers (especially slow bowlers) to exploit and take wickets, apart from a bit of minnow bashing and games at Bangalore, most other major games in India involved reasonable scores being scored and chased down.

----

Coming to the squad, I have to say, I'm not a fan of Yuvraj being left out, fair enough he's not been at his best since his comeback but seriously, dude almost ALWAYS performs in ICC events, he's too big a match winner to leave out on a major ODI tourney. I don't mind Dhawan instead of GG in the openers slot, lol @ Vijay in ODIs. No Rahane OR Pujara? Seriously wtf

Rohit Sharma opening LOL, a couple of decent IPL knocks and suddenly he's back in the squad <_<

I personally don't have many complaints as far as the bowling goes, Irfan adds a lot of balance to the team along with Jadeja and Ashwin, Yadav is very hit or miss in ODI's, but I don't mind giving him a chance, he's a wicket taking bowler and I feel he's capable of making an impact, Bhuvi should hopefully do well. I'm still worried about Ishant, I just don't think he's good enough.
 
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Scaly piscine

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
The 50 over world cup didn't negate bowling, apart from Bangalore (which is generally flat), all other grounds had enough it it for the bowlers (especially slow bowlers) to exploit and take wickets, apart from a bit of minnow bashing and games at Bangalore, most other major games in India involved reasonable scores being scored and chased down.
There's a difference between negating bowling skill and flat pitches.

Really flat pitches will negate bowling skill pretty well. But so will a lot of slow pitches, even though the par score might only be 250. Obviously extremely bad pitches can negate bowler skill as a factor too, but those also negate batsman skill and it ends up being a lottery.

Slow pitches can remove a lot of batsman skill if they're severe enough that certain shots aren't viable, whilst it can be easy for even poor batsmen to survive, instead it becomes about people heaving, slogging, clubbing or whatever you want to call it to score at any sort of rate. Wickets lost becomes a measure of how many big shots didn't come off, or how many ended up playing on to their stumps when the ball didn't come onto to the bat.

A lot of World Cup 2011 pitches fitted into the latter category, as well as some being overly flat.
 

Contra

Cricketer Of The Year
I still fail to understand how the pitches used at the world cup were "slow pitches", apart from a few games involving England @ Chennai I can't recall any other pitches which can be categorized as slow.
 

Maximas

Cricketer Of The Year
Yeah, Vijay in the squad was a surprise...
Pujara is injured right now so I guess it's OK to leave him out, they should really play him in ODIs after CT though. Rahane has been in poor ODI form lately to be honest, but hopefully he gets picked again after CT.
 

Arjun

Cricketer Of The Year
I still fail to understand how the pitches used at the world cup were "slow pitches", apart from a few games involving England @ Chennai I can't recall any other pitches which can be categorized as slow.
Anything that makes Yuvraj compete with world class spinners is a slow pitch- and I wouldn't be surprised if those were cracked pitches that he made full use of.
I think you're both right to an extent. The more bowler friendly a surface, the less bowling quality matters. It's on the flat pitches that the trump bowlers really made a difference. Obviously India not really having one, means their bowling suffers more than others when the pitches get a bit flatter.

That being said, I think pitches like these help the Indian batsman far more than they hinder the bowling. Going up to Durham against the Saffa's and they could have been toast, but I'd back most of them to get big runs in this comp. Dhoni in particular could be unstoppable at the death facing cricket balls that are only 20 overs old on good batting decks.
The Indians will fall short on flat decks, because their bowlers stand no chance whatsoever on these decks and flat-track bullies with brute force and power will smash them out of the match. Nobody in the Indian side can bat like that. We've seen decent Indian batting totals get chased down rapidly with few wickets down, and the Indian bowling concedes gargantuan totals that are beyond the reach of the batsmen, and they often implode each time they're facing a massive total. They're competitive on 50/50 pitches and pitches that are bowler-friendly, with extended batting.

Someone like Vinay Kumar will revel in seamer-friendly conditions, but on flat decks, he's a flat-deck bunny in the hands of flat-deck bullies. That's a concern.
 

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