***Official*** India in West Indies

[honestbharani]

Originally Posted by Dasa

^It seems like you make excuses when Lara fails. I respect your views on most things, but it sometimes seems that you can't accept he can make mistakes as well.

Anyway, I think some people are being a bit negative about this series win. I definitely see many positives coming out of the tour, positives that outweigh the negatives IMO. Considering India has been average in Tests for a while now, this tour has been a definite improvement.

I'll justify why I chose those names;
Jaffer
I don't think he'll be an all-time great or anything, but he has shown he has the temperament for Test cricket. He's performed far better than any other Indian opener of recent times bar Sehwag. Sure, he didn't look too solid on the juicier pitches, but he has the technique to be able to sort those issues out I think.

Laxman
He is nowhere near what he used to be, but this tour has shown that he still has the ability to make useful runs, particularly when the team needs him. Even in the 4th Test, Laxman didn't make big scores but stuck around with Dravid in the 1st innings and battled through a very difficult patch. Laxman hasn't been treated too well by the selectors of late either.

Sreesanth and Munaf
Both of them showed that they have some ability (which they have shown before). More importantly, in their first tour outside India both showed enough positives to stick with them. Still a long way to go, obviously, but I think for two rookies on some unforgiving pitches it was an excellent performance.
That's another thing I meant to mention earlier. India may not have beaten the Windies as comprehensively as they perhaps should have, but the Indian team went into the series with a very inexperienced bowling attack. That they performed at the level they did is a huge positive IMO.

An interesting fact to note about Lara's performance in this series - he hasn't scored this slowly (series SR of 47.95) in a significant length Test series since 2001 against South Africa at home (SR of 43.01). It's also the slowest scoring rate for him in a Test series, barring the previously mentioned example and a one-off Test against Sri Lanka, since his debut series.

I dunno abt excuses. I called it straight that wat he did reg. that Dhoni dismissal was wrong. And I agree that he has had a below par series with the bat. But I don't think there was any real way u cud call that hundred of his a flat track knock. And abt excuses, it is only because I think a few guys in this thread have been very much read to knock him abt anything and everything. It doesn't mean that I accept everything Lara does as right. I said that I thought he had a reasonably good series as captain, esp. given that he didn't get the kind of sides he wanted, because I thought it had kinda gone unnoticed.


It is like how it happens in the threads reg. Murali. Everyone knocks him in those threads and then those of us who try to say the real things are called Murali backers.

[honestbharani]

Originally Posted by honestbharani

I dunno abt excuses. I called it straight that wat he did reg. that Dhoni dismissal was wrong. And I agree that he has had a below par series with the bat. But I don't think there was any real way u cud call that hundred of his a flat track knock. And abt excuses, it is only because I think a few guys in this thread have been very much read to knock him abt anything and everything. It doesn't mean that I accept everything Lara does as right. I said that I thought he had a reasonably good series as captain, esp. given that he didn't get the kind of sides he wanted, because I thought it had kinda gone unnoticed.


It is like how it happens in the threads reg. Murali. Everyone knocks him in those threads and then those of us who try to say the real things are called Murali backers.

BTW, I don't think India are as bad as a few fans seem to portray here either. Our batting doesn't look as solid now, definitely but our new ball bowlers seem to be much better prospects than the ones we had earlier. But then again, a lot depends on how these guys progress from these starts.

[Dasa]

^Fair call on both points.