Best SC Team to show up in England during the last year

[BoyBrumby]

If anything I think his captaincy has been too aggressive. No third man to Ian Bell, ever? That's just gifting him runs. Let's remember how poor the bowling has been. It's not like the ball has been flying aerially through a third slip that had been moved to extra cover boundary.

His batting was horrible in the first two tests but his runs in the third have to count for something and it's not entirely fair to dismiss them as "slogged" given that we both agree that Dhoni's at his best when he plays that way and with the tail in around him he had very little choice. Succeeding in two innings out of six against this attack is pretty good going and he certainly didn't look like getting out in either innings if the team hadn't capsized around him. His sloppy keeping has ultimately only cost India a few byes and I don't think he's to blame for the fact that India can't field, it certainly isn't his responsibility to design the warm up routine.

Nah, don't agree with much of that at all.

Not having a third man for Bell isn't aggressive, it's ****witted. Pretty much every cut he plays ends up there.

& I'm not giving him a pass on the sloppy keeping or the disinterested, bollock-handed fielding either. No-one will make VVS into Jonty Rhodes, but throughout the ground-fiedling has been abysmal. Strong leadership should be about correcting these little flaws & leading by example. Obviously I don't know for sure what goes on, but his footwork hasn't improved at all throughout the tour; if the ball wobbles after pitching he's ****ed. It could be he's working his balls off and just isn't very good, but somehow I doubt it. If the captain's not polishing his turd why should his troops?

Moreover, it becomes self-defeating; why have six men riding the boundary when they aren't going to stop the ball anyway?

As for the batting, yes he looks a better batsman when teeing off, but at Edgbaston was either innings really crying out for brisk 70s? One could make a case for the first innings I suppose, but in the second it was just a piss in the wind. Kudos and all that, but the game wasn't going to be saved by quick runs.

Now I'm not trying to apportion all of the blame to him, but at worst a test captain is part of the leadership team and, on tours, usually has a healthy say in who's selected too. I imagine the XI taking the field is a pretty close approximation of Dhoni's team and has failed abysmally.

 

[Top_Cat]

Two fairly reliable measures of a team's morale; how the 'keeper and how the captain are traveling. Dhoni can't make the bowlers bowl tighter or the batters hit them well directly but indirectly, stuff like that matters absolutely to a decent team's success and a good captain has huge influence over it. That's the part of the job which makes captaincy so bloody hard, let alone if he's having to keep too. But that it's hard does not exempt Dhoni from criticism if he's not up to it.

You look at his 'keeping and see only a few byes missed, I look at the bowlers and assume they'll change how they bowl because they're losing confidence in the man behind the sticks (your 3rd man example too). If the captain's struggling with the bat, I would assume it'd affect the way the rest of the line-up bats too. If a captain can be given big praise for inspiring a team to great things (as Dhoni has) he's definitely in line for brickbats if it goes the other way.

 

[Uppercut]

I just have some sympathy with him because given the quality of his team and the quality of the opposition, I don't think there's anything anyone else could have done that would have made a difference. What makes Dhoni look even worse is the pre-series consensus that the two sides were closely matched- largely, imo, a result of the Indian team overperforming under Dhoni's captaincy over the course of the past few years. A combination of India being crap, England being awesome and unreasonably high expectations has left him in a situation where he's simply bound to wind up looking terrible.

 

[flibbertyjibber]

India are the most shambolic and came with the highest reputation. The rest knew they would get beat but put up differing levels of fight. India have just given up.

 

[smash84]

awta. the others were expected to be beaten

 

[Jacknife]

Nah, don't agree with much of that at all.

Not having a third man for Bell isn't aggressive, it's ****witted. Pretty much every cut he plays ends up there.

& I'm not giving him a pass on the sloppy keeping or the disinterested, bollock-handed fielding either. No-one will make VVS into Jonty Rhodes, but throughout the ground-fiedling has been abysmal. Strong leadership should be about correcting these little flaws & leading by example. Obviously I don't know for sure what goes on, but his footwork hasn't improved at all throughout the tour; if the ball wobbles after pitching he's ****ed. It could be he's working his balls off and just isn't very good, but somehow I doubt it. If the captain's not polishing his turd why should his troops?

Moreover, it becomes self-defeating; why have six men riding the boundary when they aren't going to stop the ball anyway?

As for the batting, yes he looks a better batsman when teeing off, but at Edgbaston was either innings really crying out for brisk 70s? One could make a case for the first innings I suppose, but in the second it was just a piss in the wind. Kudos and all that, but the game wasn't going to be saved by quick runs.

Now I'm not trying to apportion all of the blame to him, but at worst a test captain is part of the leadership team and, on tours, usually has a healthy say in who's selected too. I imagine the XI taking the field is a pretty close approximation of Dhoni's team and has failed abysmally.

Spot on.