Why ugly can be beautiful

[Uppercut]

I thought Dhoni's tactics were excellent on the third morning. While Ponting had defended in the series by spreading his fields and giving away easy singles, Dhoni did the opposite and bowled outside off to an 8-1 field. Katich and Hussey had been free-scoring the evening before, but they were both strangled into mistakes and eventually Australia's batting gave way. Rather than negative captaincy vs. positive captaincy, this was a triumph for good captaincy over bad captaincy.

That's why i enjoyed that morning- it was an example of good tactical cricket from Dhoni. I don't overly care if the cricket is defensive or aggressive, i just want to see good cricket.

 

[duffer]

I thought Dhoni's tactics were excellent on the third morning. While Ponting had defended in the series by spreading his fields and giving away easy singles, Dhoni did the opposite and bowled outside off to an 8-1 field. Katich and Hussey had been free-scoring the evening before, but they were both strangled into mistakes and eventually Australia's batting gave way. Rather than negative captaincy vs. positive captaincy, this was a triumph for good captaincy over bad captaincy.

That's why i enjoyed that morning- it was an example of good tactical cricket from Dhoni. I don't overly care if the cricket is defensive or aggressive, i just want to see good cricket.

This, exactly.

 

[Richard]

I thought Dhoni's tactics were excellent on the third morning. While Ponting had defended in the series by spreading his fields and giving away easy singles, Dhoni did the opposite and bowled outside off to an 8-1 field. Katich and Hussey had been free-scoring the evening before, but they were both strangled into mistakes and eventually Australia's batting gave way. Rather than negative captaincy vs. positive captaincy, this was a triumph for good captaincy over bad captaincy.

That's why i enjoyed that morning- it was an example of good tactical cricket from Dhoni. I don't overly care if the cricket is defensive or aggressive, i just want to see good cricket.

Although I agree 110% with that last 2 lines, and certainly don't object to anyone using various defensive tactics from time to time, I don't want to see bowl-outside-off-to-8-1-field being used as a tactic too often. I don't mind having in-out fields, because (as you point-out) this doesn't stop good batsmen from scoring quickly if they can find singles, and I don't care in the slightest whether runs come through running or hitting boundaries.

But outside-off-to-8-1-field, while fascinating if you only come accross it on occasions, gets boring quickly. I only really like to see it being used at the end of a series as a team's protecting a one-game lead, or obviously if a small total's being chased in not-that-much time.

A bit like I hate it when a team takes a 1-0 lead in the first game of a three\four\five-Test series then just prepares concrete runways for the rest of the rubber. If you're going to do that, you might as well just play one-off Tests.

 

[Uppercut]

Although I agree 110% with that last 2 lines, and certainly don't object to anyone using various defensive tactics from time to time, I don't want to see bowl-outside-off-to-8-1-field being used as a tactic too often. I don't mind having in-out fields, because (as you point-out) this doesn't stop good batsmen from scoring quickly if they can find singles, and I don't care in the slightest whether runs come through running or hitting boundaries.

But outside-off-to-8-1-field, while fascinating if you only come accross it on occasions, gets boring quickly. I only really like to see it being used at the end of a series as a team's protecting a one-game lead, or obviously if a small total's being chased in not-that-much time.

Maybe there's truth in what you say, but when id been criticising Ponting so heavily for his bad field placings (not defensive- just plain bad) for so much of the series, it was refreshing to see someone defend properly. Dhoni got his tactics spot on- flat track, Katich and Hussey well set and scoring quickly without much trouble, not much in it for the bowlers. It's not like he defended from ball one of the Aussie innings, he attacked them for a whole session and a bit the previous evening. The tactics weren't solely because they were 1-0 up, i believe he would've used them (probably successfully) if it was 0-0. When new batsmen came to the crease later in the game, Dhoni attacked them. By then, Australia's momentum had dried up and India were in the driving seat.

Like any tactic, it's not going to have a 100% success rate, therefore shouldn't be used all the time. A lot of the time these things work once and suddenly become the norm, captains using them when such things aren't the right way to go at all (has seemed to become the norm of late to relax as much as possible from the 15th over onwards in ODIs). What i enjoyed about that morning was that Dhoni weighed up the situation, came up with a certain tactic- one which i don't expect to be commonplace during his time as captain- and used it in the right way, at the right time, to good effect.

That, and it made Ricky Ponting looked like the plonker of a captain he is.