Any more questions?
So we lost. What were we expecting ? Why ? Didn't we fight enough ? Is that not improvement(enough) for NOW? I know we have the talent to win, we were so close, we could have won etc....but then, isn't that the 'problem' we have been looking to solve ? Isn't this inconsistency of individuals the main issue that Chappel had talked about solving, but over a period of time? IN DUE TIME, as I also have been saying.
I am often labeled as die-hard Indian supporter. But sometimes I feel its the other way round. Throughout this series I had been looking at Indian results, pointing out those small improvements, elaborately making my point that this team will, step by step, reach the declared goal of being winners again. But the normal supporters, they suddenly get swept by the hype that "India has reached a final"...and "now we are ready to win" ! Why, what made us think that we should win? Have we improved that much already...overnight(from our last game against Zim?)
Oh, and btw, about individual problems...sure there were some tactical errors by Ganguly as pointed out by Prem during the course of the match, but then all captains make errors. Who are the brilliant captains around ? Watch their 5-10 matches in row, and you would find a flurry of common mistakes (Prem would find even more :-), he is more than an average cricketing brain :-) ). The problem is that firstly we are sitting here and analyzing their mistakes, not making our decisions in the 'heat of the battle' as they are, and secondly that those cricketers are normal humans. They are not intellectuals or even very smart people. They are very good players...and then we try to chose the relatively smart one amongst them to make him captain. Sometimes, only very few times, by coincidence, you get a good player(or decent enough to hold his place in the side) who is a really smart person from social standards.
And I'm sure some of those decisions would have had good cricketing sense behind them. We don't know both sides of the story do we? And atleast I don't judge too much before that. (even I could have figured out reasons for some of his criticized moves)
And yes, as I pointed earlier, there are problems of inconsistency in all aspects of our game. And that is what I see GC trying to iron out. With very hard work. Unfortunately I did not watch the final game to comment on specific aspects of it, but anyway it was one game(despite being the final) in the bigger scheme of things.
As GC himself pointed out before the series "We're not judging a team on outcomes such as winning the series," "We've judging them more on whether they're improving in critical areas.". I believe he(and the team) is working towards this, and have set my expectations based on this.
Now the questions is, what do you believe?
posted by worma at 9/07/2005 05:42:00 PM
5 Comments:
tiger...its not as if the same team in same form has been playing so many finals in past few weeks. Look at this team...which was down after Pak series...slumped even further in SL....then started showing signs of recovery in this tour. Now, looking at this way, do YOU see any improvements ?
Its difficult to look at individual improvements, but still...dont you see improvement in ALL of them ? In their approach (Yuv, Kaif we know...what about Dhoni, Sehwag, Ganguly....do you not see more applicatio...more hardwork...more 'effort'?). Dravid is a single case, but that kind of inidvidual form slump in a brilliant player is understandable...its not as if he is playing well (like Sehwag in SL) and then throwing it away.
I did not see the final, as you know, so cant comment too much on specifics there, but look at it as a single match. I saw all the other matches, and saw improved effort in the fielding (does not mean Nehra would dive like kaif :-) )..infact in all areas of game. Even if all of these areas went down in finals(which I dont think they did) still its one out of 5 games. So?
Some questions on individual areas in the last match, since I didnt see it:
...except for those drop catches in tense situations....were we showing lack of effort...not 'present' in the field ?
Batting...ganguly showed more effort..whatever you feel about him, atleast there was conscious effort to survive..and then score. Sehwag..what can I say...kaif same....Yuv was there...Dhoni..well his is a chancy game...we know that, but still he has tried in all other games....and JP, Rao are too new to judge that way...I dont even know whether they deserve a place in the long run or not.
Bowling..well ganguly said it in his comments after the match, and I believe 100%...."just like we need to learn how to bat in seaming conditions, we need to learn how to bowl in flat conditions"....something which I had been thinking for a long time...our ODI team has been doing well outside India(last year was anyway overall slump), but not so much in home/flat conditions...even when we were doing well in WC, and that one season before and after it...even at that time we were not doing that well in home ODIs..our pacers dont do that well. Bhajji is one factor that I'm not able to understand well. Sure Ganguly is using him defensively...but still...its a bit of a puzzle
vijay I agree, consistency is the main problem. So when we get a good performance, it invariably ends up covering for some other bad performance in some other area (or sometimes in the same area). But thats why, if they all become more consistent..to give 100% effort all the time...then they will do well, in terms of results, in atleast 60-70% of games..and that would mean that in any given game we would have a higher chance of enough good performers to take us through.
tiger, yeah same old if you look match by match. But thats not going to help, esp when team is down. When they do come up...and start doing well in all areas (reasonably well...I dont want us to wait till they all become champs)..then u start looking match by match (as I explained above to vijay's point). Did you think, going by their performance in past 4 games..that yes, now the Indian team has reached the high point..now I can start expecting them to win most of the time? Although I was optimisitic...still even I did not think that way ! Did you ?
Sure fielding, throwing at stumps....Nehra stopping a simple ball....these are all tough things...these guys are not natural...so if GC has to be judged...give him time to convert them....remember its not their prime area of specialization (unlike in Aus etc where players specialize in batting/bowling AND fielding). For example...if you were a great batsmen, right now, and if I asked you to shoot down a single stump from 10-15 mts, regularily ?? Its the same cases with most of these guys. Its the problem with our cricket structure. Guys like GC, Wright etc are trying to teach them something from the scrath.
Looking for gradual progressive improvement....try looking at all our performances(wish we had those video files)..all the games..from SL onwards to here...and then tell me if you see anything ? Dont look at the past...I never meant that we are gradually improving from the past level. We are improving from the great depths at which we ended last season(and began this one)
Ganguly and Nehra were average fielder during WC also, but I distinctly remember more 'effort' and purposeful dives from Ganguly atleast during that time. The area in which they dont specialise in, dont expect them to becomes 'good'. Expect themt to become 'hones triers'. Like McGrath in batting. And yes committment is the key.
I do know a good coach would make the diff, whether GC is a good coach or not, we have to wait and see. I am sure Wright made a difference, as I said, I remember seeing more commitment from the same bunch.
Its not a matter of new and old...Nehra is new. But yes most of the youngsters are learning the importance of fielding, mainly due to TV. But still, you cannot ignore the potential of Nehra if he is willing to give his 100% in fielding.
About why not perform well in all the games...well thats the consistency I'm talking about. Sure no-one does well in ALL the games...but if they give the same level of application in ALL the games...they will click in a majority of them(take any Aussie regular ODI player...calculate his success percentage...that is the rate we should aim at!!)
Well...the difference between 215 and 276 is, most of the time, about the pitch and playing conditions. Where we got 276 batting first, that pitch was suited to batting, then why do you expect opposition to behave as if we have made 215 ? They are also batting in same conditions.
The whole thing is not as complicated as we often make it out to be, with our analysis ! Sure, minute analsys helps in ironing out the small factors that make difference in crucial situations. But we have big gaping holes in our basics. So forget over analysis and solve simple things. We got 276, it was LESS. We should have got more. Read Bond here. Now that the match is over, I'm sure he is giving honest opinion and not playing mindgames. So we got less than what any AVERAGE team would have defended. Then we bowled slightly less than average (not much less, as you read Bond, he doesnt think it was our seamers fault, he thinks our batsmen should have also punished their seamers!!). Then we fielded, or rather caught, badly. Thats it. The three basic areas of cricket, and faults in three of them. In this game mainly in batting.
Then, if you go into 'why we failed in batting' that takes us to individual players analysis and we realise that it boils down to same 'consistency' issue again. The players who actually let us down in that area are yuvraj and dhoni. Dravid is in a slump, JP and Rao are new...so we dont even know whether they are good or not(and whether that one innings from JP was enough proof of talent or not). This is what GC also talks about. Therefore I have a feeling he is good enough to identify the problem. Whether he can rectify it or not, dunno about that.
Since I did not watch the game, so no comments on Dhoni. But we are not good at bowling on flat tracks (as Ganguly also said, we have to learn that, since we dont have raw pace). We win in subcontinent mainly due to 'out-batting' the opponents (and sometimes due to slow bowlers like kumble, sachin, bhajji). Remember the ODI series we had in Pak, and now also in India against Pak. All high scoring games...batsmen often vying to top each other...thats how most games go.
I mean on our tracks also, one of the team has to win, does that necessarily mean that team is bowling well? What if both were bowling badly, still one will have to win, right? And yes, I do think we would have defended a score of 300, I am sure.
Having said that, I am not defending our bowlers, we could still have run them close with a little more intelligence by our pacers, but as Bond was trying to say, the main fault does not lie there.
And why did you expect us to beat Nz ? We are not at top of our game. Nz is playing as good as they do. They are so high in world ranking despite missing Bond for 2 years. Bowlers like McMillan, Syris may not look good but they have made Nz good enough to give Aus ODI setup a run for their money, most of the time. They have perfected art of playing ODI. Why would you expect us to beat them, given all this? Yes sure, we could STILL have beaten them, but thats more unexpected for me, knowing all this.
The records on paper do count, but those are 'individual' records. There are team records also, on paper. These records also count. And they say Nz are better. Nz are a perfect example that the team is not the sum of its individuals.
Hi,
I just discovered this site by accident...good blog! Since I've found it, I'll make comments occasionally too :)
-saurabh
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