Friday, January 12, 2007

Vengsarkar and co lack the will for a surgery

By John Cheeran
I have little doubt that Sourav Ganguly will be in the list of 30 for the World Cup, to be announced today.
After his gutsy batting in South Africa Ganguly can stake claim for a berth in the World Cup squad.
That, however, does not cover the flaws in Ganguly as a batsman. But the point is that Ganguly made whole-hearted efforts in South Africa to overcome his shortcomings against fast bowling and be in the reckoning for future series. How comfortable Ganguly was against Shaun Pollock and Dale Steyn is altogether a different matter.
In Virender Sehwag's case I cannot say the Delhi batsman made any efforts at all to deserve a place in the Indian team.
I would suggest selectors and team management to ignore Virender Sehwag for the World Cup.
But considering the overall equations in Indian cricket I expect Sehwag to find place in the list of 30 and as well as in the team for the first two one-day matches against the West Indies.
Selectors had erred by bringing back Ganguly for the South African tour. They wasted a golden opportunity to blood young batsmen such as Karnataka's Robin Uthappa and Tamil Nadu's Badarinath during the South African tour.
In sport, experience counts for little. Instinct and daring are far valuable qualities on the playing field.
Had Dinesh Karthick been given preference over Ganguly as a specialist batsman in the first two Tests in South Africa, who knows the outcome the series would have been quite different.
Irrespective of the team composition arrived at by selectors for the World Cup, India should have it easy in the group stage. Apart from Sri Lanka, India's opponents in the group stage of the World Cup are Bermuda and Bangladesh.
An ideal platform for guys such asVirender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly to hammer centuries.
No wonder Ganguly, a man who is so reluctant to open the Indian innings inTests, has come forward to open the Indian innings in one-dayers once more.
Should one be ready for a few surprises in the list of 30 for the World Cup?
Certainly not.
Indian cricket will again see the usual suspects crowding around the dressing room.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Cheeran,
I would like to comment on a significant statement that you have made in your article ...
"In sport, experience counts for little. Instinct and daring are far valuable qualities on the playing field." ...
As a former player I find this statement contrary to what any player would say, especially in cricket where the mind plays a huge part. Cricket is slower that many other ball or raquet games. Thus the mind gets much more time to mull over things.
Therefore in cricket experience plays a huge part especially in higher levels of the game.
This view has been openly expressed by many including the current chairman of the selection committee Mr. Vengsarkar who has played over 100 test matches.
I wonder whether your statement was bourne out of actual experience as a player or is it just a conjecture.

I am not commenting on some of the other points mentioned in your article as they border on the ridiculous.

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