India’s virtual exit from the 2007 World Cup means we can all get back to our favourite game: hunting for scapegoats. Should Rahul Dravid step down as captain? Should Saurav Ganguly be reinstalled? Or should “vice-captain” Sachin Tendulkar be elevated? Should Greg Chappell be sent packing? Is it time for Indian coaches? Should the selection committee led by Dilip Vengsarkar resign en masse? And what about Sharad Pawar?
We need to do what S.Africa did in 2003. Revamp the entire team. Bring in new faces (if there are any!).
Dravid should definitely step down as a captain. Reinstalling Ganguly is quite foolish. Elevate Tendulkar ??? No way, he needs to be “rested”.
If I were in the secection committee, this is what I would do: Retain Dravid, Ganguly, Yuvraj, Dhoni, Zaheer, and Munaf in the team. Of course Pathan, Sreesanth and Karthik as well, since they never got a chance. Rest of the players needs to be shown the way out. Bring in Kaif as the captain. Need not be Kaif, someone else is fine too, but I think he is a good captain material.
Great players are never good coaches. We need to rememebr that when we select our next coach.
As for Vengsarkar and pawar, ’nuff said.
This is what he has said:
Will you continue as captain?
I was appointed captain till the World Cup. So I am not even the captain at this point of time. So it’s not my decision to make.
Vinod Kambli and Jadeja should be called back
A new team should be created which will start performing well by 2010.
There should be a clause of ‘no ads campaign’,though.
We want to see them PLAY- not strut and sashay on the ramp or in front of cameras.
I wish there could be one such clause for Ex -players too.
I am happy India lost. At least now those cricketers who have been living off their reputations like Tendulkar and Harbajan Singh will be exposed. Hopefully they will be sacked too or retired for good. Tendulkar has to take all the blame. He must retire from active cricket and if he doesn’t do that, someone should take the trouble to do that. Players like Dhoni and Sehwag have no technique to get themselves out of tough situations. Imagine using the World Cup for getting into form. You take the best men and those who are in form to play in such tournaments. Instead you take those players who used to be good once upon a time to play in such tournaments. I think that’s what was wrong with us. Where do we go from here? It is pretty simple actually. Select players on their form and not on their reputations. Select able bodied men and not those who may be good in batting or bowling but are lousy fielders. Or those who may be good in fielding but are lousy batsman or bowlers.
I would terminate Chappel with immediate effect, had I the right.
Dravid, Ganguly, Zaheer and Dhoni would be retained.
Yuvraj singh would be made captain.
I would call back Murali Karthick and try Powar as well.
Irfan Pathan…no comments, but try for other options as well.
Trying Kaif as a captain is a foolishness.
Vengsarkar had nothing to do with the team that did not do well.
Its all the idea of Greg Chappel foolishly followed by our gr8 captain.
There cant be a better shame.
Even I think Yuvraj should be made the captain. Dravid is no captaincy material. Never was. Maharashtrians never made good captains anyway. They are too cautious and though they make good dependable batsmen, they are not leaders. Perhaps, perhaps, Kumble should be made the captain and Yuvraj his deputy. One will finally see results because Kumble does not play favourites and backs only those who are good players. More than anything else he does not tolerate nonsense.
The time is ripe. Cricket in India requires a well deserved “break”!
1.Yuvraj Singh[capt] 11.Dhoni
2.Ganguly 12.Munaf
4.Dravid 13.Akash chopra
5.Kaif
6.Karthik
7.Raina
8.Sreesanth
9.Pathan
10.Powar
That is my team for the future.For the last two slots we can have VRV Singh and another maybe ,Badani
Badan or Uthappa
Well,reg Coach-I think a senior Indian player could be coach-but,will these ad driven player listen to him?-so,in comes foreign coach.Maybe Dean Jones or Dave Whatmore
BCCI should be dismantled and reorganised keeping out businessmen and politicians out of it.
Likewise, all sport organisations should be cleansed out of politicos like Kalmadi, Gill, Dasmunsi, Malhotra etc.
India has long banned family jageers and titles!
Fire them all. Take a break from international cricket and forget about a national team for some time. Start picking good domestic sides and elevate the level of the game in the Ranji trophies. Let’s think of a national side after about a year.
Indian cricketers worshiped as demi-gods cannot perform overseas. Cricket in not an exception, India with its teaming 1 billion humans, mired in corruption in all walks of life-sports particularly provides dismal show in world sports events-world cup, olympics etc.. I bet with every cricketer a dozen officials would have gone to West Indies. While China was collecting a bucket load of gold medals in Athens Olympics, India had a poor harvest of bronzes, but the officials ( and their spouses) outnumbered the team.
My advice to Indian cricket team: stay home cricketers! You do not deserve any accolade. Play locally until you deserve to take part in international matches. As for the coach, he can ‘only take the horses to the stream and cannot make them drink’. Chappell should go home where he has chances to train next generation of Aussies who would not throw the wickets away.
Come to think of it, I am not surprised at all. Indian sportsmen never delivered anything worth any way.
Yuvraj as a captian ?!?!?! I am sure the selectors are thinking on the same lines….That would be the biggest disaster…….
Till, Sachin came back from his injury break, team was preforming very well and was on a record breaking spree. It is this record seeking and self serving great man, who caused the down fall of the team and dissension within the team. Even Pathan would performed better as a batsman in his place. May be the denial of his double hundred in Pakistan still rankling in his mind to sabotage the team and down fall of Dravid. People like Yuvaraj have dubious records socially and may have some nexus with the betting mafia. See how became run out chasing a non existing run ! Great Talent no doubt, but not fit for a captain’s responsibility.
Though Kumble should have been captain long ago, now it is too late. We do not have any one else in the horizon. So it is a toss between Ganguly or Dravid for another year or two till another worthy surfaces Or Sehwag regains his golden touch
Having a captain who would just ruminate on technicalities may not be enough.I think we need one who is loyal to the game(and not to the spin-offs like ad revenue.)
We also need one who has guts and the spirit to fight till the end.
The captain should have spunk and nerves of steel.
We need a coach to teach body language,mind games and the need to adapt to actual match situations.Most times we feel that each player is on a different planet-not connected to the team at all.
We are in coach and captain induced slump.
There is no ex-cricketer that can turn it around.
Forget Kapil Dev,
his views on Indian cricket changes direction like a weathervane.
Indian cricket will rise again
if and when Ganguly or someone like him is appointed as coach.
But I do not see it ever happening,
purely because of the present politics in Indian cricket.
In the case of our cricket the same old Frencg saying holds good, more things change more it remains the same. All specualtions are like kite flying, just to think one crucial defeat has violently changed perceptions? Think the other way, if we had won nobody would have been pilloried. Life’s like that, most predictable
in my opinion these players failed to perform. can’t really put much of a blame on coach if players fail to perform. he can be blamed for any lack of game plan or incorrect team compositions.
in my opinion the problem runs deep………. coach, BCCI pick a team from available resources. Current resources constitute aging legends and few young guns who chose cricket as a career option. And ours is a nation where sports as a career option has declined over last decade. Cricket in India will soon head the hockey and football way where we can only talk of a glorious legacy (Hey, we were asian number ‘1’ in football once upon a time). We will soon run out of skilled resources for other career options. We do not have any concrete plans to nurture and encourage sports as a career among youth. Only one sania, and once in a while a uthappa props up. Even this will be like a sighting of a UFO few years from now.
Alarm bells are ringing, but we can continue to stay deaf. We will only create world class programmers, testers, project managers and customer service agents. Even journalists will mould into content writers for IT cos.
And ten years from now, me and you can still continue to blame coach, BCCI, selectors, captain and advertisers (To date i have never got a satisfactory answer on how advertisements can make a player perfomr badly.).
life will go on. “kids” like us will spend more time online in forums like orkut rather than on field playing outdoor games. In the year 2020, China will be world champions in kabbadi,kho kho, cricket, hockey, football and….. maybe even in ‘hide and seek’.
Nishant
We must request Ireland Cricket Association -if such a thing exists- to loan their players to us so that we can send a better team for 2011.
In my opinion the coach and the captain are not culprits in the sense that is now made out to be. Their fault if any lies in the fact that they did not identify ( or act upon ) the simple truth, that cricket matches, especially the world cup ones are not won by talent alone, but through sense of belonging to the team, and the hunger to get the team to win. It was the most apparent difference that I saw in the two team in the India Srilanka match.
Cricket was not the greatest game to epitomize team work, and it is true now more than ever in the Indian team. Every player has an individual agenda, some of it working against each other. SO the first problem that really needs to solved is this big dressing room ego clash. The media that gets paranoid over every victory or defeat doesn’t help either. Just adding to the woos of an already psychologically weak team.
Sportsmen are made as much in mind as in body and it is sad that we do not have a lot of players ( at present) who can be called complete.
Dravid to step down.. Keep Chappell. The man has a plan, we should let him carry it out even if it means 20 defeats in a row. Nobody ever became great without daring to do the ‘impossible’ or ‘stupid’.
Yuvraj captain. Uthappa vice-captain. Combo of firepower and calmness. Attitude and aggression. If you want a team for the future, they are your best bet. Uthappa deserves more chances. If he is not exposed to Intl cricket for a year at least, you will lose an obvious talent in favour of flat pitch bullies.
Drop Dhoni. Scare him out of his complacence. Dinesh Karthik’s time has come. He has shown spine and attitude. Time to face facts: Dhoni is a flat pitch, mediocre-bowling bully. He can be the reserve keeper or a spare pinch hitter if wants to.
Agarkar is done. His will be the present generation’s Chethan Sharma. Great on his day, but under the shadow of Srinath and Prasad and later under Zaheer/Pathan/Sreesanth, too old or ineffective. RP Singh and VRV Singh deserve more opportunities. An attack of Zaheer, Pathan, Sreesanth and VRV Singh, raw talent honed by experience will be formidable.
Kick out Harbhajan. His sell by date has long passed. It is time to hand over the baton to Romesh Pawar. Forget the cracks about goggles or weight, but we need an aggressive spinner with a hunger to play. NOt a tame sardar trying to bluff and bluster the opposition on the weight of a non-existent ‘doorsa’.
Kumble. The time has come to say goodbye. One day cricket has not been his forte for the last few years, but for the commitment, spirit and attitude he has brought into the INdian team, over after over, session after session, match after match, he must not be treated shabbily. Bowling tirelessly on heartbreakingly dead pitches, with little ‘support’, he has done his duty, and like any veteran going off into the sunset, an honourable ‘discharge’ is in order. He still has a year or two in test cricket IMHO.
Sachin Tendulkar. The show is over. The star has faded. The shoulders, wrists, eyes and legs have seen better days. 18 years is a long time. We have seen the strokeplay, the timing and the beauty. We have cried at the failures, seen the shoulders bearing the unbelievable pressure, and yet, with pitiless ingratitude we add some more, and howl like hounds when the back breaks. ‘
‘How many matches has he won for us?’ ‘Where was he at the crunch?’ ‘He has failed at all the crunch situations…’ For eighteen years we have seen the boy turn into the man, provide us vistas of his skill and greatness, seen him tirelessly bear burden after burden, silently, maybe gladly and yet we have the impudence to question his commitment and skill when the pressure unreasonable exprectation gets to him.
Now we want him to become 25 again. To be captain, star player, veteran, ‘hope of a billion’… and not to fail the slightest bit in any of these. Fattened slobs, proudly proclaiming their illiteracy of cricket, who haven’t sweat their palms holding willow now demand that he be treated as a robot created to entertain; not as a sportsman, and much less, a human.
Sachin has few years left; with careful marshalling of the resources left to his body. This is not the age of the gentleman cricketer turning up at 39 to send down overs of gentle off spin and playing gritty defensive cricket. We expect a 32 year old to play with the body of a 20 year old. The mind is there, but the body can only do so much. He still has cricket in him.
Hello Mr.Alok why should Dravid step down. He has led India from the front taking on responsibility. Take the case where in Pakistan where he volunteered to open the innings against the feared pace attack. Just jog your memory as to how he faced the likes of Brett Lee and pack in Australia to put India on top. He volunteered to keep wickets in the last World cup for the team’s cause. He still has a few years cricket in him.
Yuvraj has to prove himself on all conditions. The only knock he played was in the Natwest trophy in England many years back. After that he has not done anything exemplary.
Uthappa is just cutting his teeth he has no knocks worth to note. Only he
has scored in Ranji matches. But he should be persisted and given more chances.
Sachin has nothing left for one days. He should concentrate for the tests.
Read Chappel article in Midday which was picked up by the other newspapers and the electronic media regarding Sachin.
When is Dravid going to come out and face the Press a la Inzi?