opening on a discordant note....
...in my last blog i described indians as being unsettled. I never imagined how much of an understatement that would be until i saw dravid walk up for the toss. My eyes popped out. What hapenned to ganguly overnight? A groin strain. Now i look at the playing eleven and i am aghast. It looks like a complete revamp of sorts and we had no idea. No harbajan! I thought harbajan in the team was a given , at least in india. But viruses dont have any discrimination and they picked the turbonator at the right time. Agarkar is in for the injured irfan pathan and karthik for harbhajan.Now i look at the batting and indians dont fail to surprise me. Tendulkar is in , as expected , but at the expense of kaif , who played a great innings in chennai until cramps got to him. Well , yuvraj gets the stick , no surprise , and Akash chopra comes in to occupy the top slot. Well thats about the changes! In spite of all these , i think the inclusion of sachin is a huge motivation for the team , if ever they need one.
On a wicket that surprised even gilchrist , the indians could have made a gutsy move by going in with a lone spinner. But remember that sachin , apart from being the best batsman in the world is also a fairly proficient spinner. Add sehwag to the bag and dravid would have had some spinning choices even without karthik. I dont want to sound rude , but i personally dont rate karthik as a great bowler. He can be average at best. He lacks the variety , guile and spin of harbhajan. Strangely , quite often i hear people lamenting that karthik never gets a fair deal and is treated shabbily by ganguly. I dont understand this. I have never see him bowl any inspiring spell or a match turning one. So , i feel that the burden is as much on the quickies as kumble and theyy have got to do the job for india if indians are to entertain any thoughts of winning the match.
posted by Tyagarajan S @ 1:06:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home