Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Time for change

With the Indian test team getting handled in Sri-Lanka, its time to talk about the elephant in the room. Yes the Indian test team has been ranked No.1 for the past several months, but with the lack of bench strength and a toothless bowling attack it is perhaps time to bite the bullet and look ahead rather than myopically try to maintain an undeserved No.1 ranking.
Tendulkar , Dravid and Laxman cannot be expected to play beyond another couple of years. Of these modern day greats only Tendulkar can be certain of commanding a place till he chooses to call it a day. If the other two are allowed to choose their time of departure, Indian cricket will be left with 3 rookies about the same time. Sure Raina and Yuvraj will probably occupy 2 slots and can hardly be called rookies, but it would serve Indian cricket if they would be eased into the scheme of things rather than pushed into the deep end. All this means that its time to start rotating the middle order batsmen.
Now to focus on the bowling. Well I have nothing there, the best I can come up with is offering a few Pakistanis Indian citizenship, after all there have to be a few who would be classified as Person's of Indian Origin.
Jokes apart, there has to be a concerted effort to manage the workloads of the faster bowlers. Regular tours of the A Team need to be organized for those who have fallen by the wayside. Also though this will not have an immediate impact, there should be some fairness in drawing up contracts. Fast bowling is a far more injury prone profession when compared to batting or bowling offspin. This has to be recognized. Fast bowlers need to be compensated adequately for subjecting their bodies to the rigour they do. This might in some way encourage them to keep the hostility and pace up.. since it invariably seems to drop once a bowler has been with the team for a while.

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