Right now, media reports on TV suggest that the BCCI wants the players fit for the IPL rather than the test series against South Africa. This eplains why they are going with 16 members in the squad and the reason they don’t want to take chances with the recovering players. At this rate, the IPL will become bigger than test cricket.

exactly, as IPL contributed much towards this. And they have made a big investment for their profit only and that is why BCCI is taking care of everything in the beginning only..

It seems BCCI is more concerned about money rather than the development of the game.If one is putting national pride lower to money making in priority.

That’s the reason why despite regular failures Jaffer & yuvraaj are in the test team.I don’t know what message Mr. Vengasarkar is conveying to people.On one hand he is making the way for the ouster of as consistent player as Dravid, from the one day team counting the rare failure, on the other hand he is reluctant to remove Yuvraj & Jaffer.

Yeah the BCCI has always been milking cricket and it will continue to do so. Amd by the way, it is not even a body which has been created by the government. Hence, it is not accountable to anybody. So, we can’t do a damn except to watch the BCCI go about bullcrappin’ itself.

Okay, one simple question here- every time we win, why is it back to Vengsarkar and selection panel. When they sent a very young team to 20/20, we shouted at them. When they dropped Saurav and Dravid for ODIs against Australia in Australia, many shouted again. Both the times teams won and then not a single guy came forward here or almost anywhere said ”Wonderful choice of a young side”. We all said the young guys were good players. Now we lose a test, and people talk about selectors again. We played bad cricket and that is all.
This is in no way telling that they always make right choices so do not ask me why they dropped X or picked Y, but in the last 3 or 4 years they are getting somethings right. We played bad, that’s all.

I meant - ”every time we won’t win”... not win in the previous comment. :)

thanks for contributing in the discussion, you have got a point ”attitude”. but everyone here is talking that why BCCI is here if they cannot make the right decision, and more over they have won few and lost many. Lets go few more months back, wat they did at the time of world cup was sheer nonsense, i mean indian team, one of the besttees were not in super eight. They are paid to make a right team not to just sit on their chairs and lead a cool life.. and peace..[:)]

As far as the world cup goes I do not see how picking a team is the reason we lost to Bangladesh as almost any team from India is expected to beat them. We had an off day and then lost to SL. I did not see anyone saying that we had a bad team ’before going’ to WC 07 and Neha having a Hindsight of 20/20 is really great, but none of us have that. I think they picked a good team and the team just had 2 bad days. I’ll ask the most obvious question, If you think that squad of 16 was wrong, then tell me whom you would replace with whom?? It is always easy to say X, Y and Z should not play. But who do you play in their places. I ask this in the most peaceful way :)

But I think that if selectors have got all the credits for the win in the 20-20, then they should get credits for the losses too.Also, In present test selection how can they retain Jaffer despite dismal performance in more than 4 tests, when they are rejecting the case of Rahul Dravid in 5 innings, and that too at different positions.

You missed the point there Ritesh. They should not get credit for anything- Defeat or Victory. As far as Jaffer goes, many believe h has the technique to open and with Dravid, I think you are talking about ODI matches and we have lot more options there apparently. We must not forget that it was Dhoni who asked for a young side and selectors din’t thrust that upon us. They do get things wrong, but we are lucky that at least cricketers select cricket team... just look at other sports like hockey and the situation is pathetic.

though i agree that we need to laud the selection commitee for a few successes outside, but the sheer number of flawed policies make the selection comitee look like a buch of morons. Now, everybody here know how much dough/political influence you need to get into the Indian side. It is not as straightforward as we think. More than talent you need contacts and money to make it to the Indian cricket team and as usual there are exceptions to this case as well.

’Sheer number of flawed policies’... can you name them specifically?

’Everybody here knows about politics that you need to get in to the team’... So name the players in the current squad who came in through only politics and have no talent and their replacements??

It is easy to make vaguely generalized comments, can you give me details about these allegation so that I can get on board with you guys. Again, they make mistakes.. even blundres, but so does every sport federation on the planet. You name the sport and federation and I will show their mistakes. That is because we are judging it only on results and they are unpredictable.

adding to the point arisen by jayprashanth, I would add that if one Dravid need to play ranji ties to prove his form and fitness, then out of form Jaffer should also go through the same way.
And Md. Kaif has now got a chance to get into the team despite his good performance for quite a some time and having his competitor’s dismal show at the highest level.

@attitude
Listen mate, to hell with results. But when i meant politics, how about there being a system where a player can make it to the under 15 or under 19 team only if he comes from the so-called ”coaching campa” that are run be several former cricketers who have the capacity to pull the right strings at the right places. That is not all, enrolling yourself into these camps gives the youngsters double the chance of making it to the Cricket team.

Grammer check,.,.the last sentence should read, enrolling themselves into these camps give the youngsters double the chance of making it to the cricket team.

And about Flawed policies, why the hell is Munaf Patel in the team when he shows absolute disregard to fitness or even his general attitude towards the game. I have seen him practice at Bangalore and he doesn’t even warm up with a jog before practice sessions. That is not all, he shows absolutely no commitment on the field. We need players who can play, not arrogant players who think they are doing the Indian cricket team a favour by playing in the team.

@ Attitude I agree with you that more than the selectors at flaw it was our teams woeful performance that led to our defeat and the selectors shouldn’t be blamed for it. You asked Jayprashanth to name a player that came through as a ’Sifarshee’. I guess Jay has a point there. Many players get in as sifarshees and then evolve into better players for the pure number of opportunities they get, ultimately cementing their places in the team

Madan Lal’s son Kunal Lal was Modern High School Delhi student who made to the national under-19 side as an opening fast bowlers if I remember correctly it was in 2002 0r 2003. The same guy played with our school team three months before his selection and a team mate of mine, smashed him for 5 sixes in a 2 over spell.

Ankush has given up playing now for the simple reason that he ain’t a sifarshee and Kunal Lal is a regular Ranji Player who might …u never know, end up as a national team player and I guarantee you that he ain’t worthy of it.

For that matter, Ajay Jadeja, Vijay Dahiya, Reetinder Sodhi and the latest Dinesh Karthik are and were all sifarshees, HOW DO I KNOW….attitude you should have played a single Ranji Match and almost every team-mate would have told you the story. I would though prefer keeping them to me.

@Atul

Wonderful buddy. I was just wondering when people would give me Jadeja. I think someone finally responded the right way. Yes, Jadeja is a name I wanted to be told out and finally it did. Agree with you on that, though i cannot second on all the other names. But the point is that the core team is same no matter who makes the list and it is generally the core that wins us 90% of matches... But good list :) We played and we lost, that is it.

Yes we played and we lost but I just hope Ishant Sharma could bowl those magic spells, with which he spelled doom for the Aussies in their own backyard. The condition there suited him but even keeping that aside, it was also his line n length which was more than impressive. I hope he wrecks the Proteas just as the way Dale Steyn wrecked us in the just concluded test.

I liked Steyn but thought he was over aggressive in a sarcastic way on the field. We always use to tell our quicky to wreck the opponents apart whenever we got wrecked and tell you it was a greater feeling than even scoring a century for then the entire unit feels elated. In this case our team surely needs a boost and Ishant doing it for us could be the perfect nitro booster, for he is our latest sensation just as Dale is for the Proteas. I am banking big time on him from what I have seen so far and here’s just hoping that he does it for us, Cheers !!!

Yeah, with Ishant coming in, the bowling will get a major fillip that it so desperately needs. But i hope green park’s wicket like it’s name is green. Otherwise, it will be a great belter and the bowlers won’t have anything in it. But the India batting may fire though;)

Want to win, please produce a rank turner. That must the message that would have been sent across to the groundsmen at Kanpur. For all the talk about producing sporting wickets in India, the result has always been contrary. Our boys run for stands with even a tinge of grass on the surface, and so it is back to the basics: production of dust bowls.

I sincerely hope that neither Munaf nor Powar make it to the final 11. I’d think it is about time that the rigorous fitness standards that selectors apply to one day version are applied in the Test selection as well. One reason why teams like SA do so well almost anywhere is the fact that their members are amazingly fit, capable of adapting to any and every condition.

for ”attitude” at that time it was not about choosing X for Y, the issue was with the captaincy, choosing the captain was the wrong decision by BCCI. We all knw that Saurav was one who took our team to heights wen it was listed nowhere in the ranking.. The burden of captaincy effected his own records, but he played for india more than for himself. at that time the management was wrong, everything was mismanaged and what else could me the reason to loose from Bangladesh, and in professional thing bad luck is not the excuse. We had best players, but changing the captain at that time was the wrong decision by BCCI. How can one learn a thing in a month which needs dedication of years.....

Thanks for contributing to the discussion ”ritesh”

Thank u so much Gagandeep, Jayaprashanth, Atul, Attitude, Ritesh for making the discussion stronger by contributing more knowledge to this post.. go on.... [:-)]

There are lot others in the Indian test side who do not meet international standards regarding fitness, are very poor fielders, can’t do well in outfield and have weak throwing arms. I’m sure we all know who they are and bad fitness and fielding standards have always plagued broadly ’Sub-continent cricket’.

Neha, hate to break your bubble but first you pick a team and then the captain. In the last few years, Saurav was making it to the test side ONLY as he was the captain. The problem was that actually Saurav needed to be shown the way out a lot earlier and he was kept on bcos. The manner in which he was thrown out was bad, I agree on that. Again simple question- Since that 144 in Australia in 2003, which actually ended in a draw name one meaningful match winning test century from him since then that we remember??
Even today he is most often struggling and fighting. It is not the free-flowing Saurav which we knew once. I still hold by the notion that he should go before someone throws him out again. He was a great player and great captain on his day and that is long past now. We should not insult him the way we did, but he needed to go. And this is not Davis Cup to have non-playing captains. :)

”attitude”
oh my god.. so much heat in the discussion..well see only one thing i want to say that is, that ur point is that the team is responsible, the situation, the time, and luck and all.. but who selects the team?? BCCI, and sometimes they take ’sifarishees’ too..as said above,, and in professional life if u blame luck all the time u cannot move a step forward..okk.. and in world cup.. how can this be the situation that all top players were there and still we dint played well..y??, may be some mistakes happened and no one was there to work on them..that is the reason why we fall..BCCI play an imptt. role and are equally accountable for the failure or the success, and that is y they are sitting there and are paid well.. and their decision to take captaincy from saurav was wrong..and b’coz of this everyone suffered.. they could have done this rightly after the WC.. they messed up everything.. that is why everyone here is blaming him..

Okay, Neha, but I think you should get couple of facts straight... One the selection committee is an honorary post and paid only nominally and so are the zonal selectors. Sure, BCCI has truck loads, but the selection committee does not get as much as you think. This is exactly why legends of the game have been shouting out that they must be paid well which would make them far more accountable. Why do you think Vengsarkar still writes stuff in papers and does not want to quit his job???

Secondly I asked a simple cricketing question for which I apparently got no answer. You talked about Saurav I asked you to mention his test centuries for which I got no answer. I will save you the trouble of searching and the answer is none. I still say that we can’t have a non-playing captain and he was exactly that for a long time. And there is no ’heat’, just stating what i feel is obvious. Sure, Saurav could score a double on a flat track tomorrow and that would prove again nothing :)

Well we have heard too much about the fitness of Indian Players. but the main thing is that what is important for us national cricket or IPL? as we know IPL is going to be started in few days BCCI is much concerned about IPL and even among the viewers IPL is must watch rather than current test series. as we have seen that key players are being preserved for IPL just to make IPL successful. in the current circumstances this test series has lost its value and the defeat in 2nd test has just added insult to injury for Indian Cricket.
Well its typical Indian viewer’s habit to forget the past and cheer for the future so again we will keep our fingers crossed and stick to our T.V set for an exciting cricketing event.