Australia v India, 4th Test, Adelaide, 24-28 January, 2012

.......Surely the former soon to turn thirty-one is in his batting peak years so needs to come in at #3, despite his terrible record at #4............

Given his efforts at 4 surely he wouldn't move up the order.

Henry wrote:And the funny thing is, the reaction of most of us when the IPL kicked off way back in 2008 was "this will ruin Indian cricket."



Sage.

Gold.

Are any of the non-Indian posters here saddened by our being right?

Zat wrote:

Henry wrote:And the funny thing is, the reaction of most of us when the IPL kicked off way back in 2008 was "this will ruin Indian cricket."



Sage.

Gold.

Are any of the non-Indian posters here saddened by our being right?

I don't think any Indian forummer disputed that. The remaining indian fans despite their reservations followed IPL I suppose with an open mind. I was certainly among those who was vociferous after that first cattle bidding that would kill us and our youngsters completely and never followed a game too date.

So now when a celebration of mediocrity whose next chapter will start in a couple of months with IPL and Home series a few questions nag me as to where our fans today stand.

Does the average Indian cricket viewer give a damn about Dhoni struggling to put bat to ball in an away test match when he can lead CSK to another IPL title?

Does the average Indian cricket viewer give a damn about Tendulkar flopping in two consecutive away series measuring 16 innings when he turns up for the Mumbai "Indians"? Does he think that these great cricketers like Tendulkar, Dravid, and Laxman have the good of the team at heart when they continue to potter from one innings to another?

I also find the calls to support the team in need disturbing as well. The fans have been supporting the team always but the time has come to ask the question: Are the players supporting the fans? I am all for waking up at night and supporting a team fighting for pride and country but not for wasting time for incompetent players walking from shameless surrender to another.

These players like Yuvi, Sehwag, Zaheer, Gauti, Sachin etc. were all nursing injuries last year, but chose to play IPL. They then skipped national duty in WI instead of skipping IPL to 'recover'. This also led to the fiasco in England where we struggled to put out 11 standing players tests after test. We still supported them, but this Aus fiasco deserves no mercy nor sympathy. Because it borders on rewarding willful negligence of pride and duty. Supporting a team really down and needing it is one thing. But supporting shamelessness, arrogance, ineptitude, refusal to learn from mistakes, continuous abject surrenders, playing without pride, callousness, casually neglecting commitment and burying the head in sand the way these players and BCCI are doing is height of unapologetic unaccountability re-enforced with a belief that no one can force them to change.

It is important to abandon the team for the precise reason that supporting them in one dayers where they may do well will only add to player-BCCI thinking that only T20/ODI results matter. The only way things will improve is if it the players and BCCI are hurt where it matters - MONEY/Revenue. Only when viewers decrease and advertising/sponsor revenue drops will these people notice and try to do well. Otherwise as long as crowds throng out to support them in pajama cricket wins, these mindset will never change and our performances overall will never improve. If you fail repeatedly at work at office, do you get rewarded with increments in pay or do you get sacked? The message for a strong performance and strong consistency and the need to be professional needs to be send very strongly and that won't happen if people help make the one day and IPL matches a success. It will only make them more careless and indifferent to test results. Hurt them where it matters. Because now that most venues in India have been consistently rendered flat for high scoring pajama cricket, our cricket will never improve like this. We can't give players and BCCI pathetic reasons to make excuses like we have avenged our test defeats and shown improvement because we won some cheap one dayers/T20s.....

I also find the calls to support the team in need disturbing as well. The fans have been supporting the team always but the time has come to ask the question: Are the players supporting the fans? I am all for waking up at night and supporting a team fighting for pride and country but not for wasting time for incompetent players walking from shameless surrender to another.

Probably the best paragraph who have ever written on this forum.

Oh sweet Jesus no...


Haddin wanted for 2013 Ashes

Daniel Brettig
January 30, 2012

Australia's selectors want to take Brad Haddin to the 2013 Ashes, and have challenged the 34-year-old gloveman to raise his level of performance to get there. Haddin is being rested for the first three ODIs against India and Sri Lanka, granting Matthew Wade the chance to push his case for a greater role behind the stumps, but the senior man remains well entrenched in the selectors' plans as both keeper and leader.

Mickey Arthur, the national coach and also a selector, said the panel wanted to be able to keep Haddin on until the next meeting with England, but needed to see more runs from him to turn the possibility into reality.

"Behind the stumps, the leadership he gives us is insurmountable and you can't put a price on that," Arthur told ESPNcricinfo. "I'm comfortable with where Brad's at, yes we'd like more runs from him, but I'm really comfortable that Brad is on the right track. Yes we've got to get performance and nobody is guaranteed their position, but I'm very comfortable that Brad Haddin could potentially go forward to the Ashes series."

Haddin's current place as Michael Clarke's deputy is significant, as the duo formed a potent leadership axis against India. Alongside Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey, Haddin's experience and savvy are considered critical to the team's development. Asked to quantify the value of the elder trio, Arthur said: "They are adding a massive amount, a massive amount."

Australia's series win over India was a marker of significant progress for the hosts, but its aftermath has been dominated by criticism of the Indian effort. Arthur said the Australians were due some credit for the way they had performed across the four Tests.

"I'm not sure what the issues are that [India] have among themselves, but what I do know is that our guys played exceptionally good cricket, and sometimes your opponent is only allowed to play as well as you let them," Arthur said. "There has been a focus on India not performing, but we need to have a look at ourselves and say 'maybe we did play some good cricket'.

"We need to give ourselves a pat on the back. We know it is just the start of this journey though, we're nowhere near the finished article as a Test team, there's a lot of room for improvement, a lot of things we can do better, and it is the start of what could be a very exciting journey."

That journey leads to England in 2013, and Arthur said he had kept an interested eye on the concurrent series between Andrew Strauss' team and Pakistan. A dramatic 2-0 series victory for Pakistan has opened questions about England's No. 1 status, but Arthur said the circumstances they encountered were extremely difficult for any touring team.

"One thing we do need to understand about that is England have just come out of a winter, where they haven't played a huge amount of cricket," he said. "They've gone to conditions where it's turned, which is really tough to counter… [One warm-up match] was a big contrast to last summer … I wouldn't read too much into it, they were us much out of their comfort zone as they could possibly be, and they'll be on the money for the following [Ashes] series, no doubt."

so is this over yet?

Red keeps up the Busted Craphouse Door impression about Clarke's 'terrible record at no 4'.

Note a subtle shift folks - I had been wondering how the BCD would re-jig his/her/its Clarke Statsguru filter to exclude his last two (three if you include Capetown) efforts going in at 3 for not many. And the BCD has managed it - formerly the rant would be about 'runs going in under 100'. Now it's 'runs at no 4'.

.

JGK wrote:Oh sweet Jesus no...


Haddin wanted for 2013 Ashes

Daniel Brettig
January 30, 2012

OK, time to think more seriously of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan option...

Surely horace would be up for a suicide attack

Classic win-win

Nasty...

Zat wrote:

JGK wrote:Oh sweet Jesus no...


Haddin wanted for 2013 Ashes

Daniel Brettig
January 30, 2012

OK, time to think more seriously of the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan option...

Haddin on ice for early ODIs
Daniel Brettig
January 29, 2012

Nancy is in position