Re: India v SA, 1st Test, Nagpur, Feb 6-10

[Merlin]

Yesssssssssssssssss!!!
Result !!
Played the Saffers.
Yet another collection from Coral's !!

You owe Steyn a kiss from cleaning up the tail again and saving your bacon.

Steady on old girl ... I might condescend to buy him a pint when next he's at Lord's!

Nice tits, by the way!

[Red]

So will that van Zyl character the caretaker coach get to have the job on a more permanent basis?

[Henry]

As soon as Rohit got injured Dhoni should have given up the gloves and played as a specialist batsman.

India just weren't ready for what South Africa threw at them.

[mynah]

So will that van Zyl character the caretaker coach get to have the job on a more permanent basis?

No, wrong colour.

[JGK]

Amla declared MoM.

Absolutely silly.

Steyn was the difference between the 2 sides.

Aye. Kallis was ahead of Amla anyway.

[DJ_Smerk]

Well done, SAF. Outstanding cricket.

[Brass Monkey]

W-ouch! Whatta drubbing.

Sree must be a better prospect.

Poor batting in parts.

That deck was deader than a doornail.

[Henry]

Amla must be the most underrated batsman in world cricket, with Duminy being the most overrated.

[JKLever]

Has bucky updated his ICC table yet?

[Brass Monkey]

I'm begging him, please don't!

I didn't even mind that he'd got the table up (even though he thought it was rubbing it in people's faces) - it's the fact he had so little class, he couldn't have just snipped the top bit off which outlined India as #1 but he had to have the whole f*cking table!!!!! Pissed me rightoff!

[furriner]

Well done SA. We wuz outclassed.

[buckSH]

going with 2 seamers again for the second test will yield similar results as this one. If Ishant is rested then Mithun has to come in for sure.

didn't sree just injure his hamstring only 2 weeks ago. He will not be able to do long spells so soon. Mithun should have played in this test instead of Saha. If murali Vijay is compared to laxman then laxman was never 3 down. Badrinath still looks raw and the 3 slot yearns for Dravid.

a lot of fundamental, tactical errors took congruence in this test match.

Dhoni's dropping of Mishra in the second bangladesh test sent the wrong vibes throughout the team and divided it into Dhoni and Sehwag camps. Though it may not have made any difference in individual performances, Sehwag unnecesarily blew it at throwing his bat at each and every of Parnell's wide deliveries. I think he was determined not to help Dhoni out of trouble this time around.

Also Tendulkar's worries grew because he missed the familiar calm reassurance of Dravid or Laxman at the other end.

bcci surely missed someone like bell lower down the order who could have countered steyn. Instead the likes of Saha, and other lower order bats always gave away their wicket too easily to steyn throwing the whole team out of balance.

Ishant look uninterested to bowl according to accounts. He may well be disinterested because of pitches prepared always to suit spinners do not help his confidence. He will go down in pace and confidence as time goes if he plays more in India. To boost his confidence and support, he always needs to be covered adequately by 2 senior seamers, either Munaf or Sree. Now then Ishant may or may not perform but the advantage is that he will not slacken so much on pace when he knows that his quota of overs is that much reduced by presence of additional seamer. One of the seamers will always underperform in a 3 seamer attack but that is only to be expected and should not be used against the 3 seamer combination.

Debutants should only be blooded in a winning team and they must not be made part of a losing venture. It has to be avoided as much as possible. Also the idea of introducing 3 debutant batsman while playing a team like South Africa is also quite silly and showed unnecessary overconfidence in these debutants to tackle the likes of steyn on Indian pitches, without quite realizing that steyn relies on pace and late movement and it isn't always possible for a debutant to tackle late movement at the first go.

major tactical errors were made by dhoni, when he failed to manage the spinners who repeatedly failed to toss up the ball and relied to ball flattish deliveries in order to restrict the batsman. These spinners or tossers were more interested in preserving their stats than working towards the interest of the team. harbhajan and mishra were feeding off each others negativity and refused to toss up the ball or give it more air thus giving Kallis and Amla enough time to settle themselves. Kallis is a relatively tall batsman and was quite comfortably able to get on top of the flattish deliveries by the spinners.

in fact the entire team played a negative self-preserving line taking que from Dhoni's Ojha gamble in the second test in bangladesh thus setting down a negative trend for the first time in Dhoni's captaincy. He not only quite clearly overplayed his hand by playing petty politics against Sehwag but also made the team more cynical overall in their approach.

[Basil]

Well played SA.

Oh dear India!

[taipan]

So will that van Zyl character the caretaker coach get to have the job on a more permanent basis?

The word on the street is that Wessels will get the gig.

[taipan]

Debutants should only be blooded in a winning team and they must not be made part of a losing venture..

Um, aren't India no 1 on the BCCI ICC tables?