Who is this stupid fellow  "Kishan Jhanjharia"?? He seems to be a fanatical supporter of our captain "courageous", like those VHP cohorts who blindly support Narendra Modi !!  The pathetic part of his verbal onslaught on Prem is that he seems to have not read many of Prem's REDIFF columns !!! The abusive language and the venomous tone of his letter suggest that the guy seems to have lost his mind.  Let him Shut Up and Get Out,  instead of asking others to do so.   He seems to be as brave a "Lion Heart" as the Indian captain, he blindly supports !

Coming to our Royal Bengal Tiger,  Sourav should not have roared so much before the start of the NZ Test series that in the aftermath of  this "greatest" debacle (2-0 with about 4 days of Test match cricket played !) I have ever known, about half of the cricket loving people in India would want to see him  whip-lashed in public.  Losing is a part of every sport, but the manner in which our "star" (sponsor created status for many in our team !) studded team lost to a lowly NZ team was very mortifying, to say the least, to our National Spirit.  Our batsmen made a "Mcgrath" out of a "Tuffey" in the bargain !! To make the feeling worse, there are biased people like "Kishan Jhanjharia" who have very little idea about the game in general and are hell bent in wanting to see the destruction of Indian Test cricket !?!?

It is high time that Ganguly is dropped as "Test" captain and Dravid (who is 10 times a better team-man than anyone in the team) be given the responsibility.  The very idea of opening with Sehwag in seaming conditions of NZ must have been anathema to many true Test cricket fans and not availing the services of  SS Das (a genuine opener) at least for the II Test was a terrible mistake.  Ganguly may be a very good ODI player but he does not deserve a place in the Test team just for being a players' man,  his verbal eloquence in  the war of words with the likes of S.Waugh and N.Hussain,  wearing his heart on his sleeve .... etc etc.   He needs to perform consistently as a player and also needs to lead by example in trying circumstances, "SEAM"ingly  Abroad !!!

-Balaji

Prem Panicker: Firstly, apologies to all -- this reader response business had to take a back seat for a bit, thanks to some complications with our mail servers here.

Frankly, as far as we are concerned, we have always called it as we saw it, without focussing on personalities, and that will continue -- despite the abuse. Rather ironically, we did get a few more of these -- which did not even have names attached, but had been sent from anonymous email address. For obvious reasons, we won't be publishing that kind of rubbish on here.

As to the performance of the team on the New Zealand tour, I am increasingly beginning to think it might be a good idea to wait till the end of the tour, then do an overall analysis of how the team fared, and how each individual performed -- that way, perhaps, there will be enough evidence to go with, one way or the other.

A pathetic batting display indeed by India. But I think the Indians for reasons we don't know are going through the motions. Are they having trouble with pace ... doubt it. Are they having trouble with seaming .. maybe. Are they having trouble with speed as in Malcom Speed ... more likely. Not to mention Dalmiya's turnabout motivated, as is always the case with him, by political considerations. I expect more and more of the "heavily contracted" Indian players to get "injured" so that Indian ends up sending a second XI to the World Cup after all.

-Jagannathan

Prem Panicker: I'm not sure how the long term thing will play out -- from all I hear behind the scenes, things are a right mess. But as far as the shenanigans of Speed and Dalmiya impacting on the ongoing tour is concerned, I'm not so sure that line of thinking -- which, by the way, seems to be getting heavy endorsement from the television commentary team -- is valid. I mean, it was not so long ago that the same team, with the same problem hanging over it ahead of the Champions' Trophy, acqutted themselves well. In fact, on that occasion, they did not even have the luxury of having the Board do the talking -- after facing seam on the pitch through the day, they found themselves facing Speed off it in the evenings.

What is the point of blaming the pitch? At least not by India -- the attitude should be, "whatever u can do, I can do better". The bottomline is NZ won. I think the media should be hard and harsh on the Indian team. They should quit crying, and play to win. Viv Richards played against the best Aussie bowling attack in a time when blacks were treated harshly and were heckled in the stadium, but hit them all over the park.

Dont get me wrong, as an Indian I would love India to win all the time. But, giving reasons is just lame. So, I would like to see an article where the team is slammed for their performance in foreign soil and good teams. And something come out of it too.

-Srini Kalyanaraman

Prem Panicker: I'd have to agree with that bit about the pitches -- ultimately, you have to play on the surface you get. Actually, I believe some of the past cricketers -- the ones who have played their cricket on uncovered pitches, exposed to the vagaries of the weather -- have a point when they say that today's cricketers, especially the batsmen, are a pampered bunch apt to cry the moment they find anything other than a featherbed beneath their feet.

It was yet another debacle by Indian batting.but i still beleive that ours is a very strong line up. and they can win the world cup. now our bowling lineup is also becoming strong but the reason for the failure is they did not adapt to the conditions .i think from here they will go on winning. Also, I once heard that the centre of gravity of our bats is at a lower level, and is suited for Indian pitches. For alien wickets it is supposed to be higher, because if the impact is at the center of gravity (center of percussion) the ball will travel greater distances. I remember reading this in a Steve Waugh article.

-D Vamsidhar

Prem Panicker: Without going into a lot of theory, the essential point Waugh could have been making is that in Indian conditions the ball tends to strike the ball lower down on the bat -- the positioning of the center of gravity is important only insofar as it determines the sweet spot. Having said which, I wouldn't look to this one factor as explanation for the team's batting failures, if I were you -- typically, batsmen (yes, even Indian batsmen) tend to carry on tours bats that have been adjusted to the conditions they are likely to encounter. It is not the case that a player carries, to say New Zealand, the same bat he used to score a century in New Delhi. As to the optimism expressed -- well, here's hoping your wishes come true. :-)

Hi Prem, one more aspect of cricket that always amuses me:

The new article about Shoaib having faked injury in order to skip a match and going to the club to dance instead sounds like a human rights abuse to me.

In every field (including yours) the working professional doesnt need to be necessarily injured or sick in order to take a break. A cricketer should be allowed to take a break without asking for a reason. I dont think we have reached a stage where we really accept our cricketers as working professional just like the rest of us. We think of them as soldiers, who cannot take a break when the country is at war ! This is unfair to any player. What the player does when he/she (being fair to all cricketers !) takes a break, is a personal issue and no one else's business.

--Kaushal Desai

Prem Panicker: Split that into two questions. First, is it any business of anyone else what a cricketer does in his spare time? No -- not, that is, unless it impacts on his cricket, on the team, and on the board and country he represents (You will probably recall Ricky Ponting's ejection from a Kolkatta club, or Shane Warne's telephone conversations with a member of the nursing profession as examples of the latter). So if Shoaib went to a nightclub or wherever, that was his business.

The other part, though, is where your private life begins, and public life ends. For instance, assume you are a key member of your organization, you are required to do a job of work within a particular deadline, you decide to sham illness or whatever and then are seen painting the town red, I am not sure your company would be too understanding, would it?

If Akthar had told the team management he wanted a break -- and that break had been granted -- I doubt any questions would have been asked.

Malcolm Speed has a striking similarity with Pervez Musharraf, in terms of hard-headedness and cold strategy with which they pursue their goal, be it Pakistan supported terrorism, or building a monopolistic financial empire of ICC where other boards and players would be subservient to ICC in the future.

They are always good in one more thing: hiding the real face, real intention. India, on the other hand, being a soft and warm nation would always lack the attitude to deal with these hard and cold attitude of its' rivals / enemies; in the past, present and future! Lets talk about secularism.

--Dhiraj Gupta

Prem Panicker: Um. What's secularism got to do with any of this?

I am not sure our losses in New Zealand are significant. That is because looking at the performance of the NZ team, India did not fair that bad. No doubt NZ has won all the matches so far, in comparison both teams have bowled well and both teams' batting orders   have collapsed. Except the first Test, the matches were closely fought and could have been anybodys' game.

Sadly, in the both the losses, it was Zaheer Khan's less than average performance at the crucial times was the key to the losses. In the first Test, 105/5 with still 55 runs needed, Zahir needed to bowl very accurately. And the same case in the first ODI. So I think we should not be too much depressed about this series. And if Srinath was there in the team for the Tests, it would have been a different story. So I would blame the selectors for this more than Ganguly and the team.

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