Letter of the Day

Of experiments and more

The Indian cricket management, be it the BCCI or the team itself that makes all the decisions once the series starts, baffle us everytime. Each time you think they are on the right track they say or do something that makes you wonder.

What motivates their decisions, what logic do they apply just beats the hell out of everyone.

And here is the latest:

They are thinking hard about replacing one of the spinners with Bangar. The first part seems well thought out, but the second part beats me. The case in his favor is his good showing in the Tests as an opener. Which is true, he has proved to be the a good enough opener, at least till a perfect one is found, in the Tests.

But what has he done to as an opener that inspires confidence that he should be in the one day team? The rate he scores at is good for the Tests, but what in heaven is he going to do in a fast scoring one-day match. And then to think the problem with Indian team today is not the batting, which has never looked better. It is the bowling that is needed an overhaul. And as a bowler, that a main stock bowler he is certainly not in the major league.

A good fast bowler is the need of the hour, one whose primary job is to bowl and bowl well. A strike bowler, hostile and not afraid to bend his back. Some one who may also become Zaheer's partner in future. Not half hearted attempts at finding someone who can be economical.

Even the best of his fans could hardly imagine Bangar as a hostile strike bowler in the mold of Zaheer Khan and Srinath.

Wonder what the powers to be have been doing all this while. It was since England that we recognised the need for another bowler. And yet they have not tapped the MRF Pace Academy or made a call to the National Cricket Academy to tell them that they have a couple of months to unearth a good bowler and keep him prepared to face West Indians and maybe New Zealand. It is pathetic that each time an injury claims a bowler we fall back on the inconsistent Agarkar, when we very well know that he is more a liability than an asset to any Indian team.

By the way, whatever is happening to the bowlers from NCA and MRF? Where are they going?

Shakeel Abedi