Tag Archives: dhoni

The Revenge Series Is Going Well

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India secure the return ODI series with a win and now lead by 3-0. Dhoni is leading the rout with another unbeaten innings. Although today’s match was close, with 5 wickets in hand towards the end, it was going to be very tough for England to win. And unless they are able to make significant improvements all around, it looks to be a 0-5 rout.

Which would have been great for India if the ODI series had been coupled with a Test series. Unfortunately, it is going to be another year before England tour India, and much of this would have been forgotten. England, on its part, are going to have tough times before then, playing Pakistan and Sri Lanka. And most likely would have lost their No. 1 ranking by then. India, also, have a tough tour of Australia coming up. Therefore, the next Test series may not be the battle at the top that we saw with the India tour of England.

Anyway, be that may, it is a welcome turnaround of fortunes for MS Dhoni. After the miserable England tour, Dhoni had another terrible tournament, the Champions League, where his team, Chennai Super Kings, ended up at the bottom of the league. And people have been talking about the end of his Midas Touch. That would not be a good thing for India, but hopefully that is not the case, and the last few months have been just a deviation from the norm.

Dhoni’s Misfortune Continues

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I was not intending to post much on the Champions League. For some reason, it doesn’t seem as compelling as the IPL. But they had a few interesting games, especially the one between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians, where the latter seemed all at sea until some lusty hitting by Lasith Malinga in the last few overs took Mumbai past the finish line.

When the tour from hell ended for India in England where they failed to win every single international match, I thought the nightmare was over for Mahendra Singh Dhoni. It was the only major aberration in a spectacularly successful captaincy career. So perhaps he would get back to India and then captain CSK to the Champions League trophy and set everything back on track again. And then beat England in the return ODI series and so on.

But things don’t seem to be going according to plan back in heaven. Chennai lost their first home game of the season. And Dhoni missed a stumping of the eventual match-winner Malinga at a crucial time in the match. In the England series, there were times when India had the upper hand, but failed to take advantage. The story seems to be repeating.

Hopefully, this is not the start of a trend. CSK did show good form throughout the match and they should be able to take it and win the next few to reach the semis. Mike Hussey has been able to carry on the good form in the Sri Lanka test series to the Twenty20 match. As long as Chennai can win the next few, …

After the Whitewash has Dried

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It is a strange thing. The 4-0 defeat has everyone upset and saying that India should learn lessons from the defeat. But what exactly? I am curious.

If it is more tour matches before a big series, shouldn’t India have had better performances as the series progressed? In fact, India had better chances of winning a match in the first and second Tests.

If it is the captaincy, who is there to replace Dhoni? There is no plausible contender. And Sehwag and Gambhir (who could have been) have performed very badly in the series. Maybe he could have got a couple of decisions right and improved his skill against the second new ball, but everybody has a bad series. And this was Dhoni’s first. (OK, a terrible series, but still his first)

If it is the coach, are you going to fire Duncan Fletcher who has just joined the team without giving him the chance to rebuild? And isn’t it his real fault the timing of his joining the team?

If it is the senior players, well, Dravid was the Indian man of the series. And I would like to meet the selection team which has the guts to ax Sachin Tendulkar. As for Laxman, he was fourth in the series batting totals (behind Dravid, Tendulkar and Dhoni).

If it is the openers, any replacement on the horizon for Sehwag and Gambhir? Seriously, is there any player who can be so destructive to the opposition as Sehwag in full flow? But here is a neat idea: As a selector, you can use Mukund as a scapegoat and end his career.

If it was the rest of the batsmen, okay, you have a good point about Raina. But he did play well in the West Indies. And he did make a 78. And if you can forgive Sehwag’s king pair, why not Raina’s pair which at least lasted for 40+ balls and wasted some time? And Yuvraj, seriously? Are you going to blame an injured batsman?

If it was the spin bowling, Harbhajan may not be in the best form during the series. But so was Swann, supposedly the best spinner in the world! And Harbhajan did not get to play at the Oval. And Harbhajan’s lack of batting was more to blame for the defeat, but he is not there as a batsman. And Mishra, are you going to let this experience go to waste?

If it was the “pace” bowling, Praveen Kumar did okay, right? Right? Also, Zaheer is a lucky duck as everyone keeps saying, “What if Zaheer was fit?” And Ishant – are you going to let his promise end at such an early age? Sreesanth? Everybody knows he is a maverick. You don’t select Sreesanth to bowl consistently. You just hope that he is having a lucky day. And RP Singh was never meant to be in the team in the first place.

When you lose 1-0 or even 2-0, there are things you could do differently to have a better result. But when you lose four matches very badly, then there are no incremental improvements. You cannot just throw 3-4 people out of the team and expect better results.

As for radical changes, even that is not possible with this team. India plays Australia this winter and if you try to make some stupid point by throwing out members of the team that played in the last couple of Tests, you could have the potential to end up with another 4-0 result.

I would say that the only possible solution is to keep the team intact, and work to mentally and physically prepare them for the next challenge, and wish them all the best.

Indian Cricket Fans Battle It Out

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Achettup has a ferocious post at Bored Cricket, castigating fans and media who had the temerity to diss India after “just” three poor Tests against England. It is a good rant mixing “shoot the messenger” spice with sour grapes. I kinda sorta agree with him on a broader perspective, i.e., this has been one bad performance after many accomplishments by the Indian team. But on the specifics, he gets many things wrong. So here is what I have to say about that:

  1. Is it so surprising to see fans and media angry after losing 3 consecutive Tests against the same opposition, especially as the performances have grown worse as the tour progressed? This was supposed to be a closely fought series for the No. 1 Test spot and what did we get? Mostly a rout. And the Indian fans are supposed to be happy about that?
  2. India were happy to proclaim themselves No. 1 in Test cricket. It was a big deal! In 2009 when Tests were already in decline and Twenty20 was all the rage. Now, when we have lost the top spot, that is when Tests have become irrelevant? Test cricket is dying now? It was in good health two years ago or even two months ago?
  3. OK, maybe that was Achettup’s way of illustrating how you can come up with a bad argument quickly. But in the comments, he states that similar reactions after the 2007 ODI WC ended up with India winning the T20 World Cup. So shouldn’t that mean that complaining leads to results and not complaining leads to what?
  4. These complaints did not start yesterday. Many of the criticisms have been made for months now and they have only been noticed because more people have joined in and so gotten louder.

Let us look at those criticisms from the past. Correct me if I am wrong.

Tour planning: This has been true for some time now. We have lost or found difficult the first Test in many away series (in Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and England). This has been a pattern, discussed repeatedly by fans and whoever responsible for scheduling tours should have taken this into account. Also, backup bowlers not having visas?

Old greats need to be phased out: Once again, this has been discussed for years. With Sachin and Dravid at 38 years old and Laxman at 36 years, it opens up a huge void in the middle order. They are not responsible for the current series loss (and people should not bring it up in that context), but what happens in the future? The fact that Dravid was added to the ODI team speaks volumes about the lack of planning in this regard.

India’s Test record: It has been good, but not great. We did beat Australia 2-0 at home, but that have easily been 1-1. 1-0 away wins against New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies. A drawn away series against South Africa. Good accomplishments that has improved India’s record incrementally, but no dominating stuff there. The 0-3 now is a big step backward from our previous series win in England.

Dhoni’s captaincy: In general, Dhoni has delivered both at international and club level as captain. But he has made some strange moves as well as timid ones. Start with the failure to chase a gettable target against West Indies. Then a failure to go for the kill against England during the few moments they were in trouble. Ishant not bowling, Dhoni bowling! Failure to stop the run glut. Along with his relative performance against Prior in the first two Tests, Dhoni has been one factor in India’s loss. Of course, we don’t have a successor waiting in the wings. So all this criticism of Dhoni is wasted.

Update to Surprising Fact of the Day

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A few weeks back, I had linked to Cricinfo’s stats article about captaincy records, showing how Dhoni had the best win-loss ratio among captains who have lead their team in at least 25 Tests. Well, after where we stand now (with 3-0) in the series, things have changed a bit. And here we are:

Dhoni 30 matches, 15 w, 6 l, 9 d. W/L ratio = 2.50
Strauss  38 matches, 20 w, 5 l, 13 d, W/L ratio = 4.00

Unless Dhoni wins 12 more matches without additional losses, he will not overtake Steve Waugh. However, he still has a splendid home record (10:1) though the best seems to be Mike Brearley (12:0). I don’t think Strauss’s ratio will stand after a few trips to the sub-continent, but for the moment, it is his run.

In general, the way the series has progressed, it is as if England were the team under-prepared for the first Test, as they only won by 196 runs on the final day. With more of the England team members finding form, what is in store for the last Test? In the 3rd Test, Cook who was missing in action found form and how! I guess the only person remaining is Swann.

Strangely, unlike many commentators, I find myself quite calm at India’s defeat. Many have found excuses and others have found various actions of India to blame. But if you take a step back and look at the big picture, India as a collective unit has been outclassed by England. You can quibble about lack of preparation or Sehwag’s brainless batting, but ultimately the gap between the two teams kept growing as the series went on.

I would relate this to another series played by India, long back in the early 1990s against Australia just before the 1992 World Cup, which India lost 0-4. That Indian team was supposed to be the best batting lineup in the world. It had a lot of superstars too. But in the Test series, the team batting performances were abysmal. There were a few gems (including from Tendulkar and Azharuddin), but time and again, it was the lower order that lent respectability to the scorecard.

Something similar happened on this tour. Everybody knew that India’s bowling was not that great, but we all expected great things from the batsmen. Unfortunately apart from Dravid, there hasn’t been much. We don’t know what the English team’s tactics are, but planned or not, they have been able to target the Indian lineup successfully. And that has made all the difference.

Also, I was very wrong. As always with my predictions about any England series.

The Best Wicketkeeper in the Batsman Role

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At the conclusion of the first Test against India, there was talk about Matt Prior being the best wicket-keeper batsman in the world right now. Many of the people commenting on the articles suggested that Kumar Sangakkara (with an average of 56.12 versus Prior’s 45.10) was the better batsman. Others pointed out that Sangakkara doesn’t keep wickets in Tests anymore and that his average as designed wicketkeeper is only 40.48 (while as a specialist batsman a staggering 72.75). Then people thought about Adam Gilchrist, but of course, he is not playing anymore.

So yes, on statistics alone, Prior seems to be the best around now. But who was the best ever wicket-keeper batsman? The answer happens to be Andy Flower, who was the best batsman for Zimbabwe when they were in a brief ascendancy before all the trouble by Mugabe happened. You can see the analysis at Cricinfo for all wicketkeepers with 3000+ runs. Not surprisingly, most of those at the top are recent players from the 1990s and 2000s:

Andy Flower (Zim) with 4404 runs at 53.70

Adam Gilchrist (Aus) with 5570 runs at 47.60

Kumar Sangakkara (SL) with 3117 runs at 40.48

MS Dhoni (Ind) with 3071 runs at 37.45

Alec Stewart (Eng) with 4540 runs at 34.92

Matt Prior is going to end up No. 2 or No. 3 on that list, more likely No. 3 as averages usually tend to go down towards the end of a career. Adam Gilchrist had a 60+ average by this 47th Test and maintained a 50+ average till his 80th Test, but then the next 16 Tests, which were his last, brought it down to 47.60. In the long view, Dhoni seems to be doing well. But he has not had many substantial scores in several Tests now and considering the fragile tail that India has, he should be doing more.

An Early Call on the India-England Series

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So I added my prediction to the multi-lingual mini-podcast on Bored Cricket Crazy Indians. Strangely enough, despite being an active contributor on the Internet tubes for years, this is the first time that I have done a voice thingy. The podcast is an interesting experiment with the participants predicting the India-England Test series (scoreline or other aspects) by speaking in their mother tongue. So there is Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, even Afrikaans. I added mine in Malayalam even though strictly speaking, it is more my mother’s language than my mother language, as I only know how to speak it and am functionally illiterate as far as writing goes.

My prediction was 1-0 England. It is no secret that both teams have a strong batting lineup and their bowling is comparatively weak. Both sides have struggled to take out oppositions in the recent past. But England has a slight edge, having recently played against a stronger team at home (i.e., same grounds) with the same team. India, on the other hand, had just finished a series against a weak team (West Indies) which was marred by rain and ended in an less-than-satisfactory 1-0 win.

When I made my prediction, I thought that India would be playing with a different team. Ironically, many of the team members who were expected to replace the weakened team in the West Indies are having trouble. Sehwag already out of the first Test. Zaheer Khan a few overs into the first bowling innings. Tendulkar suffering from some illness. Now Gautam Gambhir hit in the elbow. The team members left standing were all part of the team in West Indies.

The outcome of the series would probably be determined by batting collapses or at least under-performing innings, such as the first India innings. I thought England was on their way to a fantastic breakdown today after losing 4 wickets quickly, but India took the shoes off their throat. Dhoni’s tactics have been very strange, to say the least. There are tactics that make sense, but are wrong in the particular context, and you can make a case to criticize them. But other tactics are spectacularly nuts (like not having Ishant bowl immediately after lunch or having Dravid keep towards the end) that it seems like a terrible waste to explain why they are wrong.

Surprising Fact of the Day

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From Cricinfo:

Among captains who have led in at least 25 Tests, Dhoni has the best win-loss ratio (5.00) followed by Steve Waugh (4.55) and Mike Brearley (4.50).

I didn’t realize that this was the case. Also, if you look at the table, while there are some (Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards) who have captained many more Tests, the others are very close to Dhoni (27 Tests) in number of Tests: Brearley (31), Andrew Strauss (35), Richie Benaud (28) and Ian Chappell (30).

The list of unbeaten series are:

  • Two series against Australia in India
  • England in India
  • New Zealand away and at home
  • Sri Lanka away and at home
  • South Africa away and at home
  • Bangladesh in Bangladesh (not as easy as Bangladesh in India)
  • West Indies in West Indies

So none of the series were easy pickings. India could have had an even better record, but they have drawn a few matches that they could have won with more favorable weather and luck. There are a few difficult challenges ahead. The England tour is going to be a major one with the England team coming off some good wins. Then later in the year a tour to Australia – that is the one to watch.

Anyway, the Dhoni Midas Touch continues. It could have been even better, but I will take this for now.

Who Will Replace Dhoni?

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In reply to my last post about firing Dhoni, a few of you have asked, “Who is there to replace Dhoni? There is NO alternative!”

My response is what would you do if Dhoni was injured and out of a year. Would India go with a captain? I don’t think so. We will find someone.

Regardless of Dhoni’s performance of a captain, we have to groom the second tier of leaders in the cricket team. With so many matches (international, IPL) being played today, India cannot afford to have a captain without any backup.

And it has to be a real backup. Not a puppet who is unaware of the strategies and tactics, and doesn’t have a mind of his own.

So let us take the 2011 World Cup which, I presume, is what all Indians cricket fans are looking forward to. It is a watershed event because it will probably mark the end of the Tendulkar era. I don’t think Tendulkar, Dravid and some players in other teams (Murali, Ponting?) will continue beyond that.

We have roughly 18 months to go before that. So what is our Grand Unified Strategy?

What is our core team? Who are the players? What is the backup plan for each of these players in case of injury and lack of form? What are we doing to ensure adequate playing time for the players and their backups, without overburdening them?

Are we planning to launch any special tactics for the World Cup (ala NZ 1992, SL 1996, etc.)? Are we going to pilot them or keep them hidden until the last minute? Will there be special tactics for batting, bowling, fielding or taking advantage of ODI rules (such as Powerplay times)?

What if we cannot execute these tactics effectively or they don’t yield the predicted results? Do we have a conventional plan to fall back upon? This is the most critical part, because if we cannot win by playing conventionally, then we will be blown out of the water by strong teams such as Australia and South Africa. Innovative tactics has to be built upon a team that can still play well otherwise.

What has India done in the last 12 months that gives you the confidence as an Indian cricket fan that India can bring the goods in 2011? My confidence was high at the beginning of the year, but with each passing month, I feel that India is losing its way.

Once again, we have 18 months. Do you think Dhoni can do his job and get the strategy right? Or should we persist with him and then see India keep experimenting with showmanship tactics that do nothing to advance our campaign for the World Cup?

Time to Fire Dhoni

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Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s initial captaincy was like a breath of fresh air. Dhoni seemed to be the perfect person to take India through the transition from the old set of players (Ganguly, Kumble, Dravid, Tendulkar) to a younger group. And he had a great start to his captaincy: winning the Twenty20 World Cup and leading Chennai Super Kings to the finals. His record as a Test captain started with four consecutive victories against South Africa, Australia and England.

What was special about those initial days? Several things. He commanded respect in the team, but also gave respect and believed in his team. I remember the 2007 match against Australia when he, as a first-time captain, could have panicked. Instead, he made all the right calls, bringing his strike bowlers back, getting rid of the dangerous Hayden and trusting a total newcomer with the final over. That took guts. Later, details of that event showed a captain who was willing to stand behind his team and take responsibility.

Then things changed. I guess there were early warning signs. I remember Dhoni taunting Ravi Shastri about his Cricinfo article that gave no hope to India. That only meant that Dhoni was closely following the press and it had got to him. And he had no reason to feel angry. India were true underdogs in the first T20 Cup. Shastri only said what was obvious. But negative criticism affected Dhoni and it seems to continue to do so.

The first signs of change was the second India-England Test in 2008. India could have pressed hard for a victory. Instead they batted on and on until Gambhir fell short of a century. What was going on? It was obvious that somebody wanted to seal an Indian series victory without taking any risk, even though there was none and a much greater chance of having a whitewash. Who was that person?

As the Twenty20 World Cup approached, the batting order changes began. Hindsight is always 20-20, but even at that time, the whole circus of moving people around seemed ridiculous. Remember India had already tried this when Greg Chappell was in charge. Then, Irfan Pathan and Dhoni made hay and India set records in chasing down scores. But very soon, the strategy backfired after both players lost form. Why would India re-embrace such a failed tactic? Maybe because Dhoni remembered those days fondly?!

The worst part of this batting shuffle game was Dhoni’s position. It is impossible to peer into a man’s soul, but it seemed the epitome of selfishness to see Dhoni walk out at No. 3 each time the openers set a strong foundation, while remaining hidden when wickets fell early.

Fast forward to the Champions Trophy. Let’s ignore for a second all the results and focus on one moment in the last match. This was when Dhoni came to bowl against West Indies in the 17th over of the match when West Indies were 49/4. This against the second-string team when neither Harbhajan nor Mishra had come out to bowl.

So what was Dhoni doing? Read SOAL’s take on this. But let me simplify it for you. There are only two explanations – one giving the benefit of the doubt to Dhoni (he was doing it for the benefit of the team) and the other not so (he was doing it for some selfish reason). Let us ignore the second one and accept that Dhoni was doing it for the team. But that also is a terrible indictment of Dhoni.

Dhoni had never bowled a single ball in almost 150 one-dayers. Apparently, he believed that he could do a good job of containing West Indies or taking their wickets than two experienced spinners (Harbhajan & Mishra) against a second-hand side who had just lost to Bangladesh. Either he is the biggest nut job or he is the biggest self-glorifying egomaniac in Indian cricket.

And that is the kindest interpretation of events. A captain who believed in his team once now thinks that he is better than the specialists in his team. Yes, he can bat better than they do – that’s why he comes at No. 3. He can bowl better than they do – that’s why he chucks off the gloves. And he can also keep. He is the Superman!

India doesn’t need such mentally damaged goods. Give the reign to someone who has both feet on the ground and who can take India through to the next World Cup and win it.