Random thoughts

I felt cheated on the very first day of the second test against South Africa. The glaring absence of Rahane and replacing Bhuvi with Ishant Sharma made me see red. How can you expect the team to win if you do not play your best 11? Yes, Mr. Kohli, I am naming the best 11 that should have formed the team against South Africa at the Centurion. This match made me realize how insignificant and helpless I am in the scheme of things. Feeling as passionately as I do about the Indian cricket team, I realized I have absolutely no say in it. I followed the score and hoped against hope for a miracle victory, but on principle I did not watch the match. I did not read any related articles, interviews (except one) or even the match report. It was my way of protesting against the bad choices made by the team management.

As the cliché goes, every game has a winner and a loser. I am OK with us being the latter sometimes. There are times when you know the team in not capable of winning and it deserves to lose. Then there are times when the team is capable, it tries and falls short (as it happened in the first test). Defeats under these circumstances are painful but acceptable. But this was a different situation. There was either arrogance or indifference in still not making Rahane a part of the playing 11. I would be lying if I say I have nothing against Rohit Sharma. I have been quite vocal about my grudge with him about not playing to his potential consistently and the extremely long rope his career has received over the last eight to ten years. In my previous post,  I had even commented that he doesn’t have a place in the team despite his current ‘form’. I never dreamt he would come in the team in place of Rahane! Virat Kohli, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane are our core batsmen in tests anywhere, but especially overseas. Sure, Rahane had an utterly forgettable test series against Sri Lanka but this is South Africa! This is where you need your test ‘specialists’. I am not saying Rahane’s inclusion would have guaranteed a better performance, I mean even Pujara failed on all occasions, but there is always a possibility of a longer, steadier innings from him than from Rohit Sharma. At stumps on day 4, when you are 35/3 with your top three batsmen back in the pavilion and  you need another 250 odd runs to win and keep the series alive, having a Pujara and a Rahane at the crease (or in the line up) gives you hope, something that the presence of a Rohit Sharma can not. I was flummoxed by Parthiv Patel’s inclusion in the team but later found out about Saha’s injury. I, however, believe Dinesh Karthik is a better replacement than Parthiv Patel.

Our bowlers did well to take 20 wickets in both the tests. But I think it is time we take a long, hard look at the relevance of having Ashwin in our travelling team. Not having watched the match, it would be unfair of me to comment on his or any other person’s performance (never mind that I am doing just that), but over the last couple of years Ashwin has lost his ‘lethality’. It is time we groom a successor for Ashwin.

The positives from the match were the 20 wickets and Kohli’s century. As much as I am fuming about his captaincy decisions I am just in awe of the batsman! If 90s belonged to Tendulkar, 2010s belong to Kohli. And I am impressed with how sorted he is most of the time. This series is a good learning experience for him and I hope he picks up the right lessons.

Having completely failed at the prediction of the series, I do not know what to say about the next match. I still believe we are capable of winning. What we need, to quote our captain, is “intent”!