The best of Indian Cricket:: Openers and the fast men

I wanted to do a writeup on the best Indian XI. I rather decided to conjure up the best players for various slots . If I miss someone please remind me.
In the first part I would do a round up on the openers and fast men. India has never been well endowed in these departments. And that explains why they have been perennial whipping boys of test cricket.

The openers.

Indian cricket has never been well endowed in this area. The list is made up of people who were forced/converted to open.
So my choice of the best openers India had, who would also be serious contenders in an International side would be
Sunil Gavaskar: Unequivocal choice. Would walk into any world XI

Virender Sehwag: Continues to redefine the realms of cricket.
Don't need to say much about these two. The others will need some description.

Vinoo Mankad:
The one half of Second highest ever opening partnership. He was an extremely versatile cricketer. Mankad's best performance was against England at Lord's in 1952. In the first innings he top-scored with 72. During England's first innings, he bowled 73 overs and took 5 wickets for 196 runs. In India's second innings in that Test match, he top-scored again with 184 runs out of India's total of 378. Though England won the game easily, Mankad's all-round performance salvaged India's pride in a series where they were heavily over-matched. Mankad was the first player in more than 30 years to score a 100 and take five wickets in the same Test and the first Indian to achieve this feat.

Navjot Singh Sidhu:This motor mouth would not make most of the teams except India. But such has been the paucity of openers in Indian cricket. He started of a stroke-less wonder, but went on to become a six hitting maniac. His double hundred against West Indies would put most insomniacs to sleep. Many people recount Tendulkar marauding Shane warne in 1997. It is easy to forget that he was already softened by the assault of Sidhu and Laxman.

Gautam Gambhir. I feel its too early to put him on the list of best openers. But he is not doubt better than the most we have had. Played the innings of his life in Napier, Newzealand. Batted 10hrs to help save the test. His true test will be when India visit the Proteas later this year.

There are others like Chetan Chauhan and Wasim Jaffer. Jaffer in particular I felt never lived upto his promise. Chauhan had 10 100+ partnerships for the first wicket with Gavaskar.He scored over 2000 runs but never scored a century. And then there is Krishnamachari Srikanth. A maverick batsman, but with the likes of Sehwag around no way he would make the list.

The Fast Men
The achilles heel of Indian cricket. It has always struggled to field more than one quick bowler in its eleven. Most of them have been the fast medium and slow variety. India have only two genuinely quick bowlers and one of them was known as Tiny. India was not always a pauper in fast bowling. In fact it started off with two excellent apprentices in Shaikh Mohammad Nissar and Ladhabhai Nakum Amar Singh.

Mohammad Nissar was as fast as they come. Indian batsman C.K. Nayudu claimed in his writings that during his first spell, Nissar was faster than Englishman Harold Larwood, who terrorized Australia in 1932 in the infamous Bodyline series. He was a Pashtun leader who migrated to Pakistan post Independence.

Amar Singh was a medium pacer of McGrath variety, who could make the ball shoot of from good length. He was a good batsman too and was the first Indian to complete the all-rounder's double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in the Ranji Trophy.

Ramakant Desai:
At 5ft 6" he was unusually short for a genuine quick bowler.
He was nick named Tiny. Like other Indian fast bowlers he was overworked. His duels with the legendary Hanif Mohammad make for rather interesting reading.

Kapil Dev:
India's greatest ever all-rounder. He would make any side purely as a bowler. A lovely side on action, he could bowl the banana curve out-swingers. A brilliant athlete and excellent outfielder, his catch of Viv Richards in the 83 world cup finals will be etched in our minds for ever. He also held the record for most no of wickets in test cricket till Walsh took it over from him.

Javagal SrinathHe took over the mantle of India's strike bowler from Kapil Dev. He was quite unlucky and suffered quite a bit from butter fingered Indian slip fielders. He was a real lion heart, and could bowl really fast at times. He is known to have flirted around 150K in the start of his career. He famously puked after knocking over Merrick Pringle. He was a key part of the 2003 world cup campaign. He reinvented himself and was India's leading wicket taker of the tournament.

Zaheer Khan Zaheer Khan burst into the collective consciousness with his yorkers in the ICC knock out trophy of 2000. I still remember watching him bowl to Steve Waugh from my college canteen. He started off well and like most Indian bowlers lost his way. But he has bounced back well and is one of the best bowlers in the world today. Can move the bowl both ways as well as from both sides.

There are a few more I would like to mention like Salim Durrani and Manoj Prabhakar. They were generally chosen in the Indian side because of their all round abilities and not real world beaters as bowlers. I would rather cover them in detail while doing the round up of all rounders. Venkatesh Prasad started well. But then Saeed Anwar and Jayasuriya happened. They combined with captaincy of India's worst ever captain post independence put an end to his career.

A God Or A Ghost

So finally the 200 has been breached in the odi’s. I am not surprised that Tendulkar was the one who did it. Before you continue reading this post let me warn you that I am not a Sachin fan. I admire him for his passion for the game. He still likes his job and excels in it even after twenty years. I find it difficult to keep the love going after 6 yrs. There is many a lesson to learn from him. But let’s keep it for some other day. This post is more on the evolution of the batting in the LOI form of cricket.
Many batsmen have threatened to breach 200 runs mark, but perhaps got too greedy reaching it. Most recently sehwag and dilshan threatened to breach it in the same match. The advent of T20 has pushed the scoring rates to a new high. But what has made the feat achievable is the powerplays and mandatory changing of the ball after 35th over. The bats have been getting better but still it was difficult to maintain the tempo for 50 overs as the balls used to get softer and hitting 4s and 6s with tired limbs was not easy.
If we study the history of the limited overs game, In the first 20 years only 3 men managed to breach the 150 runs mark a total of 4 times. Twice by that great man Viv Richards, once by Kapil Dev and Glenn Turner. These are remarkable innnings as these were before the era of fielding restrictions, helmets, power-plays front foot no balls, strict leg side wides rules, restriction on bouncers etc.
The 1992 was the dawn of a new era as the 15 over field restrictions was introduced.
However it was not until 1996 that powerhitting caught up. In the next few years the 150 mark was routinely breached, till the bowlers started catching up. The team scores continued to rise but the individual scores started seeing a bit of a slump.
Then came the T20s, power-plays and the ball change rules. These changes have removed the bowlers totally out of the equation. These along with ever shortening length of boundaries have removed any challenge whatsoever the batsman had. Only obstacle a LOI batsman has thesedays is boredom.
Technology is advancing in all sports, but so is the human effort. Bolt still has to run 100m’s. Better shoes and tracks help him, but he still is a cut above the rest.
We love the nadal/federer rivalry for the contest, the rallies. It would have been boring if they had been indulging in a slugfest of aces. Similarly in football people love goals. But we don't remove the defenders and goal keepers and have 90 mins of free kicks and penalty shootout.

I don’t understand these craze for feeding more 4s and 6s. A six used to be thrilling as we never knew till the last moment if it was a six or the batsman was out. These days the moment a ball is hit in air the only thrill is if the ball has been hit out of the stadium or not. Perhaps we should bring the original 6 rule. Award 6 runs only for balls hit out of the ground. Not an impossible feat. I love the game. And want to keep on loving it. But for that, the contest should return back. A few more years of such ghastly innings I am off from this nonsense for ever.

An Elixir for ODI's

One day cricket is in news again, albeit for all the wrong reasons. I am not in favour of abolishing it.
For crickets sake we need to Ensure the primacy of Test cricket and need to make it elitist. Restrict it to 8 nations. Use T20's as a tool to popularize cricket and use ODI's as a bridge between Tests and T20's. Cricket should follow a 4 year calendar. The bottom two of the eight nations be relegated. To make ODI's more interesting it is imperative to make changes and bring the bowler back in the game. I don't agree with the concept of 2 25 over innings. Shane warne had proposed this around 5 years ago. At that time it looked interesting, but not any more with the advent of T20's.

Some of the changes I propose:
1. Introduce a min cap for bowlers and abolish the max cap. I suggest, make it compulsory for 4 bowlers to bowl 10 overs each. No restriction on max no of overs a bowler can bowl. This eliminates the need for bits and pieces players. The bane of ODI cricket.
2. Abolish the concept of runners for batsmen. It's equivalent to chucking by bowlers. No substitute fielders either. This will ensure only genuinely fit players will play.
3. Better ball which will last 50 overs. This will bring back reverse swing into play.
4. Increase the bouncer limit to 2 per over.
5. Reintroduce backfoot no ball rule. If the non striker can leave the crease before the bowler delivers then the bowler too shall be allowed some lee way.
6. Restriction on boundar dimensions. The bounday ropes need to be atleast 75m. We need to give the spinner a chance to take wicket. Entice and deceive the batsman. I was aghast to see Hayden beaten in flight hit a 6. Modern bats and short boundaries are a sure shot death sentence for spinners.