Calypso MAGIC...

Caribbean Tussle

Rahul Dravid and his men have been in the Caribbean for a week now. They are trying to get an old monkey off their back. They need to defeat the West Indies convincngly and break the record of not having won a series in the Caribbean for the last 30 years. Looking at the West Indies of today, the Indians definately start as favorites, but they will not be meek pushovers like the Zimbabweans or the Bangladeshis.

The last time the Indians were there, under Saurav Ganguly's captaincy they were a team on the rise, but they did not manage to win the series. They lost the 3 test and levelled the series. The Indian team is 3 in the world in both forms of the game and the West Indian team too seems to be confident after their demolition of the Zimbabwe team recently.

With "Brian Charles Lara" at the helm no one knows what to expect from this stalwart. Can he inspire his boys to defeat the the mighty Indian team which has had quite a few shake ups in the recent past but still looks very strong with new stars like Dhoni (Now the Number 2 batsman in the world in ODIs), Suresh Raina and Sreesanth coming to the fore. I believe that the Indians will win the series hands down but in this game you never can say. The Caribbeans in their home environment with the tremendous crowd support may just spur them on to something miraculous and it will also be interesting to see how the young Indians do in hostile conditions.

There are a few worries in the Indian camp with injures to Ramesh Powar and S.Sreesanth but they should be strong enough to come out of it and be ready to take their place in the team in time for the 2-3 one dayer. Sachin Tendulkar has been the foucs of all the attention in the Indian media off late to see if he can recover in time to join the team for the Test matches and the World would be in for a special treat of seeing two of the world's greatest batsmen on the same stage maybe for the last time in test match cricket.

The test matches are still a while away and we hope sachin will be fit in time for the series, for no other reason other than it will be great to see that dual.

The Indians play their first one dayer later today on a pitch that is supposedly a green top. With the pace attack that the Indian currently boast of it should favour the Indian team. With a solid win over Jamaica the Indians should be really high on confidance.

A Second Chance

Ravi Shastri was recently quoted saying that the selectors should be ruthless in selection and old players should not be given another chance unless the current crop does really badly and there is no more backup for them. This would seem to imply that no matter what Ganguly or Zaheer or D.Mongia do in first class cricket, he feels they should not be given a second chance. I feel we should never forget some of these cricketers because they have match winning abilites and the door should never be completely shut on any of them. If the door has to be closed, let them close it themselves with mediocre performances.

Burnout

Player burnout seems to be a major issue for players these days. I feel there is a very simple solution to the entire issue. Most cricket boards contract 25-30 cricketers for the national team every year. Which means they feel they are good enough to represent the country, they should put in a rotation system in place where the best cricketers play maybe 3/4 of the time and the rest of the time they can be rotated with the second rung players. They could take 18 people on tour instead of 16 and implement the policy, this also gives you more injury cover. 18 would mean 3 bowlers, 3 batsmen and 1 wicketkeeper on stand-by. That is sufficent cover for all the players on the field. The schedule cannot get less exhausting and this is the best way forward. Like Kapil Dev said, they are professionals and if they feel they need a break let them take a break.


Rahul Murali Venkataraman
(Correspondent http://rahulblah.blogspot.com)