The India Aussie Series -- My thoughts

The score line reflected the performance of the Indian team. Typically, during the past , for  a series played  away from home , it has been familiar 4-0 blanking out for the Indian team.

However , this time, it looked much better although it was still a 2-0 in favour of the Aussies.  The Indian team threatened  in the first test at Adelaide , faltered at Brisbane but were at par at Melbourne and Sydney that led to the  two draws. I agree it could have gone in favour of the Aussies but India did hold on and that was a good result .

Some thoughts on the series :

MSDhoni : While I  continue to say that the timing of his retirement was brilliant , some figures will tell us how the man played the game and  how he viewed results from his perspective and did not chase records. He played 90 tests , scored 4876 runs and had 294 victims as a  keeper.

 Now any cricketer  with this scoreline under his belt, , to me will go for Glory – get to 100 Tests , get to 5000 runs and get to 300 dismissals . I can tell you that  the Sachin's and the Sourav’s of the world would  have  stretched to get to the records and also typical Indian  public sentiment will support it as well. I remember Kapil Dev stretching his retirement  to get to 434 to beat Richard Hadlee’s record knowing very well that it will be surpassed.  In fact with  home series against lowly ranked teams coming up in the recent future  , Dhoni could have continued and got to the landmarks.  But Dhoni is not that breed. His timing of the decision was outstanding. Kudos to the Captain Cool for what he did.

How about the new Captain ?

Virat Kohli : 

He is  young , brash and aggressive and how aggressive ? I think his problem lies  right there in the aggressiveness . Do we have an alternate to him ? I think Not —The leadership pool is dry at this point and this is  evident of the fact  that Ishant Sharma is the Vice captain. 

Virat needs lot of coaching , counselling guidance as he takes on the leadership of the team .  This is where Ravi Shastri  has to help with his immense knowledge of the game and the right behavior on the field in his role as the Director of Indian Cricket . Ravi is outspoken and connects well with all players and should be able to shape up Virat..

There is no doubt that  Virat  is a match winner and an intense competitor.  I have followed him closely for the past several years  . He was remarkable when he led India U 19 team win the world cup in 2007.   And this incident will prove how strong his temperament is :

 Not sure how many know of  his passion and commitment for the game during personal crisis. On day 2 of a Ranji match , his team Delhi was struggling and Virat was playing  , he learnt as play ended that  his father had passed away. One would have expected him not to resume his innings  on day 3, the next day. But Virat did and saved the situation for Delhi and then went back to his family for his father’s last rites.

So he has got it in him .. The help that is needed is not to become another  Hansie Cronje who was very similar in his approach and had great ambitions for South Africa. We all know how he dusted himself.

Batting : 

This was a big surprise .. The team batted brilliantly Down Under. Murali Vijay was outstanding , Kohli exploded all the time , Rahane blossomed, Rahul show promise for the future. Still need to sort out Rohit , Raina and Pujara – Do not see good replacements for the no 3, 6 and 7 slots. We need more bowlers who can bat a bit as well ( the Ashwin , Bhuvi types ) – cannot have a tail that reads – Yadav , Ishant  and Aaron ..  We also need a good wicketkeeper who can bat a bit more than Saha… But definitely a big plus from this tour was the batting

Bowling – 

this is  a horror story. If the current pace attack is the best that India has currently , then we have no chance of bowling out the opposition twice on overseas soil. We have tons of work to do to bring this bowling attack to what is expected. And we have to make the current bowlers better.. Again the backup talent is shallow.

Overall ,  the above comments are for the Indian Test team- for the One dayers , it is a different ball game and we still have the services of Captain Cool and that is a big big plus.