Its Only Cricket

3rd Test: Australia wins Sydney Test (scorecard), South Africa won Test Series 2-1.. T20 & ODI series follows.
Current Cricket Series : South Africa vs Australia, West Indies vs New Zealand. Coming Up : India in NZ 2009.

For a long jump, you've to take a few backward steps

Filed under Article India's tour of South Africa.

Sourav Ganguly has an ego. Sportcenter must have got a good taste of it when he hung up on them during their 3 pm special edition on Indian test team selection today.

Sourav Ganguly is also a lazy man on the field and he isn't good enough to bowl 10 overs regularly in every test Innings.

Sourav Ganguly, in short, is a chapter of Indian cricket which has to be closed before we can look forward to building a World Champion Indian cricket team.

But the reality is we have failed to tackle South African fast bowlers on their pitches. When so many things were going well Sourav Ganguly Selected.jpg

towards building that dream Indian cricket team - we lost the momentum on West Indies tour. And haven't regained it as yet... even when we did beat West Indies in West Indies after 36 years.

The fact of the matter is we badly need to win. Nothing else is our cure. But the good thing is - the time is just perfect. If we start winning right now, with 8 home ODI's and 3 test matches to go - we can easily be the one team with confidence, momentum and proven ability to play on West Indies pitches, come the World Cup in March.

I mentioned ego that Sourav Ganguly has, and I am not backing away from it. But ego is a rare nature of human being which has to be their if you want to win the World. Don't Australian team have an ego? Remember their incidence with Mr. Powar..??

If we add this egoist man with Dravid, Tendulkar, Sehwag, Laxman, Dhoni and Jaffer - we suddenly have a batting lineup which South Africa will think twice before blowing over.

We cannot over night turn our talented but inexperienced young batsmen overnight and teach them how to play real fast bowling. What we can do is call back a guy who has some memories of scoring on those hostile pitches, and seems to have the hunger as well.. at least through the news that he makes.

I am not sure where Sourav Ganguly will bat in the line-up, or how many overs will he bowl, or even how many catches will he take - but he is a better bet than unleashing Subramaniam Badrinath right now.

All we need from this "Castle & Lager" 3 test match series in South Africa is not to lose it. If we can win one test match, or even the series - fine. But our motto should be not to lose anything more from here on, even if it comes at a cost of not winning it.

Indian test squad for South Africa tour 2006

Rahul Dravid (Capt)	Mahendra Singh Dhoni
VVS Laxman (V.Capt)	Dinesh Karthik
Sachin Tendulkar
Virendra Sehwag	Anil Kumble
Wasim Jaffer	Harbhajan Singh
Gautam Gambhir
	Zaheer Khan
	Munaf Patel
Sourav Ganguly	S Sreesanth
Irfan Pathan	VRV Singh

I know it's a wrong attitude to go into a test series, but we can't afford to lose anymore. The tank is empty and we just have to hit a fuel pot, before we start racing again. So lets take the third option that test matches offers - A Draw.

And I am sure if we can deny South Africa wins in first two test matches, we'll cruise through the third one. Because of the variety we have in our bowling. And will achieve what we never have - A test series victory in African nation.

Its Only Cricket

For a long jump, you've to take a few backward steps

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