PETTY POLITICS
India won the kotla test match convincingly by 188 runs.According to me it was a combined effort by all the players. I knew India would win the match when we bowled Srilanka in the first innings and took a lead of 60 runs. It was a match that saw players reaching milestones in their career. The first being the master blaster reaching his 35th test century, then dravid becoming the third indian to cross the 8000 run mark in test cricket, Chaminda Vaas taking 300 wickets. Ganguly was a given an oppurtuntiy to prove himself. The first blunder that India committed was opening with dravid in the first innings. I think ganguly could have been given that oppurtunity the fact that he has already opened for India in the one dayers. Probably Chappel wanted a left hand and right hand combination. Accepted. I think batting at no.6 he did a good job of building parternership with Sachin and a made a decent score of 39. Unfortunately the tail failed miserably in the first innings both Yuvraj and Dhoni failed to click. I was eagerly waiting as to who would open the innings with Gambhir and to everone's surprise it was Irfan Pathan. Pathan did a good job. I appreciate the effort of Chappell to groom him as an allrounder for the 2007 world cup. But lets not forget the fact that the opening slot in tests is meant for specialists. All of us are happy if Indian's have a batting order till number 7 or 8, but experiments like this could be really dangerrous. Gambhir failed miserably in the second innings and India made a commendabel score of 375 with contributions from the middle order. The shock of the day was Ganguly dropped for third test at Ahemdabad. My question is on what grounds. A player like Gambhir who failed at the chennai test(thought it was washed off India played an innings), and also at kotla. The selectors gave a reason that they did not want Ganguly as the sixth batsman and yuvraj is in form. But this is not the way you treat an experienced and senior cricketer like ganguly who has scored more than 15,000 runs in both forms of the game. The fact that when ganguly- chappell controversy sprung up after the zimbabwe tour we knew that ganguly had to face the music and the result was he lost his captaincy,though he was seccesful in an overseas test victory at Zimbabwe. He not playing as a batsman was the question raised by the swlectors and he was dropped. A beautiful plan by the selection committe to win the Election, but unfortunately the Dalmiya camp lost.The domestic season had just begun and he proved his mark by slamming a century agianst the zimbabwe presidents XI. Why do people forget the fact that he is the guy who has groomed this team for the past 5 yrs and encouraging youngsters to perform. I recollect one of those incidents, where inspite Yuvraj was not performing, he backed him and said youngsters need to be given more oppurtunities and you can't judge their performances from two or three matches. He lead the Indian team in Australia and the first test match at Gabba which is considered to be a bouncy track,we found this guy playing a wonderful knock of 144 and the historic series where levelled against the mighty autralians. In my opinion Gambhir should have been dropped and jaffer could have replaced him and opened with Sehwag , provided sehwag recovers. Politics has become an integral part of Indian Cricket. I fail to understand why are they politicizing the game, in fact such petty politics would ruin the game. Ganguly shouldn't have spoken to the media the way he did at Zimbabwe but the kind of gestures Chappell exhibited at the Eden Gardens is unaccpetable. Though we don't have enough proof that he was pointing at the crowd. He clarified it that he was nursing his finger. I dont want to get into that controversy. The kind of support that Ganguly enjoyed during the Dalmiya regime won't be the same during the tenure of Mr. Pawar. But at the same time you can't ignore and spoil the career of a talented batsman like ganguly who still has lot of cricket left in him and can contribute more. For that matter I fail to understand why Zaheer khan has been dropped. If they didnot want to change the winning combination during the one dayers why are they doing it now is my question. Its a motivated decision where i believe the performance of the players has not been taken into consideration. Ganguly is a tough guy and I still believe he will make a come back. Don't put him down,the tiger rose back in the year 1996 when we toured England and he will do that soon..
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