Dropping Pace: A Fashion (World Cup Woes)-Part 1

Among all the brouhaha of the cricket world cup , one goes through a lot of analysis , comments , write-ups and columns regarding the strengths and weaknesses of teams . You will find sundry cricket experts pontificating on the various merits and demerits of teams playing. The funny part is that these same qualtities or the lack of thereof are known to everybody who follows cricket , however the diktats of commerce has ensured that you are force fed the same banal tones time and again.

One comment which however sounded somewhat true and also gave rise to many sour memories is Harsha Bhogle's description of Indian fast bowlers dropping pace as a fashion. Now you can count on the fact that Bhogle always writes and speaks his mind even if he has to taper it down sometimes maybe due to commercial obligations of channels or portals.

The reason why I wanted to bring up this issue was the unrelenting mass orgasmic frenzy of our channels in projecting a quite ordinary Indian side as favourites even before the world cup began. Yes! we are number 1 in test cricket and probably second in ODI's , however one look at the squad selected for the world cup should have told all the pundits enough about the capability of this team to progress further.
And No! there was no need of an ecstatic Krishnamachari Srikanth making the prediction about the best team being picked and all that for people to believe otherwise.(Should have put suspicions in the minds of fans already).

Why that great fast bowler Praveen kumar was picked was beyond my understanding? In fact the 'legend' has been continued in the team for the past two years on basis of two or three mediocre performances and 'Baba Dhoni's' umpteen blessings on anybody from Maya's territory. It obviously escaped our selectors minds that the man cannot surpass 125 kmph in his dreams and would have been cannon fodder on Indian wickets.

The other pick was our perennial old man with a stoop "Ashish Nehra" , I am sure we will be blessed with a Tushar Kapoor hit before Nehra achieves full fitness. I am not going to talk about Harbhajan for this is a post about fast bowlers and the man obviously wants to ditch spin since he darts his deliveries at batsman foregoing the art of spin when the collar gets hot. (A seperate post therefore should come on the most overrated player of our generation)

Now the crux of the matter is pace , show me an Indian who says he doesn't care about an Indian tearaway bowling at 150 kmph consistently and I will show you an impostor. Do we have such bowlers the problem is yes we had! What happened to Ishant Sharma when he was bowling above 150 in Australia in 2008? if he dropped pace was there a system which took him under control? Our captain obviously has 'Alti-Plati De Ghumiake ' on his mind so you always find him rooting for great talents like Chawla and Praveen.

It is another ingenuity of our system that we call a gambling captain a brave captain , see! it keeps the money tickling in.I don't think Ishant ever found any support from the captain or the team management and we have squandered a golden opportunity of breeding a thoroughbred.What do you expect from a person who publicly criticised Sreesanth for his agression and made his displeasure clear. This treatment was meted out to a bowler who was outstanding in South africa.

There is obviously a rotten stink of parochialism in our selection as the above selections would point out. The end result was that Sreesanth came under tremendous pressure to perform in the first match and got hammered. Our great saviour and leader needs to purge his cricket brain of all cobwebs and learn about effective leadership and for heaven's sake chide a player behind closed doors and not in front of everybody. The behaviour is all the more surprising considering his affection for a certain Chawla again from 'Maya's territory'.

Obviously the captain sees more to Chawla then even his state teammates see in the legspinner who makes Narendra Hirwani look like Shane Warne.

What was the harm in trying a partnership of Ishant and Sreesanth along with Zaheer for the world cup , the theory is at least we had three bowling spearheads and not 'put the ball there' kind of bowlers like Munaf whose grunt is more effective than his bowling.

Yes! dropping pace has become a fashion but when you ground your thoroughbreds to dust you don't expect them to have the same thump in their hooves. A case here over the IPL overkill and too much unnecessary cricket.

This is a long post with a second part.