Test Cricket Prediction and Discussion Thread [self - mod]

[JSRAW]

~snip~

Was just curious about this- There was lot of questions asked about Pujara's slow batting style. What do you think about it? I've seen people praising such styles a bit when it is a tight situation and that playing style comes in handy if we are trying to get out of losing situation, but do you think the reaction could go opposite if it goes other way if a target seems pretty much achievable but somehow it goes towards draw? What do you guys feel as a cricket fan.

I love his old era resistance which we don't get to see in the modern cricket. It has pros and cons as cricket has changed and now batsmen like to rotate strike as well but Pujara just bat bat bat and then bat again. He always frustrate opposition bowlers and tire them off completely. I wouldn't be surprise if Starc-Hazelwood-Cummins having a nightmare of him batting all day n night.

Sometime he frustrate non-strike batsman and fans too because it is common believe that he creates extra pressure on non striker batsman, which is kinda true on some occasion and fans being fan especially Indian fans love to moan because majority are high on IPL steroids (Not saying that T-20 format is not important) but everyone keep forgetting that the same Pujara was the Man of the series in the last Border-Gavaskar series. I have said many times that in SENA countries India need players like Pujara, Rahane and Vihari. Not sure about other countries but Poms and Proteas will not hesitate to commit murder just to get players like Pujara anyday. You could build team around such guys by including stroke players and power hitters like Pant, Gill, Shaw Pandaya, Mayank etc who can keep up with the run rates a bit. This gives you enough stability on one end and keeps the scoreboard ticking on another.

Yes there would be a time when same mindset could go wrong and you might end with the draw or worse, lose a game from the winning position but this same technique going to win game and series in the Test Cricket every time. Pujara is 32 so he will serve India couple of more years from here. India should invest on such players more and keep this bread alive, We had Dravid now Pujara but who's next wall for India? Big question mark atm.

~snip~
Okay ladies i think Indian team going to Lords for finals. Hope its not too early to say as series against England coming up for Indians but its home series and they need to win only 2 out of 4 games.

With this historic win now India is surely going to Lords and Australia lost their chances now I am feeling as opponent we have good from England or New Zealand both are good enough for first World Test Championship award without Kohli they are much better so now time for another change and hand over test captaincy to Rahane and ODI, Twenty/20 to Kohli what your view about this ?

I wouldn't say that India's lords seat is confirmed but yeah chances are high. Cricket is funny game and everything could change in short period of time.

What if India fail to win against England at home? We still need atleast 2 more wins.
What if Australia wins the series against South Africa with 2-0 or 3-0?

Its wide open, even now.

I highly doubt if BCCI want to follow 2 captain policy or change in status quo. Although its good idea and i am in favor of 2 captains idea for a very long time but i don't think its going to change anytime soon unless Virat failing badly which as a Indian fan i don't want to happen because his failure is team's failure.

~snip~

What an Excellent win for team today. The most impressive thing about today's win is that it's the win of India A vs the Australian team. Except Rohit, Pant, Pujara and Rahane no one could have been said close to playing XI if the Whole team would have been fit. But now there will be an even fierce battle for having a place in playing XI when we will play in England. I wouldn't be surprised if I see a few of these young guns like Mohammad Siraj and Shubhman gill becoming the first choice for the playing XI.

Bhai i would say that now BCCI should arrange one thing, after every 1-2 years they should facilitate the India vs India A 3 match series instead of rubber dead ODI/T-20 series( if its not too much then add Combined strength of Ranji too). So that they could build more bench strength.

[teosanru]

~snip~

What an Excellent win for team today. The most impressive thing about today's win is that it's the win of India A vs the Australian team. Except Rohit, Pant, Pujara and Rahane no one could have been said close to playing XI if the Whole team would have been fit. But now there will be an even fierce battle for having a place in playing XI when we will play in England. I wouldn't be surprised if I see a few of these young guns like Mohammad Siraj and Shubhman gill becoming the first choice for the playing XI.

Bhai i would say that now BCCI should arrange one thing, after every 1-2 years they should facilitate the India vs India A 3 match series instead of rubber dead ODI/T-20 series( if its not too much then add Combined strength of Ranji too). So that they could build more bench strength.

I think the only thing that is restraining BCCI from doing this is viewership. Facilitating a 3 match test series for Team India would eat up atleast 20-25 days from their schedule in this time they would have scheduled a foreign tour which will receive a much better viewership or a t20 tournament of so many matches with huge viewership and revenues. Bhai One thing I have realized growing up is that everything squares up to the revenues and money. Politics/ Government/ Sports/ Players everyone is at the end of the day playing for money. BCCI too has become calculative and all such schedulings are done solely based on their revenues. You can see how they were so keen to have IPL amidst Global Pandemic but hardly realized any need for Ranji Trophy.

[vella85]

That would have to be India's best ever test series win in their history and to win the series with most of their top players not playing is even more amazing. I said from the start that I thought India will play well in the series and may even cause some upsets along the way but I got it wrong with them winning in Brisbane as that is one ground I didn't expect them to win with Australia being so dominate on that ground and hadn't lost a test match there since 1988. Congrats to India on winning back to back test series in Australia, not many teams have been able to achieve this. This loss for Australia will hurt for a long time.

[Indymoney]

That would have to be India's best ever test series win in their history and to win the series with most of their top players not playing is even more amazing. I said from the start that I thought India will play well in the series and may even cause some upsets along the way but I got it wrong with them winning in Brisbane as that is one ground I didn't expect them to win with Australia being so dominate on that ground and hadn't lost a test match there since 1988. Congrats to India on winning back to back test series in Australia, not many teams have been able to achieve this. This loss for Australia will hurt for a long time.

This is just beauty of test cricket we never now what's going to happen in next session and today I am also really surprised with play of Indian team they done one of best job for their cricket history Pujara is great architect of this win as he was really solid Pant shut down all mouths those was criticising him for drop catches but he still need some more better quality today we watch Indian bench power in absence of big names its really great win for them.

[Sithara007]

This is just beauty of test cricket we never now what's going to happen in next session and today I am also really surprised with play of Indian team they done one of best job for their cricket history Pujara is great architect of this win as he was really solid Pant shut down all mouths those was criticising him for drop catches but he still need some more better quality today we watch Indian bench power in absence of big names its really great win for them.

Pant still needs to improve his wicket-keeping skills if he wants to become a permanent member of the test squad. No one is talking about the dropped catches, because he made runs and as a result India won the match. But that won't be the case every time. Whenever he drops a catch or miss a stumping, there will be demands to include a specialist wicket keeper.

[mersal]

Yes there would be a time when same mindset could go wrong and you might end with the draw or worse, lose a game from the winning position but this same technique going to win game and series in the Test Cricket every time. Pujara is 32 so he will serve India couple of more years from here. India should invest on such players more and keep this bread alive, We had Dravid now Pujara but who's next wall for India? Big question mark atm.

In any format of the cricket game, the batsmen should take the innings as deep as possible which having wickets in their hand then it is possible to score at more than 6+ if needed in the last 10 or 15 overs when 6 or more players yet to come. Batting on day 5 is not an easy task and Pujara did his job perfectly that is why other players can able to make strokes with the tiring bowling.

About the next wall, why not Vihari? He just proved that he can able to bat and bat and bat at the strike rate of 6 when faced 100 balls.

[amishmanish]

Rahane has some good qualities, he likes to be calm and focused on his work. But Kohli is very aggressive. He often misbehaves with players. Now Kohli's opponents want Rahane to be the captain. But it doesn't look like the BCCI will fire Kohli from the captaincy right now. They will probably give Kohli a few more series time. If Kohli proves his worth, we will see Rahane as the captain of the Indian team next time.

Keeping Kohli as the captain for the ODI/T20I teams and making Rahane the captain of the test squad would be the best decision. But then, this is going to make Kohli and Shastri angry, as test format is considered as more important than ODI/T20I. Next test series for India is against England at home. It will be interesting to know who will lead the Indian team for this series.

Since when did Indians start taking decision based on who is the right man for the job or who performed well..LOL..That goes against our culture. We have things like experience, prestige and "raula" to take care of. So right now, Kohli's and Shastri's "Raula" is too much to lead to any such change.
No offense to Kohli as he is the best batsman out there but Shastri has a parasitic relationship with him. He takes care of Kohli's ego and Kohli returns the favor. That dynamic is pretty much visible between the two. So performance or no performance, Rahane will be back where he belongs until Team India performs badly, which is quite difficult considering the talented bunch of individuals there are.

[mersal]

About the next wall, why not Vihari? He just proved that he can able to bat and bat and bat at the strike rate of 6 when faced 100 balls.

Vihari's test average is not that great. A test batting average of 32.84 would be acceptable for teams such as Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe, but not for India. I am not downplaying his performance in the series against Australia, but his presence in the team has most to do with good connections with powerful people rather than good performance. The England series should be his last chance. If he still averages around 30, then he should be dropped from the team.

Only 12 matches are not enough to find the real ability of a player in the test cricket and we are talking about the wall so the potential to play longer innings is much indeed than scoring runs which he proved. His first-class test average is above 40 for 80+ matches so for sure he is one of the batsmen born to become a test cricketer like Pujara.

[JSRAW]

What an Excellent win for team today. The most impressive thing about today's win is that it's the win of India A vs the Australian team. Except Rohit, Pant, Pujara and Rahane no one could have been said close to playing XI if the Whole team would have been fit. But now there will be an even fierce battle for having a place in playing XI when we will play in England. I wouldn't be surprised if I see a few of these young guns like Mohammad Siraj and Shubhman gill becoming the first choice for the playing XI.

Bhai i would say that now BCCI should arrange one thing, after every 1-2 years they should facilitate the India vs India A 3 match series instead of rubber dead ODI/T-20 series( if its not too much then add Combined strength of Ranji too). So that they could build more bench strength.

I think the only thing that is restraining BCCI from doing this is viewership. Facilitating a 3 match test series for Team India would eat up atleast 20-25 days from their schedule in this time they would have scheduled a foreign tour which will receive a much better viewership or a t20 tournament of so many matches with huge viewership and revenues.

Sadly that's a reality for right and wrong reasons. But they could try this with the India A vs Rest of India (Ranji team), after that may be 1 game in between India vs India A. Plus BCCI should get rid of Billateral series for T-20/ODI and focus more on Trilateral and Quadrilateral series to resolve schedule problems.

Bhai One thing I have realized growing up is that everything squares up to the revenues and money. Politics/ Government/ Sports/ Players everyone is at the end of the day playing for money. BCCI too has become calculative and all such schedulings are done solely based on their revenues. You can see how they were so keen to have IPL amidst Global Pandemic but hardly realized any need for Ranji Trophy.

I have many grievances with the BCCI as far as corrupt policies, power struggle etc are concern but i have no hesitation to say that other Indian sport organisations must learn thing or two from the BCCI. There is a reason Indian cricket team and India as cricketing nation is respected around the world. We can't say same thing about other sports much, couple of exception but not good enough.

TBH IPL is blood line for Indian cricket so i don't blame them and last i heard Ganguly and Shah are trying to start Ranji season but few States are not very thrilled with the Bio-Bubble Ranji Season. Both Ganguly and especially Shah pushing the idea tho, let's see what happens.

Only 12 matches are not enough to find the real ability of a player in the test cricket and we are talking about the wall so the potential to play longer innings is much indeed than scoring runs which he proved. His first-class test average is above 40 for 80+ matches so for sure he is one of the batsmen born to become a test cricketer like Pujara.

That may be true. But I was pointing out the fact that Vihari managed to cement his place in the team despite inconsistent performance, while promising batsmen such as Karun Nair were dropped after just one bad test match. And there are several youngsters out there, such as Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer, who are not even being considered for the test squad.

Hanuma Vihari is considered run machine in domestic cricket, he average like 55ish there and doesn't have any sort of backing,he was making shitload amount of runs in almost every domestic season along with Mayank Aggarwal. Last season they played, both were averaging like 90+ and 100+ respectively that's why they went to Australia. About Vihari's international stats, i think you are ignoring the fact that he batted in tough conditions so far. He scored valuable 50s in England/NZ and asked to open inning in Australia when KL/Murali Vijay failed and he's not opener, his only job was to face the new ball against Starc-Cummins-Hazelwood. He did remarkable job there.

Karun Nair was unlucky and lucky at the same time. Unlucky because he deserved to play few more games but you can't deny the fact that competition is tough. And lucky because he debuted in India, not many players enjoy this feat (Vihari,Mayank etc) and got like 6 back to back games but he only scored only 1 big triple ton.

We are not going to see Ishan Kishan in Whites anytime soon (may be never). He needs to perform in Ranji first. In Ranji if your average is below 40 then no one is going to notice you. Shreyas Iyer is excellent and i think he will come in the Test squad soon.

[teosanru]

What an Excellent win for team today. The most impressive thing about today's win is that it's the win of India A vs the Australian team. Except Rohit, Pant, Pujara and Rahane no one could have been said close to playing XI if the Whole team would have been fit. But now there will be an even fierce battle for having a place in playing XI when we will play in England. I wouldn't be surprised if I see a few of these young guns like Mohammad Siraj and Shubhman gill becoming the first choice for the playing XI.

Bhai i would say that now BCCI should arrange one thing, after every 1-2 years they should facilitate the India vs India A 3 match series instead of rubber dead ODI/T-20 series( if its not too much then add Combined strength of Ranji too). So that they could build more bench strength.

I think the only thing that is restraining BCCI from doing this is viewership. Facilitating a 3 match test series for Team India would eat up atleast 20-25 days from their schedule in this time they would have scheduled a foreign tour which will receive a much better viewership or a t20 tournament of so many matches with huge viewership and revenues.

Sadly that's a reality for right and wrong reasons. But they could try this with the India A vs Rest of India (Ranji team), after that may be 1 game in between India vs India A. Plus BCCI should get rid of Billateral series for T-20/ODI and focus more on Trilateral and Quadrilateral series to resolve schedule problems.

Bhai One thing I have realized growing up is that everything squares up to the revenues and money. Politics/ Government/ Sports/ Players everyone is at the end of the day playing for money. BCCI too has become calculative and all such schedulings are done solely based on their revenues. You can see how they were so keen to have IPL amidst Global Pandemic but hardly realized any need for Ranji Trophy.

I have many grievances with the BCCI as far as corrupt policies, power struggle etc are concern but i have no hesitation to say that other Indian sport organisations must learn thing or two from the BCCI. There is a reason Indian cricket team and India as cricketing nation is respected around the world. We can't say same thing about other sports much, couple of exception but not good enough.

TBH IPL is blood line for Indian cricket so i don't blame them and last i heard Ganguly and Shah are trying to start Ranji season but few States are not very thrilled with the Bio-Bubble Ranji Season. Both Ganguly and especially Shah pushing the idea tho, let's see what happens.

I think ODI and T20 are also equally entertaining. They might no feel that great because of the legacy test cricket carry but they are entertaining in their own way. ODI is still a bit less entertaining these days because it's sort of stuck in between a flux of Test cricket and T20 cricket. But T20 cricket has its own flavor. People love t20 because every ball in t20 is a contest between the batsmen and bowler from which the batsmen cannot back out. But yes bilateral series of T20 cricket doesn't make much sense. It would become much more interesting if played in a tri-series or quad-series format.

Coming to other sports organizations. I have been associated with a couple of associations of state levels in Lawn Tennis and Chess. They too have huge dreams and aspirations for the development of their sport. But everything comes down to viewership. How often you see switching on a channel to see Lawn Tennis. No viewership makes their business a charitable business and they end up at the mercy of the ministry to give them the money they need and then we all know how slow these machineries are.

[mersal]

Only 12 matches are not enough to find the real ability of a player in the test cricket and we are talking about the wall so the potential to play longer innings is much indeed than scoring runs which he proved. His first-class test average is above 40 for 80+ matches so for sure he is one of the batsmen born to become a test cricketer like Pujara.

That may be true. But I was pointing out the fact that Vihari managed to cement his place in the team despite inconsistent performance, while promising batsmen such as Karun Nair were dropped after just one bad test match. And there are several youngsters out there, such as Ishan Kishan and Shreyas Iyer, who are not even being considered for the test squad.

But this is 11 men sportsen game so not everyone is going to get their chances even if they are deserved to be one. And it is not good idea to swap players for every series because need a permanent team then only their mindset will sync together and can perform much better by understanding the pros and cons of their fellow team player.

[7788bitcoin]

But this is 11 men sportsen game so not everyone is going to get their chances even if they are deserved to be one. And it is not good idea to swap players for every series because need a permanent team then only their mindset will sync together and can perform much better by understanding the pros and cons of their fellow team player.

The highlight of the entire series is that how a young team could conquer a team that is dominant in their home turf and the most impressive part is that only two players played the entire series, Pujara and Rahane, rest of the players were included in the team every match due to injury and they still performed even though they are making their debut which is incredible. Some of the players might not get the chance if the established players return in the team but every player contributed even though they were making their debut and that is the main difference.

[ene1980]

Keeping Kohli as the captain for the ODI/T20I teams and making Rahane the captain of the test squad would be the best decision. But then, this is going to make Kohli and Shastri angry, as test format is considered as more important than ODI/T20I. Next test series for India is against England at home. It will be interesting to know who will lead the Indian team for this series.

I did not expect this turn around from India and you need to give all the credits to Ajinkya Rahane for taking a second string of players and motivating them and then able to extract the best performance from all the news players, in my opinion Ajinkya Rahane should be the captain as he proved his mettle as a captain but i am not expecting Kohli to hand over the captaincy but he will be under scrutiny in all of the upcoming series and if they under perform as a team he will be replaced.

[vella85]

But this is 11 men sportsen game so not everyone is going to get their chances even if they are deserved to be one. And it is not good idea to swap players for every series because need a permanent team then only their mindset will sync together and can perform much better by understanding the pros and cons of their fellow team player.

The highlight of the entire series is that how a young team could conquer a team that is dominant in their home turf and the most impressive part is that only two players played the entire series, Pujara and Rahane, rest of the players were included in the team every match due to injury and they still performed even though they are making their debut which is incredible. Some of the players might not get the chance if the established players return in the team but every player contributed even though they were making their debut and that is the main difference.

I agree with you. This will go down as the best ever test series win for an Indian team and every player contributed to the series win. This series win can also help benefit some of the younger players and make them into great players as they came up against one of the best bowling attacks in the world and were playing away from home so it will be interesting to see how some of these younger players careers progress after this series.

[Sithara007]

I did not expect this turn around from India and you need to give all the credits to Ajinkya Rahane for taking a second string of players and motivating them and then able to extract the best performance from all the news players, in my opinion Ajinkya Rahane should be the captain as he proved his mettle as a captain but i am not expecting Kohli to hand over the captaincy but he will be under scrutiny in all of the upcoming series and if they under perform as a team he will be replaced.

Rahane was informed even before the 4th test that he would be the captain only on a temporary basis. I agree that his captaincy was exceptional, but then Virat Kohli would simply refuse to depart with his position as the captain of the squad. And it will be wrong to make Rahane the permanent captain after just one series, although I would favor giving him more chances.

[ene1980]

Rahane was informed even before the 4th test that he would be the captain only on a temporary basis. I agree that his captaincy was exceptional, but then Virat Kohli would simply refuse to depart with his position as the captain of the squad. And it will be wrong to make Rahane the permanent captain after just one series, although I would favor giving him more chances.

To tell you the fact, i never considered Kohli as a tactical captain, he has the aggression but that alone will not win you matches, you need to be a tactical captain to win matches in difficult situation. MSD was a tactical captain in the shorter format but he applied the same in Test and so he was not that successful in the later part of his captaincy. Kohli is leading RCB and even if they have a strong team i have never seen the team performing to their strength.

This is the first time i am seeing Rahane captaining a side and to win a series in Australia with a completely young team says a lot about his captaining skills and that too after getting humiliated and getting bowled out for just 36 runs with Kohli as the captain in the first match and to recover and Rahane leading from the front and scoring that century and then winning the series is outstanding.

[mersal]

Rahane was informed even before the 4th test that he would be the captain only on a temporary basis. I agree that his captaincy was exceptional, but then Virat Kohli would simply refuse to depart with his position as the captain of the squad. And it will be wrong to make Rahane the permanent captain after just one series, although I would favor giving him more chances.

To tell you the fact, i never considered Kohli as a tactical captain, he has the aggression but that alone will not win you matches, you need to be a tactical captain to win matches in difficult situation. MSD was a tactical captain in the shorter format but he applied the same in Test and so he was not that successful in the later part of his captaincy. Kohli is leading RCB and even if they have a strong team i have never seen the team performing to their strength.

This is the first time i am seeing Rahane captaining a side and to win a series in Australia with a completely young team says a lot about his captaining skills and that too after getting humiliated and getting bowled out for just 36 runs with Kohli as the captain in the first match and to recover and Rahane leading from the front and scoring that century and then winning the series is outstanding.

In cricket, selectors give more priority to the player stats and individual performance as quality to captain a team but it is a completely different task in my opinion. One who can group every player into the same mindset in the dressing room and also in the ground should be the one to be considered.Anyway, none of the proposed things are going to happen, Rahane proved that he can so in the future if he got chances he may do it again.

[teosanru]

Rahane was informed even before the 4th test that he would be the captain only on a temporary basis. I agree that his captaincy was exceptional, but then Virat Kohli would simply refuse to depart with his position as the captain of the squad. And it will be wrong to make Rahane the permanent captain after just one series, although I would favor giving him more chances.

To tell you the fact, i never considered Kohli as a tactical captain, he has the aggression but that alone will not win you matches, you need to be a tactical captain to win matches in difficult situation. MSD was a tactical captain in the shorter format but he applied the same in Test and so he was not that successful in the later part of his captaincy. Kohli is leading RCB and even if they have a strong team i have never seen the team performing to their strength.

This is the first time i am seeing Rahane captaining a side and to win a series in Australia with a completely young team says a lot about his captaining skills and that too after getting humiliated and getting bowled out for just 36 runs with Kohli as the captain in the first match and to recover and Rahane leading from the front and scoring that century and then winning the series is outstanding.

You know what I think. Captaincy isn't always about delivering results. A person from outside like us might feel that this captains isn't good but it's like saying your friend that his boss is bad when you have never worked under his boss. Some captains don't focus on short term winnings they seek to develop long term assets for the team. Dhoni in his initial part of career developed some great assets for the team. So did Saurav Ganguly. We sitting outside really have just one metric of judging captaincy which is the win percentage which isn't always that accurate. Even the out of the box decisions made by Dhoni would have looked idiotic if India would have lost in those occassions. so I think there is no point discussing who should be captain until you are part of dressing room.

[Sithara007]

OK.. most of us would have liked to see Ajinkya Rahane as the captain of the Indian squad for the series against England, but the BCCI have gone back to Virat Kohli. Their reasoning is perfectly understandable. At this point it will be too early to criticize this decision. Let's see how the series turns out for India. If Kohli's captaincy is not up to the mark, then I am sure that BCCI will reconsider their decision for the next series.

[pakhitheboss]

It was supposed to happen Rahane was only a replacement for Kohli for the Australian series. Now sice Kohli is free he can join back the squad. I do not think performance from the up coming series will affect kohli. After all he has a lot of support from the team and the management.