Monday, September 15, 2008

Double speak on fading stars

"Australia have ceased to think that their team’s fortunes depend on one or a group of individuals to get them victories... Australia have learnt to live without their star players," says former Australian coach John Buchanan in an interview to DNA. In the same breath, he says he's surprised by Sourav Ganguly's omission from the Irani Cup, a sentiment also expressed by Ponting. I can only surmise that either their Kolkata IPL connections are a factor, or that they prefer to have Ganguly in the Indian team. Because, when it comes to the Australian team, they've wasted no time in moving on from Gilchrist, Martyn, Langer, etc, and that's the key to their success over so many years. The message from Buchanan and Ponting seems to be that Australia doesn't need fading stars, but India does!
Mickey Arthur, the South African coach, appears to be more on the side of youth in this matter, defending Gary Kirsten, India's coach from South Africa, who had suggested Dhoni is ready to take over the Test captaincy from Kumble. "Kumble is 38, for goodness sake. He has back-to-back series against Australia and Pakistan coming up. How long do people expect him to carry on?" The question, Mickey, is how long the seniors expect to carry on, because I doubt any of them will retire of their own volition with so much money coming into the game. And that's also why it's hard to give them a nice send-off, like the Australians do by hinting to a senior player that maybe it's time.

13 comments:

Anil Singh said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anil Singh said...

But still one should have a proper mechanism in place to include or omit a player from a team; simply saying that they are not in the reckoning will not do.
Sorry but I'dont agree

Anonymous said...

Performance, my boy, should be the key. Not age..

unfortunately media in India doesnt understand...

today its MSD all over. Tomorrow when he looses a series or his form dips, the same media would leave no stone unturned to bring him down by misnomers like "Dhool gaye Dhoni" or "Dhoni ki ho gayi Dhulai"

the bottomline is our media doesnt have the maturity and responsibility.

i wonder if India wins the series, then wud the same media say the same stuff abt the warrior s?

Trideep said...

Buzz.. u said it... performance shud be the key.. not age or anything else for that matter... Unfortunately we don't have such a system in Indian sports.

Viswanathan said...

The question is who is to bell the cat? :)

Trideep said...

Ott.. u reminded me of my MBA prep which is going nowhere..

Anonymous said...

Basic reason for this crap senior junior debate is we dont have patience to deal with the results.

Ankit Poddar said...

guys, i don't think that the point sumit is trying to bring up here, is whether ganguly should be left out or not!

i think the point he is pointing out is that Oz like john and ricky have double standards, different for them and different for us..

but then, sumit, we have always known this, haven't we?

straight point said...

in his twenty odd innings against oz he avg about 32 with only one century...

oz team orgasm over the sight of ganguly coming in to bat and they don't want to lose the feeling...

there is definite IPL link here...

straight point said...

opps i meant to say 20 odd matches...(36 innings)...

Unknown said...

age no bar is certainly my credo too. my focus has been on performance and fitness. it just so happens that a bunch of senior guys have been walking into the indian test team on the basis of their past records, not current form and fitness based on a reasonable number of Tests against competent opposition in challenging conditions. what's unfair is that it's holding up the careers of the nextgen. remember how long javagal srinath had to wait while kapil dev went on and on to catch up with hadlee? i think srinath lost two years at the start of his career which affected his development as a bowler.

Anonymous said...

I think performance is directly related with age. See the example from sachin and ganguly. Australians understand their responsibilty and give the resign while Indian...? don't know what they think.

Gaurav Sethi said...

sumit - sometimes i get the feeling srinath is still waiting. Guy deserves better.