India vs South Africa

Samid said:
Wasn't having a dig at India in particular. They are well within their rights to do that as hosts. Just saying that test cricket is heading in the wrong direction with home advantage playing too big of a role. All test nations are guilty of it. Pakistan just beat England comfortably 2-0 but I know for certain that England will win 4-0 or 3-1 when the teams meet again in July, with most matches done within 4 days. Test cricket is getting boring and predictable.
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Youre somewhat right. However, gone are the days of Lara, Kallis, Smith, Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Ponting, Hayden, Pietersen, Sangakara etc. Players who could carry their teams batting performances in tough conditions. Then add the likes Sehwag, Langer, Clarke, Jayawardene, Trescothick who used to provide great back up to the aforementioned greats.

Batting has declined massively where we see more flat wickets bullies like Kohli, Root, Smith and Williamson. All of whom I am yet to be convinced by. These players are meant to be the best of this generation but Im not sure they will ever be as good as those mentioned above.

My point is that whilst pitches are somewhat tougher, the batsmen arent at the level as those of the generations gone by. In fact, the bowlers are a level below, too.
 
KM said:
Ponting suggested that the home team can produce any kind of pitches but the visiting captain will decide who'll bat first thus negating the home advantage by a bit.
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Holding suggested that same thing during The Ashes.
 
So, South Africa's amazing nine year record of having not lost a series away from home is under serious threat.
 
Di Maria's angel said:
Youre somewhat right. However, gone are the days of Lara, Kallis, Smith, Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Ponting, Hayden, Pietersen, Sangakara etc. Players who could carry their teams batting performances in tough conditions. Then add the likes Sehwag, Langer, Clarke, Jayawardene, Trescothick who used to provide great back up to the aforementioned greats.

Batting has declined massively where we see more flat wickets bullies like Kohli, Root, Smith and Williamson. All of whom I am yet to be convinced by. These players are meant to be the best of this generation but Im not sure they will ever be as good as those mentioned above.

My point is that whilst pitches are somewhat tougher, the batsmen arent at the level as those of the generations gone by. In fact, the bowlers are a level below, too.
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Yeah I was thinking the same the other day when the legends where playing in New York. Was trying to imagine how a legends game would look like in 8-10 years and I was struggling to come up with 10 names never mind 22. With all the technology, facilities and science available for cricketers these days you would think the quality would improve but in reality it has just got worse, apart from the fielding. I guess this decline in quality is mainly due to all the T20 cricket around. Money talks. You probably earn more during an IPL or Big Bash edition than you would during a whole year of test cricket.
 
Absolute awful cricket. Dhawan, Kohli and Rahane gifting their wickets.
 
The lack of application from some of our batsmen is absolutely embarrassing, but then when your captain gets out in that way at such a critical juncture then it must send a really wrong message through the dressing room.
 
Ayush_reddevil said:
The lack of application from some of our batsmen is absolutely embarrassing, but then when your captain gets out in that way at such a critical juncture then it must send a really wrong message through the dressing room.
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To be fair to our batsmen, they're hardly tested in these conditions, against good opposition. We've played a bulk of our cricket away from home, such that these conditions have, ironically, become alien to most of our line up.
 
Just seen the highlights, Rohit's innings of 23 classified on commentary as 'a good innings'. Sums up the whole series really.
 


They should look at their shot selection before criticizing the pitch.

That's just awful.
 
Samid said:
Just seen the highlights, Rohit's innings of 23 classified on commentary as 'a good innings'. Sums up the whole series really.
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Nothing wrong with that, there are plenty of wickets out there where anything less than 150 is missing out. See the recent Aus/NZ series - averages out at the end of the day.
 
zing said:


They should look at their shot selection before criticizing the pitch.

That's just awful.
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I watched a bit earlier and the pitch is an absolute disgrace.

There's absolutely no problem whatsoever with preparing a turning track, there's no problem whatsoever with preparing a massive turner either. But the problem with the pitch isn't that its a turning track. It's that it does it variably.

It has variable bounce, variable turn, and variable spin. The ball is just as likely to bounce in one place, speed up off the pitch and cannon into the stumps as it is to bounce in the exact same spot, spin twenty foot, slow down, do the macarana, the hokey cooky, and star in a Bollywood musical.

A 'good' pitch for the bowler, has something in it for the batsman. If you knuckle down, are compact, and play well, you can score runs. That is not possible on this pitch.

When the fact of the matter is that the pitch is so bad that its because South Africa didn't bowl very well that they didn't bowl India out for the same total it should tell you its not fit for test cricket. All the Indian spinners had to do was bowl remotely accurately and that was it.

As soon as a pitch has variable anything its a bad pitch for cricket, when it has it to the degree that this pitch has it becomes dreadful, because it takes the skill out of the game, run scoring and wicket taking becomes about luck rather than skill. If this was all happening on Day 5 at least you could make the argument that the deterioration of the pitch is largely done to factors that can't be predicted (I still would argue that you should be able to create a pitch that holds together for 5 days, but thats another argument) the fact its happening on Day 2 is appalling.

(also I think the problem in general with looking at wickets in isolation and criticising players is that the reason some of these shots look horrific is because of whats come before, there was a really interesting post on reddit the other day about Bairstow's wicket in the Pak tests which is similar. On first viewing Bairstow looked hopeless, but it was actually good bowling and outthinking Bairstow that got the wicket)
 
A night watchmen - someone with decent enough defensive technique.

Imran Tahir was used as a night watchmen by South Africa....he averages 10 deliveries per innings :eek: :lol:
 
Neutral said:
A night watchmen - someone with decent enough defensive technique.

Imran Tahir was used as a night watchmen by South Africa....he averages 10 deliveries per innings :eek: :lol:
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It was very stupid, to make the same mistakes 2 days in a row I don't have the words for it
 
Poor approach from Saffers. Going at under 2 runs an over, did they really think they could play out 160 overs on this pitch?
 
Australia are going to struggle when they go to India in 15 months if their away form and inability to deal with good spin bowling doesn't improve.
 
Steve Smith will be key, India have won this just on the basis of the spinners but the batting has been absolutely terrible. England showed on their last tour that if you can have a couple of batsmen play well then this Indian team is there for the taking.
 
This pitch was pretty bad have to be said. The pitches in first two test matches however were not, anybody saying that hasn't watched the series and is going on by the cricinfo commentary.
 
South Africa's first away series defeat in 15 series, remarkable record!
 
ha_rooney said:
South Africa's first away series defeat in 15 series, remarkable record!
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First away series defeat in 9 years...how the hell does that happen?

Remarkable feat, which of course makes the Indian domination of the series an even bigger accomplishment.

Pitches, spin...etc etc...lots of different talking points, but in the end RSA were beaten mentally.
 
Kohli: It's not a policy, it's just the conditions that you get in India, otherwise you're just playing matches where 500 is scored - you don't create bowlers doing that, you don't win test matches like that.

I've said this before, wherever you go to play in the world you have to be prepared to face those conditions and tune your game accordingly. Today was a classic example of two guys (Amla & Faf) applying themselves and showing that it can be done.

So I don't see why there's so much hype around the pitch. There are a lot of people writing things about the pitch - "it should not be like this" or "it's turning too much - people sitting somewhere in another country talking about pitches here in India... I think it's just a matter of mindset.

We have never complained when we have had challenging conditions and we won't complain in the future either. We try to improve our game. It's always a matter of us (India) not having the technique or the mental strength to cope with conditions away from home but when this sort of thing happens everyone starts talking about how it's undue home advantage.

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We as a team feel that we have to improve against spin as well. These are the conditions we will get in the subcontinent and we are going to play a lot of matches here - so as a team for us this is a learning phase as well. And we need to step up our game in order to win test matches like we have done in the series.

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People can talk about it, people can choose not to talk about it but the fact is that we won the series and we won 2 test matches. That won't change no matter how many articles are written about the pitch, our batting, or undue advantage for our spinners.

It doesn't matter. At the end of the day results matter and that is why we play the game: to win games. And that is what has happened here and we're happy about that.
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He's pretty awesome :cool:
 
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