It is the right time to groom young cricketers. BCCI should put in efforts seriously in this regard. Rahul Dravid, V.V.S.Laxman,Sachin Tendulkar,Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel are most unlikely to play international cricket for more than 2 to 3 years. The backup players like Yuvraj Singh,Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli and Rohit Sarma should take up the mantle soon. It needs plenty of dedication and sincerity for them to succeed at the highest level. They should treat each and every match like their first match. BCCI should make them aware of their shortcomings. They should be told to work out on their short comings in their interest and in the interest of the Nation. Even the invincible Sachin Tendulkar has shown chinks in his armour and so did all our top batsmen except Rahul Dravid in the recently concluded England test series.  They appeared like gutless players and sense of shame is not seen on their faces. What a shame. Our cricketers were totally under prepared. The least thing Dhoni could have done is to play five bowlers in every match and drop Suresh Raina. I certainly don’t think our youngsters are worth the money they are being paid in IPL.

Suresh Raina, Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh and Rohit Sarma have earned a reasonably good sum by now. They are still young. They should realize that they would be replacing the fabulous three shortly in the test and one day cricket. They need to play sensible and responsible cricket for a longer period of time to come without worrying about the money factor. They should have the zeal to fight it out at the highest level.

BCCI should keep away Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir ,  Rahul   Dravid,V.V.S.Lakshman,Yuvraj,Raina,Kohli,Rohit Sarma , Chetesh Pujara, Ambati Rayudu, Abhinav Mukund,Paul Chandrasekhar Valthaty, Zaheer Khan,Munaf Patel,Varun Aron, M.S.Dhoni, Parthiv Patel, Ishant Sharma,Amit Mishra,Ravichandran Aswin, Piyush Chawla, Ajinkya Rahane,Manoj Tiwari, Pragyan Ojha,Umesh Yadav,Ravindra Jadeja,Saurabh Tiwari, Praveen Kumar, Iqbal Abdullah and couple of other talented youngsters from playing any 20-20 cricket including IPL tournament. Special efforts should be made by BCCI for tapping fast bowlers who can bowl consistently 140 km + all the time. BCCI may provide necessary financial compensation to youngsters subject to performance for not playing 20-20 cricket.

Praveen Kumar was a successful bowler but not a match winning bowler against England in the recently concluded series since he lacks pace. Ishant Sharma has pace but lacks consistency and dedication. Sreesant has to improve leaps and bounds in temperament, sincerity and dedication. Our medium pacers of the calibre of Irfan Pathan,Ashok Dinda,Vinay Kumar, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Abhimanyu Mithun,R.P.Singh,Jaydev Unadkhat,S.Aravind etc lack speed and pose no threat to international class batsmen especially under unhelpful conditions. Gone are the days of great spinners like Prasanna, Bedi, Chandrasekhar and Venkat Raghavan. Our Board has to efficiently groom Ravichandran Aswin, Prgyan Ozha, Piyush Chawla, Amit Mishra, Iqbal Abdullah and Rahul Sharma.

15th May 2012 should be marked as  golden day for the future of Indian Cricket as far as fast bowling talent is concerned. Umesh Yadav, Varun Aaron and Parvinder Awana have exploited the conditions beautifully at Ferozshah Kotla ground at Delhi. They bowled fast, furious and swung the ball nicely on a pitch that provided some assistance. It was a treat to watch them in action in the IPL match between Delhi Dare Devils and Kings XI Punjab. India’s future is secured in the fast bowling department. Our spinners are capable of getting wickets on tailor made pitches. They should learn the art of taking wickets on pitches that favour batsmen. But this is most unlikely to happen in the present scenario, quite unfortunate indeed.

Our players should be made to work hard in fielding as well and raise their fielding standards. Our cricket can attain greater heights again if separate teams are selected for all the three types of cricket with proper backup without messing up by playing them in all forms of cricket. The cricketers should play with dedication and raise their performance in batting, bowling and fielding lest they should never be considered for donning national colours irrespective of their seniority and previous contribution to the team as players.

A pool of 60 cricketers for three forms of cricket should be selected purely on merit and dedication and without regional bias. The pitches in India should be made sporting so that bowlers can find helpful conditions to bowl on pitches having some bounce and the batsmen can exploit their skills on the challenging pitches for improving their performance. These steps will immensely benefit the future of the Indian Cricket.

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Indian people are passionate to the extreme about cricket. Cricket Control Board in India (BCCI) is the richest cricket organization in the entire world. England’s Lords cricket stadium is considered to be the mecca of the cricket. The main cricket playing nations in the world are England, India, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. There are three forms of cricket. They are test cricket, 50 over cricket and 20-20 cricket. Test cricket is played for 5 consecutive days. An over comprises of 6 balls. In 50 over game each team is supposed to bowl 50 overs in a day. 20-20 game is like mini or instant cricket. The maximum number of overs to be bowled is only 20 overs per team in this game in a day. The 20-20 game has become popular among spectators and TV viewers because of instant entertainment in batting, bowling and fielding departments and also because of the fact that it takes far less time to watch. The maximum time consumed is only 4 hours for watching the game. Its popularity is mainly due to the success of IPL tournament for the past few years. IPL tournament is conducted on behalf of BCCI. Players across the globe are making a bee line for IPL because of huge money involved in it. The amount paid by IPL to the players is many times more than what is paid by their respective boards in their countries. They prefer joining IPL due to huge popularity it attained across the World in addition to getting very large sum for a very short duration.

The Indian players play all forms of the cricket round the year. So their technique is got messed up. The test Cricket needs plenty of skill, dedication, lot of patience and adaptability to all kinds of wickets in the World. The Indian wickets are generally batting friendly wickets. There is no bounce on these wickets barring one or two pitches. Even the weather conditions make it difficult for the fast bowlers of any international standard and for the seam and swing medium pace bowlers. The spinners also do not get much help from the pitch unless the pitch takes wear and tear. So the Indian batsmen make merry and score plenty of runs on Indian pitches. The team total score even exceeds 450 runs per innings most of the time and then they get carried away by the instant fame. Their weakness to fast and swing bowling gets exposed on foreign soil especially in countries like England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand due to varied bounce on the wicket and also due to the climatic conditions prevailing in these countries. They have failed most of the time on foreign soil. They succeeded on only very few occasions. Further they also play 50 over game and also 20-20 Cricket. In 50 over game the batsman cannot afford to take too much time to settle. The batsman invariably has to go in for the non conventional shots and also he is supposed to take risks. In 20-20 cricket he takes too many risks in far too short time. Now we can see that if a particular batsman plays test cricket, 50 over game and 20-20 game he is neither here nor there. His game completely gets ruined.

Ishant Sharma is some what fast compared to the other bowlers. He doesn’t swing the ball much. His bowling is some what improved recently. He still needs to go a long way and should learn to bowl good line and length balls when the conditions don’t favour his type of bowling. Sreesanth generally gets carried away and bowls wayward most of the time. Zaheer Khan is the only strike bowler and gets injured on account of too much strain on his body. Munaf Patel is only restrictive type of bowler. Praveen Kumar is a very good swing bowler but lacks pace. We should encourage bowlers like Varun Aron who have raw pace and are very promising. Harbhajan Singh hasn’t contributed much of late. Ravichandran Ashwin needs to be considered in his place. Amit Mishra needs to be disciplined when the conditions of the pitch doesn’t favour spinners. It is always better to be disciplined in their bowling and not to try too many things at a time and should learn to bowl within their limitations in the larger interests of the team.

It appears our cricketers are playing in all the forms of cricket mainly with the intention of making merry when the sun shines thereby pocketing loads and loads of money and also to obtain instant fame at the cost of the Nation’s pride ,barring a few, and also at the cost of their health. Further they generally do not give priority to fielding aspect of the game. Their fielding is not up to the international standards. Sometimes the batsmen prefer to sit out rather than facing a deadly fast bowler on foreign tours for fear of failing and getting their batting average damaged and also getting injured. The players even try their best to be in the team even when they are not physically fully fit. They fear that some other player may cement his place in the team. This kind of attitude has caused immense damage to the Indian Cricket. BCCI should handle this mess with iron hand. There should be separate teams for all three forms of cricket with a good backup. There should be a strict rotation policy of the players. They should strictly monitor the behaviour of players on and off the field. BCCI should not permit senior players to play 20-20 Cricket at all. Their participation in IPL should be a strict ‘NO’. These players may be compensated subject to performance. Bouncy wickets in addition to good wickets should be prepared by BCCI in the larger interest of the game. Then only India can be called genuinely a top Cricketing Nation.

The BCCI’s policy of playing international matches on dust bowls in India is sure to boomerang. 

The disgraceful performance of our cricketers continued non stop in the present test series in Australia. Virat Kohli played unbelievable innings the other day at Hobart for a lost cause. Our cricketers are too selfish and lack the team spirit. They think that they are playing an individual game rather than representing their Country. Rohit Sarma, Ravindra Jadeja and Suresh Raina failed to capitalize on their opportunities. Sehwag appears to be a confused man. Rohit Sarma, Ravichandran Aswin, Gambhir and Suresh Raina talk too much without delivering goods.

Srilankans proved to be the real Lions. Their Board has gone bankrupt but their spirits are high. Jayawardane’s captaincy is the highlight. All of their top batsmen have scored heavily. All rounders delivered the goods. Everyone chipped in. The way they fought back at Melbourne on 2/3/12 when they had the drubbing by Indians is to be seen to be believed. Lasit Malinga proved once again to be their trump card in spite of severe battering by Kohli at Hobart. M.C.G ground in fact looked like Columbo ground. Srilankans came in huge numbers for supporting their team out and out at M.C.G. Hats off to their enthusiasm. I salute the Srilankan team. I am least interested about the ultimate winner. As far as I am concerned the Srilankan cricket team is the champion team.

Sachin’s century of centuries at last happened in Bangladesh on 16th March 2012. Is that all India wanted?. There are many questions asked rather than answered such as

1) The chaltaa hai attitude of players like Yuvraj, Sehwag, Gambhir, Rohit Sarma, Ravinder Jadeja, Suresh Raina, Ishant Sharma and Yusuf Pathan, officials are no exception either has caused immense damage to our team.

2) Fitness of Zaheer Khan.

Hats off to Bangladesh for achieving clowning glory by reaching the finals of the Asia Cup due to its win over Sri Lanka on 20th March 2012 and successfully eliminating India. Shame on India for achieving ha-trick of failures against England, Australia and now in the Asia Cup. Of course our selectors, players and Board Officials will definitely say it’s just one of those things.

Bitter Lessons Learnt:

1) Politicians should have no place in BCCI

2) All our senior cricketers right from openers should be shown the door except Sachin.

3) Sachin should be asked to concentrate only on Test Cricket and quit IPL and one day games.

4) Zaheer Khan proved to be no destroyer of rival teams.

5) Ishant Sharma has miles to go.

6) The players should be made to play in Mohali and in Himachal Pradesh and J $ K during winter.

7) They should be asked to practice on matting wickets.

8) Fitness and outstanding fielding should be the essential criteria apart from talent for selection of the players and no politics of any kind should be entertained.

9) The medium fast bowlers should be asked to bowl from 18 yards instead of the regular 22 yards if practiced on the regular pitches. Then our bowlers can achieve the much needed speed and our batsmen can be rattled.