It seems that India is dependent on few players which includes Zaheer Khan for bowling department and Sachin Tendulkar for batting department. After being criticized for his never-coming 100th 100, Sachin Tendulkar still remains the top scorer from Indian batting side. He is still on the crease but this time it’ll be better if he can add some runs to the team.

Instead of this personal milestone, what we really need to care is India’s overall performance. If Sachin is scoring 70s or 80s and getting out without scoring a ton, it’s fine but if your team is not able to score more than 200 in a test match in 1st innings or not able to restrict the opponent under 1st innings trial or target and losing with a big figure of runs and an innings then it should be a point of concern.

Looking at the Australian side, all they have with them is confidence and support. What India needs is Confidence and support from the country. That’s enough.

(Image Source: Mid-Day.com)

He says “I must start learning Punjabi.. I seem to be getting lots of tweets in that language.” . It i’ll be better if he doesn’t  try to learn the language because if he does, he will thinking of quitting the Twitter.

Seems to be funny for Indians but Indian people should remember that disrespecting  a foreign personality will reflect their own culture. All we can wish for Mr. Vaughan is to get what the tweets sent to him actually mean.

There is no doubt on Australian bowling line-up or the consistency from Ben Hilfenhaus but it seems that India is not able to get a good start. Opening innings with their all time favorites Gambhir and Sehwag doesn’t seems to be working at all. While Sehwag is not able to pick the start to a big score, Gambhir is unable to get a start of his innings. He also seems to be facing difficulties while facing Pace bowlers.

If India have to save their batting, they must do something with the opening pair, if Gambhir is not working then Rahul Dravid can also be a good option.

There are good selections like Naman Ojha, Pragyan Ojha and Amit Mishra in this new team but there are some selections which need to be reviewed.

Murali Vijay

He is well known for his overconfidence, wrong selection of shots and a dreadful batting performance in the T20 World Cup 2010. Whenever people expected a decent innings from him, he just ruined their expectations. Does he deserve a another chance?

Yusuf Pathan

His full name is Yusuf ‘Money’ Pathan. Yusuf has got too many chances in the International team but he has never proved his selection to be useful for the team. The Selection committee expected him to perform well in the World T20 after an excellent innings in the IPL but he was not able to stand in the crease for even 10 minutes. Also, he must have realized till now the difference between the T20s and the ODIs.

Ravindra Jadeja

Drop catches, inconsistency, lack of skills and lack of experience. Ravindra Jadeja may be handy for the T20s but he doesn’t suit for the ODI team. He first has to improve his basics rather than competing against the International teams.

It seems that the Indian selectors are overconfident on their youngsters but they should keep in mind that there is also a another team in the series who have defeated them recently. This team may tackle the Zimbabwe players but it may be difficult for them to fight against Sri Lanka have who recently qualified to the Semi-finals of the World T20 after defeating India brilliantly.

Take a look at the Indian squad and then you can easily judge the intelligence of the Indian selectors:

Suresh Raina (c)

Dinesh Karthik (wk)

Virat Kohli (vc)

Rohit Sharma

Murali Vijay

Naman Ojha (wk)

Vinay Kumar

Umesh Yadav

Ashok Dinda

Pankaj Singh

Amit Mishra

R Ashwin

Pragyan Ojha

Yusuf Pathan

Ravindra Jadeja

He was a luck guy who got a golden chance to play in ICC T20 World Cup 2010 from India when Sehwag was declared unfit. In the first match against Afghanistan, he opened the batting for India and made his International T20 debut. First ball, four! “Here comes the big talent” “What a shot man!” “Wow”. Indians cheered everywhere. Vijay scored 48 runs in the first match and impressed everyone. People thought that they finally have got a replacement for Sehwag.

Second match, out! “He is out on first ball!” Was that expected from him? Okay no problems, sometimes that happens. Third match, he played just 7 deliveries in which he wasted 5 and scored just 2 runs. In his fourth match, he scored just 7 runs and finally changed the minds of Indians.

He was able to score only 57 runs in 4 matches in the tournament with an average of 14.25. The most amazing thing is that 48 runs were scored against a team who just managed to qualify to the World Cup.

The simple logic behind this is, Indian pitches are pretty easy to score runs but if you’ll look around International pitches of South Africa, West Indies or England, you’ll see uneven bounce which won’t allow you to score runs easily. Dhoni should have selected Dinesh Kartik who is an experienced batsman than the debutant Murali Vijay. You would be shocked to see that in all his 4 innings, Vijay was caught out which showed his weird selection of shots and lack of experience against world’s best bowlers. Mistakes repeated again and again, in the end, end of India.

Fans should keep in their mind that Virender Sehwag is world’s one of the best opener and a young boy cannot replace him.

Shane already announced his retirement from Test cricket in December 2009 while just after coming back from ICC Twenty20 World Cup 2010; he announced his retirement from all forms of cricket. Shane’s fans were expecting him to play in IPL but it seems he is not interested in playing cricket any more since. This 35 year old rocket has taken this decision because of his fitness.

Shane Bond is well known for his impressive bowling average in test and ODI cricket. Shane has taken 87 wickets in just 20 test matches with an impressive average of 22.09 and 147 wickets in 82 ODI matches with an average of 20.88. He has not even played 100 ODI matches and has proved himself to be one of the best fast bowlers. Shane Bond was also the most costly player in Indian Premier League when Kolkata Knight Riders bought him for US$750,000.

Shane has been struggling with many injuries and many surgeries. Fitness is a key point for a fast bowler to stay alive in cricket rather than the age. Shane Bond also faced International restrictions from New Zealand Cricket Board due to his involvement in Indian Cricket League which brought a huge break in his short career.

What I think is, New Zealand has definitely lost their “Best bowler” but they should thank this man who has made New Zealand proud of something. Shane Bond feels proud to represent New Zealand in T20 World Cup in his last match. It may not be possible for New Zealand to replace Shane currently but there are also some young talents like Ian Butler who can help to fill this gap in the future.

“While taking the catches near the boundary line make sure that you are at least one meter distance from the rope and you are not stretching your body backwards too much. This can make you when when you’ll try to catch the ball. Stand on your position, look the ball carefully and then jump in a bit forward direction towards the ball.”

If you want to see a demo, try to think of David Hussey’s catch in IPL 2010. You’ll definitely get the basic idea.

Though there are some other senior players like Zaheer, Harbhajan, Gautam and Sehwag but the presence of Sachin & Dhoni can improve the condition of the team at higher level.

Zimbabwe is not too good in cricket but it cannot be said on the bases of stats because in cricket anything can happen and any time.