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Saturday, April 15, 2006
Arguing about Indian cricket
I'm editing a cricket discussion over at Wicket to Wicket on "The two Indias", examining why India's doing so well in one-day internationals of late while not performing quite as well in Test matches. My introduction to the discussion is here, and Ashok Malik begins off by lambasting Greg Chappell, and holding him responsible. Dileep Premachandran gives a strong reply here, and Prem Panicker backs him up here. Fine writers, good fun.
My take: well, briefly, I think that the resources needed to win Tests and ODIs are entirely different, and while we're brimming with good ODI resources, we haven't got enough in the bag in Tests -- yet. Even there, though, it takes time to build a team, and I think the sample size of Tests under Chappell is too small to comment. Also, we risk confusing correlation with causation if we hold Chappell responsible for the recent Test defeats at Karachi and Mumbai -- and if we do insist on giving him the blame for that, surely we should give him credit, then, for India's remarkable resurgance in one-day cricket?
I think we need to wait somewhat longer before passing judgement one way or another.
My take: well, briefly, I think that the resources needed to win Tests and ODIs are entirely different, and while we're brimming with good ODI resources, we haven't got enough in the bag in Tests -- yet. Even there, though, it takes time to build a team, and I think the sample size of Tests under Chappell is too small to comment. Also, we risk confusing correlation with causation if we hold Chappell responsible for the recent Test defeats at Karachi and Mumbai -- and if we do insist on giving him the blame for that, surely we should give him credit, then, for India's remarkable resurgance in one-day cricket?
I think we need to wait somewhat longer before passing judgement one way or another.
