Saturday, September 15, 2007

Twenty20 and Indian Captain

I have been planning to write a lot on the latest version of cricket matches - the Twenty20 format for quite some time. But before I could start on it, the World Cup took the whole cricketing world in its grip.

I think it is a wonderful format. Twenty overs per innings, and by three or three and a half hours, the game is won or lost. Let us not assume for even a moment that the players workload has gone down. If one watches the telecast, it can be seen that the bowlers are actually running back to their marks. No time is allowed to be wasted. In fact, if any team cannot complete their bowling of twenty overs then they are harshly penalised. All for the good of the game.
I especially enjoyed and liked the concept of "BOWL OUT". The league match between India and Pakistan was tied, and to break the tie, "BOWL OUT" had to played out. Just like penalty kick shootout in football, here five bowlers are selected by their respective captains and they bowl a ball each, by turn, alternating between the two teams and the team which knocks off the stumps more number of times wins. Just like India defeated Pakistan 3 - 0.
Dhoni, the Indian captain in this version of the game, however, doesn't prefer to win this way. That brings me to the next point of discussion. Rahul Dravid's resignation. Frankly, he should have resigned after the World Cup debacle and retired right now. His performance as a batsman and as a captain hasn't been good enough to merit any continuation. In fact, everyone agrees that Sourav Ganguly has been one of India's greatest captains ever, so if you have him in your team, use his cricketing brain. Very much like having Edison in a summer camp and not inventing a thing or two.
In any case, Ganguly's captaincy was never questioned. So why wasn't he reinstalled to his rightful position within the team. However, the shameful and shoddy way in which he was treated by BCCI, More and Chappel, he would naturally stay away from any important position.
So who should be the captain???
The certainties within the teams are few - Dhoni and Yuvraj, Sourav and Sachin, Dravid and Zaheer.
My suggestion would be - Dhoni as captain and Piyush Chawla as vice captain in all formats of the game. Please let us not make the same mistake by selecting a senior player as the captain, we are a futuristic team and let us not err in selecting both captain and vice captain of the same age group. One may end up never becoming nor standing a chance to lead the team. Of course they'd be groomed by the greatest maestro - Sourav in the fine art of captaining the side, forming a cohesive unit with a common objective.
My best wishes with the Indian Cricket team in South Africa.