There have been funny sound bites in the electronic media and reams of print material in the print Media on the Rotating Policy ,purported to be followed by the Indian Captain MS.Dhoni,in the wake of defeats in the ODI series(till 26 February) ,T20(one match) and a draw in Test Match series.
Senior Players must be rested(by age or their seniority in the Team-none is clear).
Of the Big Three,Sehwag,Sachin and Gambhir( I am surprised that Gambir has suddenly become a Senior (till a couple of months back he was fighting for a place in the team to such an extent even Shikar Dhawan was considered!)
Sachin must not be asked to rest( another euphemism for dropping).
No Sachin is over the hill,he must gracefully retire but BCCI must not tell him, Sachin must decide by himself-Gem from Ganguly.
If one is fit enough to be dropped he must not be told and he will decide!
Ravi Shastri,after whom the infamous ‘Chappathi shot ‘ is named says Sachin must call it a day as he is not performing-people forget they eulogized him till about a couple of moths ago when he scored heavily in 2011 and retracts the next Day Sachin is not to disturbed.
Then a clamour for inducting youngsters like Rohit Sharma– I do not know how long will they be calling him that,Ravindra Jadeja,Virat Kohli,Manoj Tiwari,, Umesh Yadav, R Vinay Kumar, Rahul Sharma, R Ashwin.
Of the lot all of them have been tried except Manoj Tiwary and Rahul Sharma.
Rahul Sharma is injured.
Of the lot, Virat Kohli, who in my opinion is no longer a ‘fringe player’,Vinay Kumar, and Umesh Yadav have performed well.
Irfan Pathan and Praveen Kumar have performed .
Ashwin has along way to go with his carom ball-people had stated that he is the replacement for Harbhajan Singh, a veteran!
Ravindra Jadeja has been good in patches.
Sachin is through a bad patch,Sehwag is Sehwag,as Dhont once put it he is worth a gamble who can win you a match single-handedly).
Zaheer Khan has not shown anything at all excepting the fact that the commentators have been saying what a great bowler he is and what a Senior Bowler who herds the bowlers.
Raina has been inconsistent and needs to be dropped.
Gambir has performed exceptionally well.
MSD has single handedly won two matches.
So, Dhoni has tried best all his combinations barring Manoj Tiwary.Probably, he will in the next match.
You can have only 11 men at a time.
We have tried all the much touted ‘bench strength’ excepting those mentioned above, others are fit only to warm the bench.
Rohit Sharma is going to be another Agit Agarkar, who is a good potential after n number of matches!Why not recall Ajit Agarkar!?
Who else we have?Ajinkya Rahane,Munaf Patel,Sreesanth , M.Vijay,Badrinath and Shikar Dhawan.
Munaf Parel at best is inconsistent and when he is fielding you have to remind him the ball passing by him is actually meant for him and he is supposed to stop it.
Rahane needs some more time to show consistency and temperament for the Big stage.
Murali Vijay may be tried, but at what spot? May be we could try him in place of Sehwag for some time and see how he develops.
Badrinath may be given a chance in place of Suresh Raina.
Sree Santh is better left for dramatics and he creates more problems on areas other than Cricket and you do not a donor at the death overs.
In effect these are the changes one may contemplate and one is not sure whether they can fit the bill completely.
This is the State of the Bench Strength.
Well, you might want to rotate, but what do you rotate?
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