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[Stumped]

     



The vision we collectively bought into

Posted by Prem Panicker


A funny thing happened on my way to this pulpit – I lost my sermon. Or more accurately, found it pre-empted most eloquently by Dileep Premachandran.

Presuming for the sake of argument that the breast-beating over the Test side has to do with Greg Chappell's tenure as coach (a presumption based on Ashok Malik's kick-off argument about the coach's Machiavellian machinations), what exactly are we talking about?

Under the Chappell regime, India has played 11 Tests, won five, and lost two. Excuse me, this is reason enough for us to break out the sackcloth and ashes why?

During this period, India has played 31 ODIs, won 21, and lost 10 – a 67.74 per cent winning record as opposed to the 52.31 percentage the team totted up during the John Wright-Saurav Ganguly era. A 15 per cent uptick in winning percentage is not, in a nation that has burnt stadia and stoned players following ODI defeats, cause for more widespread celebration why?

I forget. Test cricket is the real cricket. It is what separates the boys from the men. The pajama version is good enough for the less traditional among us – but it is victory in Test cricket that endures; it is in the Test arena that memories morph into legend.

After all, everyone remembers Eden Gardens for the web of mystery Harbhajan Singh spun, for VVS Laxman's epochal knock, for Rahul Dravid's sublime second fiddle – but who remembers the score line of our last time-limit thrash?

That, or something akin, is the argument advanced when you presume to celebrate one-day success. To those advancing it, I have a question: Where were you when India and England, vying for the number two slot in world Test rankings, were playing in Nagpur, in Chandigarh? Why, in Mumbai, did we see more English fans than locals? Do you even go to watch Test cricket any more?

Not in your numbers, you don't. And by not turning up for Tests, and having to be turned away from houseful stadiums for ODIs, what signal are you sending to the administrators of the game?

There is, in every industry, two groups that take responsibility for the final produce – the producer, and the consumer. And of the two, it is the consumer that dictates. There was a time when we indicated that we saw a car as a lifetime purchase; that the car we bought after much agonizing needed to last a lifetime. We got the Ambassador. Times changed; we indicated a preference for sportier models – so look what's clogging our roads now.

Cricket is an industry, fans are the consumers, and the fan has over the past several years clearly indicated that he prefers the shorter form of the game. So again, we are surprised when the BCCI focuses on one-day cricket, at the expense of the longer form of the game, why?

Are we not getting exactly what we asked for?

Think back to late October 2000. John Wright was making an outside run for the job of national coach. He walked into the meeting with the BCCI honchos, and the first thing he said was, "Gentlemen, let's not talk of my salary; let us, instead, talk of what we can do with this Indian team."

He then outlined a vision of a national side that could shed its tag of poor travelers, a team that could perform in all countries and all conditions – and he was not talking of one-day cricket.

He sold the BCCI on that vision, and we collectively bought into it. We celebrated the first overseas win in a generation, we celebrated a Homeric epic against the all-conquering Aussies, we danced in the streets when the team fought Australia to a standstill Down Under and we joined the proverbial cow and jumped over the moon when our team won a historic Test series in Pakistan.

Fast forward, now, to May 2005, when the BCCI honchos met to select Wright's successor. Each applicant was asked to make a presentation – and the winning theme, authored by Greg Chappell, was how to take India to the top of the podium in World Cup 2007.

It was this vision the BCCI bought into (and in this age of calculated vilification, it might be worth pointing out that it was the previous administration that made the decision); it was this goal that was endorsed and, significantly, it was World Cup 2007 that signposts the end of Chappell's contract.

Any reasonable analysis would tell you we are nowhere near Cup-winning form yet; the same analysis however would also tell you that in the course of 11 months and 31 one dayers, we have taken significant steps towards getting there.

Before Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell teamed up, Dravid had led India in 12 ODIs; his scoreline read 5 wins to 6 defeats and one no result. The Dravid-Chappell combine has now been at the helm for 24 ODIs; the team has won 17 and lost 7. And significantly, a team that routinely folded when asked to chase has just stitched together a world record streak of 15 straight wins batting second.

Stop the presses, folks -- the cup is half full.

Yes, the other half is empty. The two Tests we have lost during this period have been identical, in that both required the team to bat through day five against quality bowling sides.

It is in the fourth innings that patience and endurance, more than talent even, is tested – and twice we have failed the test. So when was the last time we passed? When, last, did we manage to save a Test batting fourth? As Dileep points out, any talk of deterioration implies that an idyllic state existed previously. Did it?

What those two failures, seen in context of the matches that preceded them, has shown is that Rahul Dravid alone has the cricketing nous, and the bottomless reservoir of patience, needed in such situations.

In the one day format, the team has thrown up a plethora of natural leaders – Pathan, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Raina, even the rejuvenated Harbhajan. In Tests, Dravid leads – but none of his mates has shown the legs to follow.

A leader with no followers is merely a lonely man taking a walk – and for the better part of a decade, Dravid in the Test arena has been just that.

I do not mean to suggest that Tests are not important. Nor that we abdicate the five-day game. But if we want our Test team to be the equal of the best, a good place to start is by saying it; by putting warm bodies in the seats.

That signals the producers that you want an all-round product, which in turn dictates step two: that the BCCI makes Test success (a firm grip on the number two slot, for starters) a priority item on the agenda of the team and its coach, which today it is not, and schedules more frequent Test series against significant opposition.

It is then up to the coach, the captain, the selectors, the team management, to do for the Test side what they have done for the one-day squad: identify the right people for the right slots, blood them, back them, hone their skill sets and meet the targets set for them.

In the interim, the one-day side – whose lack of mental strength, killer instinct and suchlike shibboleths we have long bemoaned – appears to have finally reached the corner, if not actually turned it.

Must we still gripe, and groan, and seek Machiavellian conspiracies behind every sightscreen?

[tombaan]

hip hip hooray...good one....
i for one dont see lot of conspiracy wish we could keep doing this for a long time. dravid the captian is cool and collected in his thoughts. he has made mistakes which get highlighted as if all the prior captians did none....but good one prem

btw prem is blogging on cricinfo?

[Stumped]

Yes he is Tombaan. On Wicket to Wicket blog.

[worma]

hip hip hooray...good one....
i for one dont see lot of conspiracy wish we could keep doing this for a long time. dravid the captian is cool and collected in his thoughts. he has made mistakes which get highlighted as if all the prior captians did none....but good one prem

btw prem is blogging on cricinfo?

Yes, he is blogging there, but it looks to me like an 'by-invite-only kind of debate...in the last version even Woolmer was participating.

And my comment on it....when he says that the product we are getting (and the producers are focussing on) is governed by the demand we show, by the signals we send through stadium-filling, does that mean he AGREES that the focus of BCCI, team management etc is not enough on test success. Does that, in turn, also mean that he agrees that our test results should be better than what they are? And are so mainly because of the lack of guidance, or rather more stricter 'management and directorial' issues? Why then would he, or Dileep, tend to argue that our test situation is not bad ? This entire debate was that whether we are slipping as a test team, which I think we currently are. Doesnt matter if we were only slightly better under Wright's last period or not....or if it was good form of our batsmen (or, alternatively, one can say having the right resources) or not.

p.s. He had a hidden advertisement for Sightscreen in the last line ;-)

[LosingNow]

Poor Prem.. what choice he has but to blog on CI now.

I mean the ridiculous UI of Rediff's blog thingy (if you want to call it a legitimate blog environment), would you not run away from it.. the design was pathetic and it still has bugs...and it has been how many months now? The whole blog interface' UI design was flawed..and as I had commented then and will repeat again - "you cannot bug fix an elephant and hope that it becomes a tiger"...sometimes one has to go back to the drawing board. Well, some organizations learn by not listening and falling really hard. Power to them. Some IT organization will write a case study on "bad UI design and following through with it" around rediff's blog experience.

It really is a shame..his original blog was wonderful..and I (and most of us, I believe)used to love the comments section. Oh well.

[gouravk]

Yes that sick rediff thing still wont let me register. Hopeless software engineering.

[Stumped]

 « The vision we collectively bought into |

Maybe we are the problem

Posted by Anand Vasu



Coming into this debate I feel a bit like Yuvraj Singh did a few years back. It was great to be part of it, and to contribute, but perhaps I was a few places too far down the order, for Dileep Premachandran and Prem Panicker have already put the team well on the way to the target, leaving me with little to do. I think it has been quite comprehensively established that there is no decline to speak of in Tests, while in ODIs India have gone from being a team that went into the fifth match of a bilateral series 2-2 with such regularity that it was a joke, to one that presses so hard on the pedal that series are being decided at the earliest possible juncture.

There has been a quantum shift in what we want to do, and the "we" in that sentence is worth looking at. While all the stakeholders that are involved in Indian cricket broadly want one thing – success for the team in all forms of the game, it might be useful to see how the immediate, short-term, and long-term goals of these parties are set.

Firstly there's the team management, consisting of primarily the captain and coach, but also including the selectors and that rare BCCI official interested in the cricket the national team plays. The team management have embarked on a program that will develop a squad of players that can pitch up, play purposeful cricket, within the roles they are assigned, and give the team the best possible chance of succeeding.

This sounds like a lot of theory, something Greg Chappell might say at a press conference. But if you actually bothered to look at how this team is going about its work day by day, you will know this is true. In times gone by there was a group of eight or nine players who were pretty much certainties to play. Of this group there was an unhealthy dependence on a couple of batsmen and a couple of bowlers to do the bulk of the matchwinning. Sure everyone else would contribute, they were international cricketers after all, but the onus of taking the initiative, or wresting it back, or making something happen was on a few tried and tested performers.

That's fine as long as things are going well. Hell, when you're winning, everything is ok – except for members of that permanently disgruntled lot who want to know why X is not in the team or why Z is getting so many chances even when you're winning series 4-0. When things are not going well, however, the pressure on the individuals expected to deliver increases to levels that are difficult to understand when you have never played sport at a high level or spoken to people who have and do.

People think, stunningly wrongly, that Sehwag is not feeling the heat now. "Ah Viru, he doesn't think about all that, he just turns up and whacks the ball." Sit down with him, have a chai, then you'll know. He is doing all he can to score runs, working with arguably the best batting coach in the world, in a team that is succeeding and backing him up, and yet things just aren't working out. For you and I, if things aren't working out at work, we at least have the option of quitting, and plying our wares elsewhere. It's as though Sehwag can walk away from this and begin batting for Bangladesh tomorrow. Really, there's nowhere for him to go, and every day people ask the same questions about when he is going to make a big one, how he will turn things around … they're well meaning, but it's pointless for Sehwag to try and explain it.

Fortunately, since this team management, while doing its best about Sehwag, is thinking more about the team's success than anything else, the results have not been hit. This is because more people are doing more things, much better than they did in the past, simply because it is being asked, no, demanded, of them, not by an overbearing schoolmaster of a coach, but by the environment they're in. Star former cricketers write columns about how Irfan Pathan is struggling under the load of batting. If they spoke to Irfan they'd know better. Dhoni batting up and down the order is another source for great concern. That, to some people, implies a lack of stability. Whose stability? One batsman's fixed position in the order or the team's? Ask any cricketer and he will tell you nothing offers more stability than winning.

While we're on the subject of asking cricketers things, one of the few things they all agree on (barring the odd Shahid Afridi) is that Test cricket is the real thing, while ODIs are something that have to be played. Of course, we don't believe them. They're only interested in making money as is the cash-obsessed BCCI. Why then does someone like Sachin Tendulkar, who, I might presume has a bit in the bank for a rainy day, choose to postpone a shoulder surgery so he can play Tests against Pakistan and take off the moment the ODIs come around? Because players are obsessed with ODIs and don't care about the Tests? I don't think so.

The way we respond to the Indian team, its individuals, its successes and failures, is as much a reflection of ourselves as it is of the team. If at any stage you link your own self-worth with the performance of the team – and enough fans do that and feel worse when India loses or a player is dropped – then you don't stand a chance of being happy, for that's the point of sport in the first place – you can never say what is about to happen. When we see failure, we look for people to blame, for conspiracy theories, something to lash out at. And in success we look to pick holes, because throwing pebbles at heroes is a national pastime. What's more, it's much easier, and more fun for some, to rant rather than sit down and try and get to the truth, to look at the things people do and the reasons behind them. That's hard. As a public we have grown more demanding, more obsessed with instant success, more impatient, and when the team doesn't deliver, we can't take it. After all, we're the paying public.

But it's not merely about paying. It's one thing to pay the fees at a college you're enrolled in, another to learn anything. You might still walk away with a degree at the end of your term if you work the system well. But real learning, now that is something no-one else can do for you. There are people in the Indian team that have internalised this, and are reaping huge rewards. It won't be such a bad idea for some of us to do the same.

[kban1]

Maybe we are the problem

Posted by Anand Vasu


Not quoting the entire post here

Anand Vasu is right in many ways. May I suggest he begins by starting with the man in the mirror ?

I am bemused that his clarity of vision and perspective comes now when there are crazy fans baying for VS or MK's head and not earlier. Perspective and principle are best defined and lived up to when application is universal and not situation specific.

The former is called a mature approach, the latter is called cherry picking.

[dhruvdeepak]

I'm sorry, but this is one of the worst and least productive Wicket to Wicket topics I have read about so far. Very poorly coordinated, the writers have let their biases take over, and now Anand Vasu manages to write an epic which says nothing.

[senthilpeter]

I'm sorry, but this is one of the worst and least productive Wicket to Wicket topics I have read about so far. Very poorly coordinated, the writers have let their biases take over, and now Anand Vasu manages to write an epic which says nothing.

now, thats a neat description 

[prfsr]

I'm sorry, but this is one of the worst and least productive Wicket to Wicket topics I have read about so far. Very poorly coordinated, the writers have let their biases take over, and now Anand Vasu manages to write an epic which says nothing.

You beat me to it. Couldn't agree more. Maybe he should feel like Devang *hi, not Yuvraj (as he says)

[bouncer]

For you and I, if things aren't working out at work, we at least have the option of quitting, and plying our wares elsewhere. It's as though Sehwag can walk away from this and begin batting for Bangladesh tomorrow. Really, there's nowhere for him to go, and every day people ask the same questions about when he is going to make a big one, how he will turn things around … they're well meaning, but it's pointless for Sehwag to try and explain it.

This argument is very Kinter-gardenish, if there is such a word.  If things do not work out at work, and then if we do not see the writing on the wall, we are fired...Mr. Vasu. I do not know about cric-info, but in most other competitive enterprises, that is the norm.  And that extends to the Indian cricket team.  Remember how many people have been dropped for poor performance, including people with a stronger proven record.

In fact I never heard of an excuse like this. Veeru has no place to go and work for, so he has to be given umpteen chances. I am not saying that VS should be shown the door, but this logic is simply mind-blowing. Actually, in the field of journalism, things are not really working out for Mr. Vasu.

[tombaan]

both prem and dileep are very good writers with great control on the language

[achutank]

both prem and dileep are very good writers with great control on the language

competition for original godspeak here?

[Blwe_torch]

both prem and dileep are very good writers with great control on the language

competition for original godspeak here?

This sounds more like a dictum from Chairman Mao!
I think, it is high time we start a new 'Devotee-sermon' series too, starting with Tommy's masterpiece!

[Cover Point]

In fact I never heard of an excuse like this. Veeru has no place to go and work for, so he has to be given umpteen chances. I am not saying that VS should be shown the door, but this logic is simply mind-blowing. Actually, in the field of journalism, things are not really working out for Mr. Vasu.

I totally agree with Bouncer. Stupid argument really! If we dont work well we get fired or quit and can start a Dhaba (please not the lack of mention of a rasogullah stand). So can Sehwag. Infact that is bound to be successful ... just with himself being a customer. Then there is the little matter of the cricketers already have Billions of ruppees already which some of us lack!

[ruchir]

And my comment on it....when he says that the product we are getting (and the producers are focussing on) is governed by the demand we show, by the signals we send through stadium-filling, does that mean he AGREES that the focus of BCCI, team management etc is not enough on test success. Does that, in turn, also mean that he agrees that our test results should be better than what they are? And are so mainly because of the lack of guidance, or rather more stricter 'management and directorial' issues? Why then would he, or Dileep, tend to argue that our test situation is not bad ? This entire debate was that whether we are slipping as a test team, which I think we currently are. Doesnt matter if we were only slightly better under Wright's last period or not....or if it was good form of our batsmen (or, alternatively, one can say having the right resources) or not.

Worma: I'm sure the reason you say this is because we have lost 2 tests recently. One against PAK and one against ENG. Are you saying that loss of 2 tests is enough to show that we are slipping? We have also won 5 Tests. Does that amount to nothing? I mean we were ACTUALLY slipping when we lost a home series to AUS after returning victorious from PAK. That could be called slipping. Under GC we have won 1 away Test series, 1 home series, drawn 1 home series and lost 1 away series. Not an earth-shattering result, I must say. Not enough evidence to prove beyond resonable doubt that Indian Test team is slipping. What it does prove, to me, is that there is NOT enough evidence to prove anything.

I have been saying that we have not had enough loses under GC to say that we are going downwards as a test team. I mean, have we played Tests against SA, AUS, NZ etc. and lost to them to show that we are consistently losing Tests and thereby going downwards? We have not even lost to ENG. We drew the series. So, I don't see any fact that very clearly tells me that "Hey, this is the proof that shows that India has detiriorated as a Test team since GC took over as coach."

No one has, till date, provided any stat or fact or figures that prove beyond any doubt that under GC we have retrograded as a Test Team. The reason is that we have not played enough under GC for any credible data to be collected to provde this proof. Instead, we have won more than twice of what we have lost.

And why do you say that it doesn't matter if we are slightly better now than what we were under Wright in his last days as coach? I feel it matters a lot. I feel that it shows that contrary to popular belief of us slipping, it proves that we might actually be on our way upwards. Even thought the upwards slide is shallow, it is still going up and not down as many want us to believe. It shows that GC is doing his bit on the Test side also. It's just that result in Test are not coming as fast as they are in ODIs. For that, we have to be patient. Not say without evidence that we are slipping in Tests.

[dextrous]

I mean we were ACTUALLY slipping when we lost a home series to AUS after returning victorious from PAK. That could be called slipping.

[Cover Point]

I mean we were ACTUALLY slipping when we lost a home series to AUS after returning victorious from PAK. That could be called slipping.

Dex explain the rolling eyes please? Do u disagree with Ruchir's statement?

[ruchir]

Dex explain the rolling eyes please? Do u disagree with Ruchir's statement?

He may have been left speechless !!!!

[dextrous]

Losing to, by a looooooooooong distance, the #1 team at home is slipping? Coming from the person who "spits" on the success of Indian team under Ganguly...of course, no mention of the Nagpur betrayal either.

[ruchir]

Losing to, by a looooooooooong distance, the #1 team at home is slipping? Coming from the person who "spits" on the success of Indian team under Ganguly...of course, no mention of the Nagpur betrayal either.

It sure is slipping if we draw against # 1 in their home ground and then lose to them in ours. Then, after defeating PAK in PAK in both, Test and ODIs, we draw Test series with them at home and lose the ODIs 4-2. Sure, it is slipping down in performance. And to make it clear, I don't *spit* on success under Ganguly. I *spit* on those who say we were great under SG/JW and trash under RD/GC. And I do that because such a statement is false.

[dextrous]

Losing to, by a looooooooooong distance, the #1 team at home is slipping? Coming from the person who "spits" on the success of Indian team under Ganguly...of course, no mention of the Nagpur betrayal either.

It sure is slipping if we draw against # 1 in their home ground and then lose to them in ours. Then, after defeating PAK in PAK in both, Test and ODIs, we draw Test series with them at home and lose the ODIs 4-2. Sure, it is slipping down in performance. And to make it clear, I don't *spit* on success under Ganguly. I *spit* on those who say we were great under SG/JW and trash under RD/GC. And I do that because such a statement is false.

And losing to an English team (missing several players) for the first time in 20 years is success. And winning against a pathetic Sri Lankan team at home (where we have always thrashed them, in every single test) is success. And losing to a Pakistan team we (only) drew against last time is success. At least be consistent.

[ruchir]

And losing to an English team (missing several players) for the first time in 20 years is success. And winning against a pathetic Sri Lankan team at home (where we have always thrashed them, in every single test) is success. And losing to a Pakistan team we (only) drew against last time is success. At least be consistent.

Okay, then let us also remove all wins under SG that we had for the so called minnows (BD, SL, ZIM, WI.... etc.). If you think SL team is pathetic now, then it was pathetic when we went there and lost in 2001. Right?

And for PAK, we defeated them in PAK and THEN drew in IND. Isn't that a climb down? Now, we lost to them in PAK. Let us see what we do when they visit us. Only then will we know if we are going down or up. Right?

I don't think calling opposition weak or strong is going to prove anything. The AUS team that lost in Adelaide were missing McGrath and Warne (their entire bowling). The point is that there is not enough stats yet to prove that we are sliding.

[Blwe_torch]

Lets get the spit and water seperated.
India loosing to Australia at home( aided and abetted by 'patriotic' Nagpur officials), cannot be called slipping.
India loosing to a third rate English team at home is surely slipping on spit.

Mind you, I am not mentioning the loss at Karachi, as against our victory in Pak in 2004, so that this gets cancelled out against the recent home-loss against the Aussies and victory in 2001.
This is not a SG vs GC/RD issue. I truly believe India has to pull up their socks in Test matches.

[keep-it-cool]

Lets get the spit and water seperated.
India loosing to Australia at home( aided and abetted by 'patriotic' Nagpur officials), cannot be called slipping.
India loosing to a third rate English team at home is surely slipping on spit.

Mind you, I am not mentioning the loss at Karachi, as against our victory in Pak in 2004, so that this gets cancelled out against the recent home-loss against the Aussies and victory in 2001.
This is not a SG vs GC/RD issue. I truly believe India has to pull up their socks in Test matches.

and where does the loss in Bangalore and ODIs to Pak (the so called weakest Pak team to visit India) fit into this entire equation?

[Blwe_torch]

C'mon, how can you compare that Pak team with this English team?!
This team is just going thru the motions in my opinion. The attitude of any visiting Pak team is different from any visiting English team, at the best of times. To top it, this English team won't even qualify to be England -B team, even by their own standards.

[keep-it-cool]

how about comparing the Pak team we lost to at Bangalore to the Pak team that we lost to in Karachi?

[Blwe_torch]

The Pak team in Bangalore was average, but certainly not their worst, like the English team this time.
That Test is the lowest point of SG/JW regime.
To use that test as a benchmark for India's performance under GC/RD is not very appropriate IMO. If you want to evaluate the current Indian Test team, use better benchmark.
You must always compare with the best, not the worst. And first and foremost, identify your weakness, without hiding it. Admit, that we are doing badly first, only then you can ever think of improving from there.
Otherwise...no hope!

[keep-it-cool]

Agreed Blwe .. compare with the best ... but in order to judge the direction in which you are moving, begin with the point you started from ... not a point where you were at one point in time

So, if you are evaluating the direction in which GC/RD have been taking the test team, start from the last series pre-GC (i.e. the Pak series in India) and not the victory in Pak and the drawn series in Australia – coz the journey from those highs to the lows against Pak in India also came under the earlier regime.

Now, going ahead, whether they have been able to take us forward from where they took over, they should achieve not just a drawn series in Australia or a win against Pak, but a more consistent series of wins against different opposition in different conditions ... something which they have done, to some extent, in the ODIs ... not yet in Tests.

So, in a nutshell .. my view is from the point they took over, Indian test cricket has just about maintained status quo while the ODI team has improved significantly. Are we close to being world beaters in tests? No, Not yet .. there is a long way to go!

[Blwe_torch]

And yet we are no.2!

[keep-it-cool]

No 3 ... but then no team other than the aussies is truly consistent ... so in effect we suck lesser than others ... plus i think the ICC rankings suck too ...

[Blwe_torch]

No, from the point of take over they have gone down. The point of take-over( considering that the change in captaincy is more important than the change in coach) was Zimbabwe. Even admitting that Zimbabwe are not a worthy competitor any more, we must accept that this was our first series victory outside the sub-continent in almost 20 years. And, it was a brown-wash too.
From a series victory abroad to a test loss against a mediocre English team at home, is a climb-down ..IMO.

[keep-it-cool]

blwe, this can be argued both ways .. if one wants to .. (frankly, i dont think this series is worth considering .. coz if that were to be the case then wait till next year when we go to bangladesh and beat them hollow ... then we can proclaim we have made progress). Let us at least agree on the fact that the overseas victory in Zimbabwe meant pretty much nothing!!

If we do not want to agree on that .. then also remember that GC was coach then ... so, our first overseas (outside subcontinent) series victory in a long time came when GC was coach!! He took over a team that had just lost to Pak and turned them into world beaters by brownwashing Zimbabwe ..

u cant have it both ways;)

[Blwe_torch]

my point is, we have gone down after Zimbabwe.

[keep-it-cool]

only if you agree we went up with the win against Zim, after the loss to Pak

[dhruvdeepak]

No, from the point of take over they have gone down. The point of take-over( considering that the change in captaincy is more important than the change in coach) was Zimbabwe. Even admitting that Zimbabwe are not a worthy competitor any more, we must accept that this was our first series victory outside the sub-continent in almost 20 years. And, it was a brown-wash too.
From a series victory abroad to a test loss against a mediocre English team at home, is a climb-down ..IMO.

Blwe, what are you drinking. Can you pass some over. It will sustain me through some lonely nights. The same team we brown-washed has had its Test status suspended.

[Blwe_torch]

well....from a home series draw against pak to a win against zimbabwe in zimbabwe...it was a slight climb, if at all.
would u like to give gc credit for that?
i am not too sure.

[keep-it-cool]

y not? if u are willing to discredit him for the fall from a "record breaking, unprecedented" brownwash of Zim, y not give him credit for the "slight climb"?

[Blwe_torch]

No, from the point of take over they have gone down. The point of take-over( considering that the change in captaincy is more important than the change in coach) was Zimbabwe. Even admitting that Zimbabwe are not a worthy competitor any more, we must accept that this was our first series victory outside the sub-continent in almost 20 years. And, it was a brown-wash too.
From a series victory abroad to a test loss against a mediocre English team at home, is a climb-down ..IMO.

Blwe, what are you drinking. Can you pass some over. It will sustain me through some lonely nights. The same team we brown-washed has had its Test status suspended.

Hey, I am in office now...so it is water only
I wish I could share a drink with you anyhow.
The suspension of Zimbabwe is a result of their internal political turmoil, not a cricketing one. ICC was saddenned when Zimbabwe decided to suspend themselves of their own Test status.
But I admit, that it has affected their standard of cricket no doubt.