India Needs to change...

India needs to change its captain.. with such a loss against the depleted Australian side that is the first reaction that I have to offer..

MSD has to take a back seat.. someone else.. somone senior should hold that mantle of captaining the Indian side in ODI.. Test matches and even T20 cricket (Dhoni was a failure as a captain in the world T20 championship as well..)

To my mind comes only one name capable of leading the side and still command respect from all the players.. and that name friends is that of Schin Tendulkar.. the living legend in the cricketing arenas..

I know he has not had best of times as a captain.. probably those were different times.. cricket was different then.. the team was different and above all cricket too was different.. it has changed a great deal after the advent of T20..

I feel Sacin Tendulkar deserves to be given one more chance to lead India in Test matches as well as in one day internationals.. and if one has to have a one cpatain theory.. I would not mind leading him in the Twenty20 as well.. though I would rather love to have someone different in that format.. even Dhoni would do for that as a contender amongst Viru and Yuvraj.. but for Test cricket and ODI I think we should put our best foot forward.. Sachin understands the game as well as few others in the world of cricket.. why not give him the responsibility to lead India..

Oh there could be this bias against Test cricket in my mind.. it is my opinion that it is not important anymore.. and if the ODI cricket could bring in some changes as ICC is thinking about doing away with limitatons of a bowler to be allowed only 10 overs.. it would be a very welcome move.. Test cricket needs far more attention to be changed to suit to the needs of the modern times.. I vaguely remember Hundred Overs Test cricket that was once suggested by me.. it could really be one innings affair.. it could well be finished in two or maximum three days.. as such in ODI cricket we do see 100 overs being bowled in a day.. so two day test cricket does not make much of an irony..

Coming back to the captaincy issue I feel Sachin Tendulkar captains the side when he is playing.. that also eans that he should not be playing every series on the earth that India is playing.. yeap.. I do want him to come forward to play against only top five cricket countries in Australia, South Africa, Pakistan (if we choose to play them), Sri Lanka and England..

India should also rotate its players appropriately.. I see no point in playing Gautam, Sehwag, Yuvraj and Dhoni playing in each and every game.. three of them should be played at a time and thus introduce our newer players to prove their mettle..

I also feel that despite India having a large number of medium pacers three bowlers should be rotated from the available pool of Praveen Kumar, Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma, R.P. Singh, Munaf Patel, Sreesanth and even Sudeep Tyagi..

For spinners slot I feel that we hae not been considering two regular spinners in ODI asking our part-time bowlers to do the job.. I was myself of such an opinion earlier yet wish that India does play two spinners from the following in Test and ODI - Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha, Amit Mishra, Shadab Jakati and even Piyush Chawla..

We also have to look for wicket keepers slot for the games where Dhoni is being rested and there are two names that come to my mind Dinesh Karthik and Parthiv Patel though I feel Naman Ojha is no less in class.. atleast with the bat..

I would rather love to have 30 to 40 players playing for India in a season some may get as many games as 7 out of 10 some with 5 out of 10 games and some just playing in two to three games from a pool of 10 games.. that way our players would fnd themselves with less fitness and fatigue problem than has been witnessed during current times..

Most importantly India should play more bi-or tri-lateral T20 Intls and cut down the IPL drastically.. I see no reason why each team should play the other twice.. one game should be enough.. a best you could have more games among top four teams and may be a best of three final..

Players of India who should get a ODI chance besides the prsent team

Batsman who could serve on rotational basis - Rohit Sharma, Manish Pandey, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Shikhar Dhawan, S. Badrinath, M. Vijay and Manoj Tiwary

Medium pace bowlers who should get some of the games - R.P. Singh, Dhaval Kulkarni, Sreesanth, Balaji

Spinners - Pragyan Ojha, Shadab Jakati, Piyush Chawla, Iqbal Abdulla and Anil Kumble ( if he continues to play at IPL why not for India too!)

All-rounders - Abhishek Nayar, Joginder Sharma, Venugopal Rao and Rajat Bhatia
Wicket Keepers- Dinesh Karthik, Parthiv Patel and Naman Ojha.

My list may not be as comprehensive as BCCI could work out with more statistics and form of the players.. yet this could be viewed as a possible way of explaining my opinion..

I hope India does not allow the Sri Lankans their first test win in India but going by the amount of cricket that Indian cricketers have been playing there is every likelihood of such an event to take place.. I would not be surprised if India looses the Test series.. I can not be wishing that being Indian but that is my worst fear.. there is a limit of each individual to play continuous cricket and still excel all the time..

I would not be watching Test cricket yet I would be following it up.. I have a felling that India played better cricket in the recent ODI series despite the fact that they lost the series 4-2 it could have easily been the other way round had India won those two close games at Vadodara and Hyderabad..

I think I should wish the team best of chances to not allow Sri Lankans to walk away with some glorious memories.. I know Kumar, Dilshan and Mendis would be thinking that it is the best opportunity to knock down Indians.. they are not entirely wrong if they think that way.. though I have a feeling the Test series would end up as a drawn series..