two interesting things happened in the corporate trophy recently...
praveen kumar opened the innings while his ongc captain, gautam gambhir came down at no. 3...
...and irfan pathan was not deemed fit to play even in the domestic games now...he didn't get a single game for air india red captained by his ipl skipper yuvraj singh... i googled but there was nothing which indicated that he didn't play coz of injury etc... so we can safely assume he didn't play for cricketing reasons...
this got me thinking if praveen has the experience to open in domestic circles... why can't india use him as the all rounder they have been looking for since irfan's demise...?
he bats very late in the order which leaves him with no option but to slog his way thru... i am sure if given responsibility and nurtured by a watchful coach... he has the talent to turn into a good all rounder... much better than other pathan, yusuf pathan... who i still wonder... how has he managed to keep himself floating in the team by doing virtually nothing of note in the odis...
at least this way we can play two front line spinners in harbhajan and mishra with kumar sharing the pace bowling burden with either zaheer (when fit) and ishant or ashish nehra and ishant as of now... making the over all balance of team india look good for all conditions...
make praveen kumar don irfan pathan's role as an allrounder...
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4 comments:
Think there's a perception problem with Praveen, he's a bowler first, and then a tail ender who can slog a bit. Like RP Singh in a way. That's perception, tough to shake off.
As he didn't use his chances to open in a Corporate match, his batting will continue to go unnoticed.
For me, he should be in as a bowler alone, the batting is a bonus.
But we gotta get beyond our fixation with the brothers. They're better on prime time TV than on the field.
there are many players who started low but went on to become a handy bat... bhajji is another example...
sometimes you need to shake players of their comfort zone to realise their true potential... and praveen's untapped batting skills is one of them... what we need is a man with gavaskar's eye who can make a ravi shashtri out of him...
But look what's happened to Bhajji's bowling?
While there is a lotta lower order batting talent, Zaks and Bhajji can smash it and even play some useful innings, they are still not allrounders. Neither was Kumble with a test hundred. All these guys have test avg well less than 20. They are not Walshes, but they are nowhere Irfan Pathan's as far as batting talent goes.
Whenever I've watched Praveen bat, he's thrown it away.
For starters, he needs MSD's backing - gotta always play. The batting will come with confidence, but let him chill @ No. 9 or 10, after Bhajji, before Ishant.
Don't want his swing to go Irfan's way.
bhajji started bowling darts even before he assumed batting skills... don't tell me he is bowling darts now for his batting...
smashing and slogging is one thing and holding it as bat is another...
i don't think it will necessarily ruin his bowling coz the plus point is that he already has experience of facing new ball as opener... he has been doing it for his domestic team... so there is obvious untapped potential which is a possibility that even he don't realises given his straight thinking...
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