Batsman and Bowlers
Isnt it noticeable that India's (relative) lack of reserves among seamers/quickies is almost startingly paralleled by the lack of quality batsmen coming out of Pakistan?
If you think about it, Pakistan has lost some good young talents in the batting department over the years -- two names that come to mind immediately are Imran Nazir and Mohammad Wasim (the latter was considered to be as technically correct as Rahul Dravid -- they both were debuting around the same time, 1996-97).
We all hail Dravid now, but its worth remembering that he also pretty much struggled through his first two-three seasons, even in test matches. In ODI's, it is well documented, but in tests also, there was a long phase, when he just didnt convert his starts into three figures, was out thought by opposition bowlers, and would often hit the ball straight to fielders.
Running parallel, India has had quite a few decent seam prospects over the past decade, to name a few - Mohanty, Bhandari,Kuruvilla, Singh, more recently Yohannan and Salvi. I m not even mentioning Nehra and Zaheer here. The relative merits here of each could be debated, but the fact is: we "lose" a lot of our pace prospects, much in the same way Pakistan "loses" its batting hopes.
And paradoxically, the batsmen we have produced (Sehwag, Dravid, Yuvraj , Kaif, Laxman) are among the best, while their bowlers are routinely good(think Shoaib, Sami, Gul).
This indicates what? That Pakistan initially had better seamers than batsmen (Sarfaraz, Imran) while India had better batsmen (SunnyG, Vishwanath, Vengsarkar) so its almost as if the support system, the legacy, the structure that came into place is more favoured towards batsmen in India and for bowlers in Pak?
If you think about it, Pakistan has lost some good young talents in the batting department over the years -- two names that come to mind immediately are Imran Nazir and Mohammad Wasim (the latter was considered to be as technically correct as Rahul Dravid -- they both were debuting around the same time, 1996-97).
We all hail Dravid now, but its worth remembering that he also pretty much struggled through his first two-three seasons, even in test matches. In ODI's, it is well documented, but in tests also, there was a long phase, when he just didnt convert his starts into three figures, was out thought by opposition bowlers, and would often hit the ball straight to fielders.
Running parallel, India has had quite a few decent seam prospects over the past decade, to name a few - Mohanty, Bhandari,Kuruvilla, Singh, more recently Yohannan and Salvi. I m not even mentioning Nehra and Zaheer here. The relative merits here of each could be debated, but the fact is: we "lose" a lot of our pace prospects, much in the same way Pakistan "loses" its batting hopes.
And paradoxically, the batsmen we have produced (Sehwag, Dravid, Yuvraj , Kaif, Laxman) are among the best, while their bowlers are routinely good(think Shoaib, Sami, Gul).
This indicates what? That Pakistan initially had better seamers than batsmen (Sarfaraz, Imran) while India had better batsmen (SunnyG, Vishwanath, Vengsarkar) so its almost as if the support system, the legacy, the structure that came into place is more favoured towards batsmen in India and for bowlers in Pak?
posted by Arjun Swarup at
9:51 AM
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