I have a sense of deja vu as I write this. India lost the 1st one day at Southampton comprehensively. But then, aren't we late starters? Even in the Test series, we almost lost the 1st Test before dominating the rest of the series.
Dravid had mentioned - just after the team for the World Cup 2007 was selected - that we needed to do "smart" fielding, when asked whether the presence of seniors would have a deteriorating effect on our fielding. It came back to haunt us during the 1st ODI. Fielding was lacklustre, our bowling (barring Zaheer Khan) was pedestrian, running between the wickets was awful.
No wonder, the big 3 are not going to the T/20 World Cup in SA.
I don't see a place for Sachin, Saurav and Dravid in the ODI team. Never mind if they have scored more than 30,000 runs between them. The demands of the ODI game are such that we need 11 athletes. We convert ones into twos and twos into threes in the field, when we are batting we convert threes into twos and twos into ones. Unless we understand this, we are always going to be under achievers.
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