Thursday, July 19, 2007

Flatter to deceive

The first test against England is underway and India's bowling is not doing too well. The England weather is so finicky that its a surprise the game got underway on time. Vaughn won the toss and chose to bat and England made most of the lackluster Indian bowling attack. But as usual, its our fielding which is to blame just as much. Since our cable service provider does not give the new channel "Star Cricket", I am confined to seeing the highlights in news channels.

One of the highlights I saw of the match was Sreesanth bowling to Strauss and Dinesh Karthik dropping a dolly. This is not the first time I have seen this. Dinesh is a very athletic fielder. He jumps around, he is chirpy and is almost like the energizer bunny. All this is very good for a wicket keeper, but as a fielder, he has to understand that he has no gloves and there are said techniques to hold catches. Even in the last couple of series, I have seen him drop so many catches, that it is surprising that there is not more noise made about his pathetic catching. In fact, he is being considered a permanent in the test team, while a consistent player like Dhoni is on the fringes and as per news reports so was Laxman! No matter how spunky a bat Dinesh is, he has to understand that he is always an all rounder. Either he is a wicket keeping allrounder or he is a fielding allrounder. He has not done enough yet in International cricket to get leeway in the fielding department like Kumble or Laxman or for that matter Ganguly!

C'mon young man... catch that ball, will you!

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