13 July 2007

Two spinners?

Let's be honest. On the basis of the evidence so far on the England tour, neither Bose nor Ishant Sharma deserve a place in the team for the Lords Test. So when we can use both Ganguly and Tendulkar as back-up seaming options, why not go with two spinners? Admittedly it is a little unorthodox, but it is certainly not stupid. In the last match, Bose looked tamer than a pussycat. In the words of whoever it was that was doing the ball-by-ball on Cricinfo, "when he got it straight it didn't swing, and when he got it to swing it was too wide to matter". Ishant Sharma already sent down nine no balls today, the first day of the tour match against the England Lions. Problems galore clearly, in the heads of these rookies, and Lords is not the place to throw them into the deep end. R P Singh has a proven ability to be predictable. A little more zip in his bowling, and he would move from 'predictable' to 'metronomic'. But in any case, a second left-armer will lend a certain sameness to the attack, which a captain certainly does not want. (Remember the Karachi Test?) Powar gets my vote.

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