Monday, August 25, 2008

Missed Opportunity


Its been a tale for more than 2 decades now that regularly cricketers from TamilNadu throw the opportunity at the International level. The list is pretty big starting from W.V.Raman,B.Arun, Venkatramana,AshishKappor, Hemang Badani and recently L.Balaji,Sriram and D.Karthick and now waiting to get added into the list is Badrinath.

TamilNadu has one of the best infrastructure in India for cricket with dedicated grounds and league system to run cricket. TN is lucky to have very good cricket administrators at every level (state,district,college & school) and has full support from corporates (TVS,Chemplast,IndiaPistons,IndiaCements) ,Govt Banks (SBI,IB,IOB etc) and Railways are all part of the league systems and who have been with the TNCA for decades and helped cricketers and promote cricket in the state. TNCA has announced that they are planning to build a world class cricket stadium with seating capacity of over 1 lakh and this facility will be inaugurated in time for the WorldCup 2011. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Chennai_set_to_beat_Eden_Gardens/articleshow/3405937.cms

In spite of all this support we have not been able to produce cricketers who are regular in the Indian Team over a period of time. We have had glimpses of class from players like Venkatraghavan, Srikanth and RobinSingh to name a few who were regulars in their playing days and after that we have not had a single player who was sure of his place for years now. I am not sure if its our style of game (all aggressive stroke players) or the complacent nature with in our culture. Our neighboring state Karnataka has produced some great players in Vishwanath,Chandrasekar and recently Srinath,Dravid and Kumble who have played important roles for Team India in the past few decades.

Any organization or institution has the mind set of looking into talent from the past performance of the region and the dismal display of TN cricketers have not helped the budding youngsters here to get a positive look unless you are exceptional. I think its very natural in any selection process, you take the states like Bombay,Karnataka,Delhi,Punjab (to an extent), they have had good cricketers all the time, its pretty obvious that a player from Bombay with decent scores gets the nod over a player from say UP,TN because the past players have proved in with lot character and toughness to succeed at the highest level.

TNCA has been one of the best run associations and its hard to believe that with such infrastructure we have produced only handful of players with high quality. Its time the people responsible for running the game wake up and take note of this and bring in innovative methods to improve the confidence level and prepare players for the big stage.

4 comments:

abimanyu said...

@Vasu you missed out Sadagoppan Ramesh & Murali Karthik(Basically from TN) to the list of failures. Its really heart breaking to see the stars of TN fail in the high profile scenarios. Hope this trend stops now & Badhri cements his place in the team.
Regarding the new stadium its really a great news for the Chennaites.

Vasu said...

Thx for pointing Ramesh and Karthick,yes ramesh did show some character with some sound knock's but was left out for reasons unknown to public.

This is the problem with TN players, ramesh for instance was said to have had attitude problems and the bias in talking about TN players in selection will reflect comments/references to him and that's unavoidable.

The proposed stadium is a welcome thing but the proposed place is too far from the city may be a problem for the crowds to reach the stadium, lets see how things go.

rsrirams said...

The problem is also the bias shown by the selectors. Hemang Badani for instance deserved more chances. When compared to Yuvraj Singh or Mohamad Kaif, he was not given much chance.

Same with Murali Karthik, just because Ganguly hated left arm spinners.

Same with Badrinath. Selectors seem to prefer Rohit Sharma over Badrinath when the later seems to have more experience and has proved himself against different international teams.

Regarding Dinesh Karthik. Its a mixture. First he did not grab the opportunities. Second Dhoni was too shrewd to sideline Dinesh Karthik. He is also doing to others who he sees as a threat to his captaincy.

Vasu said...

Hi,

I agree with you on Hemang Badani and unfortunately injury and lack of form in domestic cricket made life tough even in the local league and ranji level but not with other observations.

Can you tell me a single full season for which M.karthick was fully fit ?? When ever he was bowling well he will take a break for a couple of matches b'cas of fitness problems. Which captain you think will encourage such players when there is so much talent waiting in the ranks.

Take the instance of D.Karthick, who will give such wonderful chances, did Dhoni stopped him from scoring runs in the test series?? The fact is Dhoni provided an excellent chance to him to get back to the playing XI by resting himself for the test series and he blow the great opportunity.

Badrinath is a good player no doubt about that but where is the temperament to stay cool and score runs so that he can not be ignored. Do you think the short he played in the 3rd ODI is correct.Every one knows that getting a chance in playing XI is tough and one has prove himself with the given chances.You saw the result right he was dropped for the 5th ODI.

As i had mentioned in the post, any sport selectors will take some prejudice in the players coming from the region where there have been good talent for long time. All our ex state cricketers have blown away chances and had made life difficult for the younger crop and if we don't perform exceptionally well our cricketers will be left out. I am saying something new here, it has been the curse of TamilNadu cricket for long.