Catches Win Matches

Dr. Dino or the expert commentator with the NDTV on Cricket Underlined in a blunt manner the woeful state of affairs of fielding of the Indian team. Indeed if all the catches would have been taken, India already would have been in a very commanding position in the first test match at Mohali. But for every catch that has been taken in the first test match by India, twice the same have been dropped. Shane Watson the centurion from the Aussie camp must be thanking his stars that he could get his century as he got more than five lives in his innings. The agony of dropped catches more so pronounced when the Australian tail wagged in a pronounced manner and was able to post more that 400 runs on the score board.

One often wonders, whether the number one position that India has acquired, would it not have achieved much earlier but for the approach towards fielding, and could have continued to maintain the same, but for the stumbling block in the form of fielding. In the form of Gary Kirstein, Indian team has one of the finest fielders that cricket has seen, but he also is not able to instill in his lads the importance of pocketing the catches, converting half chances into full chances , and not allowing the sitters to be spilled over. Indeed, quite a lot of sitters were pocketed.

Besides, there have been quite a large number of catches which were not picked up around the off-stump and the batting crease. One often wonders how is it that these half chances never go a begging when the same players are playing professional matches for different clubs! Is then there a sense of complacency when the player is donning the national colors?

It seems that the time has now come to go back to the drawing boards and indeed appoint separate captains during the practice that is a batting captain for batsmen, a bowling captain for the bowlers as also a fielding captain for fielding.  Indeed, the whole process can be broken into sub-parts and each sub-part may be made the responsibility of the individual experts, and then the results indeed would improve as also the specialist captains could be made accountable for his lapses and accolades for his performances. Dhoni need to sub-contract his job. It would help his team to dominate the world cricket for long times to come.

Tags: Catches, Commentator, Cricket, Cricket Underlined, Fielding, Indian Team, Matches, Men In Blue, NDTV, Sports