r2i forum

Nattusbs;4093I was thinking of the reasons for Viru's slump over the last year or so. Some of my random thoughts:

He has been successful is slashing outside the off-stump for a long time, getting runs by hits over slip and the opposition have taken notice of this and are prepared. Now, he is having a tough time to curb this "natural" instinct for himself and gets out easily.

One more thing I have noticed is that he has put on a lot of weight. He needs to loose 20-30 pounds. I believe that this extra weight is causing him mental, psychological and physical stress in that he is not as agile as earlier. This decrease in mobility I believe is affecting all aspects of his game, eg, the quicknessin reacting to a ball bowled at him. There have been "over weight" players - Inzamam comes to mind - but, I think Inzy was always like that.

He took his place in the team for granted, this is not true only for Viru, it is an Indian syndrome given the cricket crazy fans.

Cheers

Nattusbs[/quote]

Here's an article on sehwag.

Reconstructing Sehwag

"
So what's he done over the last few weeks? He's gone back, lost weight, grown a French beard, returned to the Government Boys Senior Secondary School at Vikas Puri - his alma mater - and gone back to Batting 101, studying videos of his dismissals with AN Sharma, his long-time coach.
Sharma points out the two major focus areas: analysing his dismissals and trying to bat long periods. "We asked him to see his videos - how he's been getting out recently", Sharma told Cricinfo. "The aim was to find out what he wasn't doing correctly."
After seeing the videos, Sehwag would have a turn with the bat and Sharma would try and ensure the mistakes weren't repeated. "

IndianByDefault;4321I am kinda worried about the Indian team being over confident going into the world cup after playing on the placid indian pitches.[/quote]

According to experts, the pitches in WI are getting slower and slower as they are being relaid. Gone are the fast and bouncy pitches of the yester-year West Indies. So, the pitches should suit India more than it used to before.

India can never be complacent as they have big issues in every department. Batting depends on sachin, dravid and ganguly (include dhoni also) with a few younsters like gambhir, karthick, or uthappa chipping in. If the seniors get out, then there is a dramatic collapse as emphasized by the 3rd one-day match. That has happenned many times and can't be dismissed as a one-time thing. So, if the top 5-6 players don't play till the end of 50th over, we fold very easily like a deck of cards. Fielding is average at best (couple of exceptions) and can make a huge difference in close games. Bowling is very sketchy with no consistency at all. Can't even think of one bowler as a match winner even though it should be a team effort. India as a team is very streaky. No team can win consistently without the proper team effort, classic example being Australia. If the star players play well, others chip-in and clobber the bowling in the slog overs to post huge totals. If the star players happen to fail, others still chip-in and post reasonable, defendable totals. They clearly have an advantage with their superior bowling, but it is the team effort that outshines everything else.