Our Indian team, thanks to our captain, coach and the fitness experts has now become one of the best teams in the world. If we look at our performance in the last 3-4 years, we have achieved a lot under Ganguly’s captaincy. Ganguly has converted the insipid Indian team of the 90’s, which kneeled and buckled down to its defeats without the slightest semblance of a fight, to a fighting and winning team.
This team knows how to fight even when it is bogged down by the opposition. The Indian captain has this uncanny ability to spot great talents and blood them in this team. Some of the talents spotted by Ganguly are Sehwag, Yuvraj, Kaif , Bhajji and now the latest addition being Pathan. Irfan pathan is a very useful bowler who uses the ball that comes in with great effect. How can one forget that he got Yousuf Yohanna twice LBW with this deadly delivery ?.
Most Right handers dread this ball coming from a left handed pacer and are often never quite ready to play it. We already have two very good and comparatively experienced bowlers like the skidder Ashish Nehra and bang in bowler Zaheer Khan. Ashish Nehra showed in the two ODIs he played that he knows how to bog down batsmen and to take wickets when needed.
I really cannot forget the day when he destroyed the English batting lineup in WC 2003 taking a 6- fer. Ajit Agarkar who is still quite young adds to our bench strength. I may go as far as saying that India has one of the better fast bowling lineups in the world. Our spin bowling can be as mean as it gets.
The likes of Anil Kumble, Bhajji and Murali Karthik certainly bolster the spin bowling department. To add, our mighty batting lineup which is in great batting form makes us one of the strongest teams in the world.
However, we don’t have two varieties of cricketers that Australia, south Africa and New zealand are full of, All rounders and Pinch hitters. Whenever I look at Irfan pathan more and more, he looks to me as somebody who can become a high quality all rounder but right now would like him to concentrate more on his bowling as he is too young to shoulder the responsibility of a allrounder.
I can visualize irfan pathan becoming a future allrounder as he is not as frail as Ajit garkar who could have been a good allrounder if he was slightly bigger, wider and taller. Don’t forget most of the best all rounders were and are lean, mean and strong chaps, such as, Kapil, Botham, Imran, Cairns and Kallis.