Letter of the Day

I'm hopeful that VVS Laxman, Ashish Nehra and Zaheer Khan will be fit for the upcoming Test series against SA. Not because I feel that their presence will make any difference to the fate of the Indian team but for the sole reason that when we lose this time, the captain won't give any silly excuses.

We have to admit that our team is not good enough to win overseas and against teams like SA it is that much more difficult. We don't have the bowlers who can dismiss the opposition cheaply.Let's not blame the selectors.

They have been doing a decent job recently. But it's quite sad that we don't have the youngstars who can replace the inconsistent players like Javagal Srinath, Laxman & Sadagoppan Ramesh.

Why do you feel that Laxman is able to keep his place in the team by scoring one big century in every twenty innings? He can afford to get out in twenties and thirties because he knows there is nobody to replace him, who can consistently get big scores. Why do you feel that Srinath is picked in the team after bowling so inconsistantly in recent matches? That's simply because we don't have the bench strength.

When the two top order batsmen were missing in the last tour, the opportunity was thrown to the two most talented youngsters. The result : one of them averaged just over 15 and the other just over 21 in three matches.

Sometimes I wonder why Ajit Agarkar is still there , why a player like Vinod Kambli makes a dozen comebacks to the side and still fails to cement his place, why players like Vijay Bhardwaj disappear after being the man-of-the-tournament in their debut tournament itself, why players like Laxmi Ratan Shukla after being compared with Kapil Dev can't get into the team.

I don't feel any pity for these players.They were given their opportunities, but didn't grab it. We don't have the youngsters to challenge the bunch of old-inconsistent players.Until and unless that happens we can't expect our team to win regularly.

Manas Mishra