Why India Can't Be The Best Team.

This blog is drifting from its orignal motive, but I just had to pin point a particular trouble some reason for India's often below par performance or lack of consistency at the top. This has nothing to do with the present series. Indian cricket has been one of the most astonishing brands in the world. It has had huge demand, huge investment but has at best shown average quality. I pondered why is this so. While, there are a variety of reasons, I wondered if there was a lack of a resouce somewhere.

Was just going through the records of the great bowlers in the past and present. A point that came across resoundingly is that for bowlers having taken above of 200 wickets, India have never had a bowler who has had an average of under 25 and/or a strike rate of under 60 balls.
And how often have we heard the phrases that bowlers win matches and that to win a test match you have got to take wickets. In comparison, Pakistan -who in my opinion over the years have been a lesser batting side than India - have had more away test wins, simply because they had in their arsenal the likes of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Imran Khan. And some competent spinners and pacers complemented them. By the way, Waqar had a superb strike rate, among the best ever. He had a staggering strike rate of a wicket every 43.1 balls. Even Shoiab has a superb 45.2. Just look at the confidence and choices a captain has with these two in the team.

Another point that came across was that among mordern day spinners, only Muralitharan and Warne have strike rates comparable to quickies. And for all the talk, the Indian spinners, Anil Kumble and H Singh lag both Warne and Murali by healthy margins in both the departments of strike rate and averages. This, when they play most of their matches on turning wickets. The message is clear to the BCCI, we need the infrastructure - both hard and soft- in place to develop world class bowlers, until that time we will have to be content with at best being a challenger to the tag of the best cricketing nation in the world.