Happy New Year, everybody! 2023 is upon us now. What better way to start the year than to tune into a State of Cricket podcast episode by Cricket Huddle? A few days ago, the BCCI’s latest review meeting was made public, and there were five takeaways mentioned. Today, we go over them and make a thorough analysis of the topics. As this will be a hard-hitting discussion, it will be one of our longer podcasts and summaries as well.

First off, we do want to start this discussion by saying that we are glad to see Rishabh Pant doing better now. Pant was involved in a serious car accident a week days ago and has multiple injuries to his body. This will rule him out of the India-Australia series for sure. It will also put his IPL captaincy with the Delhi Capitals in a state of flux too, depending on how long he will be out of action. We’re going to hope that he will be ready by October, when the ODI World Cup will begin. We will be wishing the best for him!

Now, we can get to the meat of the conversation, the five takeaways. They are: Yo-Yo tests will return, 20 players will be shortlisted for the ODI World Cup, workload management and NCA (National Cricket Academy), emerging players, and no changes will be made to the current personnel. Let’s talk about some of the thought-provoking parts of these takeaways, in our opinion, in five separate sections.

1. Yo-yo tests

Is India making a mistake again by focusing on cardiovascular fitness first? These tests will do nothing to help someone with, say, a shoulder or a hamstring injury. Part of the reasons for India’s latest underperformances has been the risk of re-injuring another body part which, in turn, makes for slower play in the field/bowling or a decrease in accuracy. Instead, why don’t we look at what players like MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli have done to avoid breaking down? They’ve had so much wear-and-tear on their bodies over the years, yet they’ve maintained peak physical fitness and little-to-no missed time. 

We need to protect guys like Jasprit Bumrah, Ravindra Jadeja, and Hardik Pandya, all of whom are key proponents to victory for us and all of whom have been dealing with major injuries over the past year or two. Some of us also feel like the yo-yo tests have been used more to detract some possible candidates (Kedar Jadhav, Ambati Rayudu) from representing the team. A proper, consistent benchmark needs to be set in order to avoid favoritism and controversy. Hopefully, these DEXA scans/tests will help with proper team selection. The key point we are trying to make is these tests and results should not be used for the wrong reasons 

2. 20-man shortlist

We went over who we thought would be the best fits as a part of this 20-man list. All of the crew came to an agreement that Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, and Suryakumar Yadav (SKY) are guaranteed locks. Also, Lokesh Rahul will not make an appearance on this list, which makes me happy too! The requirements are eight batters (at least one wicketkeeper), eight bowlers, and four all-rounders. Each member rattled off their list, all sounding nearly identical. One thing the guys decided was that Prithvi Shaw would need more playing time in the T20I side first before even getting a chance to represent the ODI team.

There was also discussion on possible middle-order candidates (Rajat Patidar, Rahul Tripathi, Sarfaraz Khan) in case someone like SKY had to be replaced, but that notion was quickly shot down. As for all-rounders, we don’t mind whether they are batting or bowling all-rounders just as long as they are able to fulfill both jobs and not be one-dimensional. What wasn’t a good sign of these discussions was that one of our members couldn’t even fill out the requirement criteria we had of four all-rounders to pick… Shows that India’s quality in this position is not as strong enough, which is something we previously hinted at in an earlier podcast. He got to pick 10 bowlers instead. In the end, we do still have some concerns with the middle-order, even joking that this means Rahul would slide back in… Ugh, please no! There is a concern with the predictability of the players chosen as well.

3. Workload/NCA

One interesting point indirectly related to this topic is: are we choosing players based on flashes of brilliance and not longevity? Is that a reason why more of our players are breaking down, because they can’t last long-term? With the way cricket has been progressing, it seems that three-format players are a thing of the past. Not many players are being considered for Tests, ODIs, and T20Is, so the “excuse” of workload management could possibly be nullified. Mental health breaks are also ok, as long as players aren’t picking and choosing which formats or leagues to sit out. Think of Virat Kohli’s rest (only post-IPL) vs. what Glenn Maxwell or Ben Stokes did (actually away from ALL cricket).

A kind-of controversial take (in my opinion) is that players should not request rest but should only be provided it if management thinks they are in need of it. It’s controversial because now players would be at the mercy of the management and maybe the players would have to play past their limits potentially. That being said, I do agree that players should NOT be asking for multiple breaks in between series. There has to be some fairness to any player requests for breaks. Another point made is that the Indian national team might have to ask IPL franchises for certain decisions to be made on their behalf (resting certain players, using certain players in certain positions). However, they should only be able to request and not dictate these suggestions.

To that, however, I have a counterpoint that was also discussed last week in our podcasts. If there is a possibility that franchises can influence national team decisions, then maybe national teams should also be allowed to do the same. Last week, we said that this possibly happened with the Lucknow Super Giants and stand-in India Test captain Lokesh Rahul using Jaydev Unadkat in the second Bangladesh Test. I also think there was a possibility this happened in the first Sri Lanka T20I, where the Gujarat Titans and stand-in India T20 captain (Hardik Pandya) gave debuts to his two franchise players (Shubman Gill and Shivam Mavi). Gill may have already played for Gujarat but Mavi hasn’t, so this may look straight out of Rahul’s book of using Unadkat. Let’s see what Unadkat/Mavi has to provide by giving him/them an early look at playing time.

4. Emerging players

We feel like this move was made so that players wouldn’t just have good IPL seasons and then randomly get into the national team. It is a smart move for sure to ensure that these emerging talents have some domestic cricket in their blood before just making the jump straight to India. Examples mentioned of such players were: Varun Chakravarthy (mystery spinner picked in the 2021 T20 World Cup team), Venkatesh Iyer (asked to be Hardik Pandya’s replacement as a finisher and all-rounder), and Kuldeep Sen (played one match, then pulled out due to injury). Getting VVS Laxman (director of cricket at NCA) into this meeting was also a key decision, as he gets to see these players (both the emerging talents and the injured guys coming in for rehab).

5. Personnel

One problem we have with no change of personnel is accountability. Rohit Sharma (current India captain) and Rahul Dravid (current India head coach) were definitely part of the think-tank for the failures in 2022, so why aren’t they being held accountable for that? Maybe they don’t need to be replaced, per se, but some change(s) need to be made so as to avoid said problems again, right? The key player talked about as part of the failures was V. Iyer. He played as an opener for the Kolkata Knight Riders and had only one decent half-season (not even a full season). Despite this, his role was completely changed to being Pandya’s replacement as a lower-order finisher who can bowl as well. He was being hung out to dry in a change of roles, which led to struggles in both the next IPL season as well as his international performances.

Some of us are hoping that a sort-of ultimatum has been provided to both captain and coach to get an international trophy (ODI World Cup and/or World Test Championship) or else they’re out. Others are saying that Rohit is at the end of his career and is nothing more than a stopgap captain, while Dravid may be required to provide stability to a team coming out of an explosive captain-coach tenure (Kohli-Ravi Shastri). A suggestion was being made to have a completely separate T20 setup (different coach, different captain, maybe even different players) rather than a combined three-format setup, as we feel that Dravid is not a good T20 coach. Suggestions for coaching replacements could be Laxman or, in my opinion, someone like Ashish Nehra. 

Pandya, we feel like, should become the permanent T20 captain but we aren’t sure of his qualifications to be the full white-ball captain too. Suggestions for ODI captaincy have been Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant, or Ruturaj Gaikwad. We end the podcast with talks of accountability for Dravid due to his bad track record. For all the negativity thrown around Shastri, he at least did better in bilateral series and only messed up during World Cups. Compare that to Dravid, who has had a higher failure rate and more losses in normal series, especially in some winnable Test matches.

If you are interested in the rest of the conversation, please check out the links below:

Thanks for reading