Mumbai missed the bus

Winning is a habit and in a team game like cricket the players should realise the importance of winning at home and abroad in regular intervals.  Mumbai cricket team just like Indian team maintain their home tiger image very well but lose when they go out to play competitive level matches.  This is happening for over a decade and the team management failed to arrest the slide in recent times.  By changing the captain and the coach the home team is not going to achieve anything extraordinary. The writing is on the wall.  Mumbai's Ranji side failed to qualify for the semi-final stage of the Ranji Trophy and the whole set up needs a sea change to come out of the rut. Old warhorses in the side like Wasim Jaffer and Zaheer Khan should pave way for the youngsters to step into their shoes at least from next season.  High scoring in school matches is not going to serve the purpose in anyway.  H. Shah scores 500 plus score against ordinary bowling but when
 they go up the ladder such a big score is not going to help anyway against standard pace attack.  Forty time champion should have proper planning to develop the game from the grass root level.  Nature of wickets should be fast and bouncy and there is need for improving fast bowling.  Team should know how to play both the first innings and the second innings with great tact and talent.  Having played for first innings lead most of the time, the players are not up to stand up second innings and face defeat.  Instead the focus is on spin and that is not helping in any way in the knock out stage of the Championship.  In all it was pathetic show to say the least. 

PLAY POSITIVE CRICKET DHONI

We come across incidents when the new ball in Indian innings was taken by wicket keepers Budhi Kundrean and Syed Kirmani.  We give very less importance to the new ball as we do not have a genuine fast bowlers to bowl 140 kmp hour and fetch some early wickets.  Instead we bank too much on spin and put paid our hopes of claiming early wickets in any form of the game.  Recently, it was no betters as we were outplayed in one day matches and lost the test series 0-1 to the number one test side in the world.  We spare no efforts to work on the ball and get sufficient swing and fox the best batsmen in the world with lateral movement.  Instead we struck around the old ball for 146 overs at Durban and the umpires force to change the ball in the end. Team India took the ball after 146 overs but one now understands that it was not by MS Dhoni's own volition but due to the umpire's intervention.  It was learnt that that the India skipper was told by the umpires that they had to change the ball as the seam was coming off.  Seeing South African onslaught and the total piling up to 500 plus total, Dhoni was scared to take the second new ball.  On request of the umpires, MS Dhoni then decided to take the new ball.  One wonders how a captain can act so negative on a foreign soil where the ball bounces and moves very well.  Better council prevailed thanks to field umpires. The previous record of 185 overs with the old ball also belongs to Team India in the year 1962.  In the last 50 years we have not done anything to improve the standard of fast bowling and Tom, Dick and Harry came and go without any advantage of taking the new ball.  Strange are the ways of Team India's approach in Test Match cricket. Captain cool does not know the real value of new ball as he play negative cricket at home and abroad all the time.