etcetera

Yesterday, India beat England in ODI in Delhi. Good win for India considering its miserable performance in Mumbai Test. But Indian batsmen failed to perform one more time. In the last few series Indian top-order has failed consistently ( especially Viru and Sachin) and lower middle order has saved the blushes for top-order. A point to ponder about Mr. Chapple.

In India, ODI series is a chance for visiting team to do some Bharat Darshan! The ODI series invariably consists of 7 matches which are held on all the corners of India, from Guwahati in east to Rajkot in west and from Mohali in the north to Cochin in south. Just check out the England itinerary for this ODI series.

28 Delhi

31 Faridabad

3 Goa

6 Cochin

9 Guwahati

12 Jamshedpur

15 Indore

Consecutive ODI's are held at Cochin and Guwahati. There is too little time to practice. Many of the touring teams have complained BCCI in this matter, but it continues to draft schedules in this manner. Apart from the travelling factor, there is no attention paid to the fact that matches are not held on Saturday-Sundays or any other public holiday. 2nd match is on Friday and third is on Monday. Only pattern the Board seems to follow is the two-day gap between two consecutive matches. BCCI knows that, be it Sunday or not, people are going to flock to the stadium. Compare this to Australia or SA, where ODIs are only held on Fridays and Sundays. Perhaps, it may save some human hours. Par apne Board ko kya? They are only interested in making money!

There was some heated discussion about the Rotating Policy, when the Test match at Chennai was cancelled because of monsoon. Because of this policy matches are not held on a fixed date in any city. e.g. in Australia there is Boxing day Test match in Melbourne or New Year Test match in Sydney. I know, it is not completely feasible, but at least Board can assign particular month for particular region. Wouldn't it be great, if say there is Diwali Test match in Mumbai, held each year!

So what I think is - there should be regions assigned to each tour. Say, South region for all Feb- March tours ( so no monsoon problem). And all the Tests and ODIs will be played in this region only. So less travelling. Fixed month and dates for Test matches. And there is no need to dish out Test status to each and every small venue in India. Small centres like Kanpur and Cuttack can be easily done away with.

There are problems in it-like every region would like to host Australia and nobody would prefer Bangladesh. If Australia tour is held in one region the other regions will be deprived of watching Aussie performance live. Or small centres will not get many matches. But in a Big country like India such things are bound to happen. As there are advantages of scale, so are disadvantages!