Breaking/Brief news
December 09, 2005
England's captaincy debate
Michael Vaughan's absence during the one-day series against Pakistan, in order to have a knee surgery, means that Trescothick will captain the side, as he did when Vaughan pulled out from the first test against Pakistan last month.
While other pundits have wondered about who England's future captain should be, Mike Selvey reckons that Vaughan is fast losing his hold on the one-day captaincy on account of his poor one-day record, not having scored a single century and an obvious shortage of batting slots.
I find a lot of similarities in the debate over if Ganguly should have been included in the one-day side. Given Ganguly's lack of mobility, it seems obvious that he would struggle as a fielder in one-dayers. But he is very obviously a much better one-day batsman, especially as an opener, because of his eye, timing and ability to come up with outrageous shots, such as slaps over backward point/extra cover etc.
The difference between Ganguly and Vaughan as fielders is that Vaughan is a hopeless catcher while Ganguly is a hopeless fielder. The obvious difference between the two as batsmen in one-dayers is that Ganguly is much more likely to play a match-winning innings compared to Vaughan.
Update
I wrote this on The Corridor of Uncertainty as a comment for a related post.
Should Vaughan try to become "something else"? I'd compare Vaughan with Dravid. Both're the typical examples of the classical batsman, high elbow etc. etc.
Dravid struggled in one-dayers and found himself frequently out of the side while inferior players masquerading as all-rounders kept him on the periphery. But given that he wanted to be part of the one-day unit and India were finding it tough to find a replacement for Mongia as keeper and because he'd kept in a few under-15 games (!!), he volunteered to keep, perhaps as a last resort to be part of the one-day side.
It did wonders for him. He transformed his batting and I wrote briefly about it a couple of years ago after he'd batted superbly in the end stages of an innings. Perhaps he was forced to reinvent himself. Remember, this was the same chap who scored one run in twenty odd balls against _Bangladesh_ in 1997!
Maybe Vaughan should do something similar. I'm sure he can't keep worse than Geraint Jones :) Maybe he should bowl a lot more often. But that'd be tough with a wonky knee.
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