Future of Indian cricket excites me

Future of Indian cricket excites me
Sanjay Manjrekar

India continue their incredible winning spree against the Australians with an emphatic win in the first One Day International. Three wins in a row for India now, against the best side in the world. While this is happening a nice bunch of talented cricketers are getting together for India. This, excites me more than anything else. VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Shiv Sunder Das, Zaheer Khan of the new generation have already shown their credentials in international cricket. These are young cricketers India can pin their hopes on. In Bangalore we found two more -- Virendra Sehwag and Vijay Dahiya.

In what has been a great four weeks for Indian cricket, the discovery of this pool of young talent is most significant. Future of Indian cricket excites me. Vijay Dahiya, I thought, was unfortunate to have not been considered for the Test series. Everyone agreed that he had a good series against Zimbabwe, both in tests as well as one dayers. That performance with only a short passage of time was forgotten and his showing just before the selection of the first Test against Australia became decisive. I thought that was quite unfair to him. It was nice to see that the last few weeks had no ill effects on this wicket keeper from Delhi. He came out to bat here at Bangalore thinking right and played a pivotal innings which saw India get past 300. He may not be the best wicket keeper in the country but he should really be India's first choice as keeper batsman.

Man of the match, Virendra Sehwag is another good news for India, Sehwag has always always carried the reputation of being a ``hitter''. Many such batsmen came up in the past with similar reputations but come international cricket, these hitters suddenly realised that there weren't too many spinners around to hit the big ones. Needless to say they did not last long. Sehwag showed us at Bangalore that he has the ability to play shots to faster bowlers as well and that is a very heartening sign. India has found a batsman at No 6 who can be called a ``danger man'' even at the international level.. His bowling will always be an asset.

Ganguly was pleasantly surprised by the fact here. Rahul Dravid since Ganguly has taken over as captain is playing a more prominent role of a senior member. He is seen there alongside Ganguly when needed and that is good to know. Dravid played an invaluable innings. He rallied with the youth and talent of Sehwag and Dahiya, guiding them into sizeable partnerships. He played the role of a senior India player to perfection. 315 runs to get on a belter of a pitch, by a side which had Harvey a batsman , at No 8 looked attainable for Australia. But, watching them lose wickets at regular intervals ,one got the feeling that Australia had just not recovered from the stress of the Test series. India dealt their opposition another serious blow while they were still rising from the mat.

(Sportsnet Syndication)