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Friday, June 05, 2009

Is team India in good form?

Team India is all set to defend their crown as the World Twenty20 kicks off this Friday. The players have seen plenty of cricket action over the last few weeks, which give us a fair sense of who’s in good form and who isn’t. How exactly do we measure this form? Simple, we look at the Castrol Index which quantifies each player’s performance.
Here’s a look at the Castrol Index for the players in the current Indian squad. The index scores are based on performances in the IPL 2009.

*Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma are officially classified as batsmen, while they played the role of all-rounders at the IPL 09. Hence their index scores have been recalculated considering them as all-rounders, which reflects the true value of their performances.

The average Castrol Index score of the top 100 players in the IPL 2009 was about 33, and the stars of the tournament had scores in excess of 40. This tells us Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma and the Pathan brothers are in really good nick which bodes well for the Men in Blue. The concern areas are the guys at the bottom of the table- the opening batsmen and opening bowlers. But players of the class of Sehwag, Gambhir, Ishant and Zaheer are bound to come good sometime- a billion Indians will hope that happens at the World T20.

There were others who excelled in the IPL, but aren’t in the Indian squad.

Delhi Daredevils Ashish Nehra and Dinesh Karthik can consider themselves unlucky to miss out- Nehra was in spectacular form with more wickets per match than RP Singh, Kumble or Malinga while Karthik played some crucial knocks in crunch situations. 
And then there’s this chap called Anil Kumble- he picked up 21 wickets at 5.86 runs per over. Unfortunately he’s retired.
Will India miss the likes of an in-form Nehra or a wily Kumble at the World T20? Did the selectors miss a trick by not picking a back-up keeper or an in-form Nehra? Probably not, given the recent success the current squad has had at the international level. Only time will tell though. Keep an eye out on those Castrol Index scores to see which players are justifying their place in the Indian eleven and which ones should be warming the benches.

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile

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