Sourav Ganguly wants Indian players to play county cricket

May 31, 2016 at 11:22 AM

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Sourav Ganguly wants Indian players to play county cricket

Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly has said that he wants Indian players like Rohit Sharma , Shikhar Dhawan , R Ashwin , Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron to play county cricket in England to perform better for the Indian team in test matches.
At an official meeting of the technical committee, which was also attended by BCCI president Anurag Thakur , Ganguly, who is now BCCI’s technical committee Chairman, cited the example of former pacer Zaheer Khan , who improved by leap and bounds as a pacer after his county stint. The pacer was a major factor for India’s good performance in the test matches in the second half of the last decade.

Sources revealed that Ganguly said in the meeting that Zaheer’s improvement as a bowler had helped India win Test matches away from home – in places like Australia, Pakistan, England and South Africa.

The left-arm pacer was really close to being dropped  during the 2005-06 season, before he decided to play in England. He played for Surrey and Worcestershire, taking 79 wickets in 17 matches. And, when he came back to play for India, he soon pushed himself to the top of the bowling list.

Zaheer has played 92 matches for India, taking 311 wickets, but off these, 151 scalps came in the 5 years that followed his county stint in 2006. 151 wickets in 36 matches at an average of 27.47- a clear indication of how much a player can benefit from playing in English conditions.

India’s recent performances in the overseas tests have been nothing short of disastrous. The year 2011 saw the Indian Test team whitewashed 4–0 in away Test series by England, displacing them from the top of the table. This series was followed by another disastrous 4–0 whitewash in Australia. They justified the tag of poor travelers once again as India drew the first Test and went on to register a historic win at Lords in the second Test studded by Ishant and Rahane’s excellent performances. Yet, they lost the series 3-1 after England decimated them in the next three Tests, the last two being innings defeats.
Ganguly also suggested that BCCI could talk to county teams to let Indian players play there between June to August after the IPL season gets over.

Well, barring Virat Kohli and to some extent Ajinkya Rahane and Murali Vijay, the other players have struggled to give decent performances in the overseas conditions. Playing county cricket will surely help them to improve a lot and they can draw inspiration from the fact that some of the modern greats like Rahul Dravid, Zaheer Khan, VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly benefitted a lot from their  county experience.

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