Ghost of Roy Dias in Nepali cricket

 Shri Roy Dias is long gone as a coach of Nepal cricket team, what remains is his ghost operating through various batters in Nepali cricket. Roy himself was not a serene name as far as ODI cricket goes, his fame is associated with Test cricket. Roy can be thus credited as a pioneer of Dot ball in Nepal cricket. On a positive note, he should also be credited for cutting off tendency to play across the line which is associated with players who are not good with driving on the off side, are not  equipped   to play with the straight bat, and do not have thinking cricketing mind to know the value of patience and shots as cut shot, off side multiple variety drives and soft hand multiple variety single.

While discussing Roy Dias syndrome let us give a glance to a  present problem in Nepali batting. One of the problems is that senior batter never get dropped hence they are not improving and their games are not changing for the better. This is one major hurdle that is hitting Nepal cricket hard.

 There are lot of upcoming players in the 25 player squad, what is miserable to see is the same senior players who have not only not performed while playing from Nepal but are also visibly appalling as the brand ambassador of   dot ball syndrome hence are known for their  dearth of good inning. 

What bugs me  is that players like Kusal Bhurtel and Saurav Khanal are not getting a go in the playing 11, while Sharad vesawkar who has not been scoring the runs in the same fashion for last five years fits in.  Leardership crisis means Gyanendra Malla, whose problem of lack of good inning, accumulation of dot ball meaning low strike rate, is  still not addressed, is the captain of the team. Gyanendra should be sitting in the bench and Khusal Bhurtel should be playing in 11. What I would love to see is Khusal Bhurtel opening the batting with Sunil Dhamala and Saurav Khanal batting at five or six. 

Likewise Binod Bhandari who bats outside the Roy Dias schooling piles runs in the domestic through his leg side slogging against weak bowlers of multiple regional teams. A player who should have been invested is/was Raju Thapa Rijal, who should have been encouraged not to  bat at low strike rate and to play his dabs and drives. Raju Rijal  was completely sidelined while non scoring sharad and gyanu and bhandari have been in the playing eleven, the logic supplied is that they have lot of "experience". Virat Kohli's expletive springs into the mind when such glamorous logic of experience is furnished. 

What happens when a senior player is not selected and sent for improvement is Navjoot Singh Sidhu, other is Ravindra Jadeja for his batting, other examples that come to mind are VVS Laxman, Younus Khan, there must be other examples as well. 

to be continued