Thanks for the comments/criticisms. Yes Shakti Kapoor did say that—which just goes to show that he is not in total control of his faculties.

I dont agree that individual achievment makes the game interesting—-that of course is my opinion. The reason why our cricketing progress stagnated in the 80s (when Australia charged ahead) was our single-minded pursuit of records (Gavaskar comes to mind but he knew when to leave unlike Kapil who dragged on into the 90s just for his record)

My recollection of events was that Sachin was told repeatedly to hurry up and he did not ! And how many overs to give Pakistan to bat was Dravid’s prerogative—if Sachin was pacing his innings according to his own strategy, then that’s definitely not “cricket”.

In addition, he publicly showed his disappointment which was also “not on”—-all it showed was how “record minded” he has become. In fact so much so that he did not mind venting in front of the media when his double century was denied.

Am with you on the slow scoring in Mohali but have to disagree on the team-individual debate in the context of the 194 not out declaration. It’s very hard to argue with a statement as high-sounding as “The team comes first, not the individual”, but face it, it’s individual achievement that makes the game interesting. Cricket would be a vastly poorer sport without its great players and their distinct abilities – it certainly isn’t an assembly-line out there.

If individual goals are impinging on team interest in an obvious way (as, admittedly, was the case at Mohali), then sure, we all know what choice has to be made. But I don’t for one minute think that was the case in the Multan Test. Tendulkar’s innings was very well paced even as he approached the milestone and an extra couple of overs would have made no difference – in fact a slightly later declaration would have been more in keeping with the traditional strategy of putting the other side in for an awkward 10-12 overs and thus having a new-ish ball in the morning as well.