Wherefore are these things hid?
January 3, 2008
Ian Chappell has been clamouring for gambling with Sehwag as opener for quite a while now; I was in favour of such a move myself too. But I’m not sure if he has seen this.
I wonder if commentators, analysts, columnists and self-certified “experts” (perhaps not much different from myself!) take due cognizance of factors like a player’s form in the nets, confidence level, fitness, etc. I believe that often we need to qualify our appraisals by acknowledging that we, on the outside, may not always have all the relevant information needed when passing judgment.
Note: As you may already have noticed, the title of this post has been artlessly reproduced from CLR James’ “Beyond a Boundary”.
January 3, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I believe I do my best to internalize this notion. There are times when you say, “captain’s call” and just let it be because he has information you don’t. Based on the captain’s performance on the observables, you need to reach a conclusion as to whether you trust him to do a good enough job on the unobservables.
January 4, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Let me just say here that we respect and admire Ian Chappell’s understanding of the game and cricketing knowledge. However, I get the feeling that at times he (and many other commentators and columnists) doesn’t take all the unobservables into account.
Then again, I don’t really know how many unobservables there are with respect to him. He might very well have strolled down to the nets and seen Sehwag’s form first-hand!