India has no genuine fast bowlers or good spinners: Azad

Former BCCI national coach, Desh Prem Azad, who produced the great all-rounder Kapil Dev and pacer Chetan Sharma, says that the Indian so-called Indian fast bowlers -Zahir Khan, Ishant Sharma and Praveen Kumar --- are just 'medium pacers.' ''India has hardly ever produced fast bowlers in the past,'' Azad told UNI emphatically.

''India is known as a country of spinners. Today our spinners are ineffective. In the past, we had a good crop of spinners ---Prasanna, Venkataraghvan, Chandrashekhar, Bishan Singh Bedi, Narendra Hirwani, Dilip Doshi, Ravi Shastri, Bapu Nadkarni, Subhash Gupte, Maninder Singh and so on --- who were most feared by the best of batsmen in the world'', he added.

The present day spinners are no match to them as they are not wily enough to extract the best out of the spinner unfriendly wicket, Azad said.

The first Test between India and Sri Lanka at Ahmedabad last week, which ended in a draw, produced 1598 runs in five days on a batsman-friendly wicket, he pointed out while adding that this was food for thought for the BCCI.

The curators ought to ensure that the wickets prepared are equally good enough for both batsmen and bowlers, else, if the trend continues, spectators will gradually lose interest in Test cricket, Azad said.

''For fast bowling, the BCCI 'pitch committee' has been repeatedly asking the curators to provide the platform which they haven't. We have not succeeded is preparing wickets conducive for fast bowling'', he added.

''How can India then produce fast bowlers?' Azad questioned.

-- (UNI) -- 23SPD33.xml

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