Playing five bowlers weakens the batting This Indian batting line-up is not what it was two years ago in Australia, says Geoffrey Boycott Rahul Dravid called it "a temporary lapse of reason" at the post-match presentation, but I would look deeper for the reasons behind India's batting collapse at the Wankhede. To me, this batting line-up is not what it was two years ago in Australia, though the names may be the same. Virender Sehwag, bad back or no bad back, has been in poor form and lacking in confidence for quite a while now, and Sachin Tendulkar is in the worst form of his career.
Indeed, Sachin has had to contend with too many injuries and illnesses in the recent past, and apart from taking a toll on his body, they have kept him out of cricket too often. Now that he's going to sit out for a further two months, I don't think he can ever come back to regain what he once had.
Lack of quality Greg Chappell's theory of using five bowlers looks good on paper because the team has more bowling options. But when India plays five bowlers, it looks to me as though Chappell is trying to make up for a lack of quality with quantity. Playing five bowlers weakens the batting, so you need better batting from the top five batsmen, and at the moment they are not in good form, which makes a good case for the inclusion of V.V.S. Laxman.
When it comes to seaming pitches as we saw at the Wankhede, the middle-lower order batsmen are not dependable.
The Indian lower and middle order comprises players like Yuvraj Singh, who are stroke-makers and crowd pleasers, who can hit lots of fours and sixes on good batting pitches, and whose looks and star status make them the darlings of the crowds, but they depend more on hand-eye coordination than on technique.
Nothing illustrates my point better than the appalling way in which the Indian lower order threw the match away once Dravid and Sachin got out.
Agreed, they would probably not have saved the match, but one would have expected them to at least try, instead of slogging it away playing flashy strokes that spoke of indiscipline and an inability to knuckle down in the face of pressure.
What made it worse was the decision to send in Anil Kumble and Pathan on Tuesday. In my view, bowlers take wickets and batsmen make runs. That's the basic rule of cricket. It is absurd to expect two lower-order players to negotiate the new ball, and that brings me to Dravid's mental block against opening, which is mystifying. He is technically the best equipped to open, and often has to walk out so early as to virtually do so, but he just will not promote himself to number one.
India has experimented with numerous opening partnerships in the last couple of years, and openers have come and gone. Good openers are so precious because they set a platform for the rest of the team, as Sunny Gavaskar used to do, so when Sehwag was injured, Dravid ought to have been the automatic choice to replace him, particularly when the jury's still out on Wasim Jaffer, who scored a century on the flat Nagpur track, but I'm not convinced about his abilities in the face of a moving ball.
Toss decision The other thing that Dravid has to answer for, in my opinion, is his decision to bowl after winning the toss. No one has asked him why, though I expected Dean Jones to do so either at the toss or at the prize distribution. Everyone is allowing him to avoid answering what all of India is asking, because the toss is where it all went wrong. England made the most of a miraculous gift, and Andrew Strauss's century was like gold dust.
In the end, nothing illustrated the frustration and desperation of the Mumbai crowd more than the chants of `We want Sourav'. Like him or leave him, Sourav Ganguly was the best captain India had, and yet, for political or personal reasons, he will probably never find a place in this Indian team again.
Truths A lot of Indian players will not like what I've said, but these are home truths that need to be told. If a half-strength English side can force them to capitulate so meekly, I can't imagine what things will be like when they come visiting England in 2007!
http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/23/stories/2006032304402100.htm
AuthorTopic: Playing 5 bowlers -- Was this a good idea ? (Read 589 times)
