India’s experiment with aggression backfires
DHARAMSALA: In a Virat Kohli-less India team, it was surprising to see Ajinkya Rahane’s name missing from the playing XI - even when experiments have looked the norm in recent times.
At the HPCA Stadium, it took just two overs for Rahane’s absence to be felt. That was how long Sri Lanka took to hand the hosts the first jolt. The crowd was silenced as Shikhar Dhawan was adjudged leg before off Angelo Mathews via DRS.
What followed left them in shock. A team of talented players aiming to become world beaters crumbled in conditions aiding swing with bounce on offer.
In the space of 27 runs, India lost six more wickets. Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik, Manish Pandey, debutant Shreyas Iyer, Hardik Pandya and Bhuvneshwar Kumar were all flummoxed in seaming conditions.
EXPERIMENTATION
Karthik, Pandey, Iyer and Pandya belong to the ‘experimentation group’ in the Indian team as India zero in on the core group for the World Cup. However, in its eagerness to give the younger lot a longer run to prove themselves, the team management seems to be ignoring proper planning.
Consider this. On the eve of the match, Dhawan had fever and Kedar Jadhav was ruled out due to thigh injury. And India are without their most consistent performer – Virat Kohli.
In such a scenario, Iyer was given his maiden ODI cap. Before the team sheet arrived, most thought the three-T20-old batsman would be in the middle order. But Rahane, who scored four straight half-centuries in the last home ODI series against Australia, was left out. India’s experienced top order has done the bulk of the work in building an enviable record at home, but the team management experimented here too. All this while knowing one of the openers was not fully fit and the other was also leading.
Stand-in skipper Rohit Sharma justified Rahane’s exclusion. “We made it clear in Sri Lanka that he is an opener and we don’t want to keep changing his batting slot. It plays on anyone’s mind, not just his, if one’s batting order is kept on changing. Having said that we understand the runs he scored in the past few series. We have identified him as a toporder batsman,” he said.
PACE TERROR
Still, India’s choice to go with the younger lot would have been justified but for how the batsmen tackled the bounce and the line of the Lankan pacers.
Four Indian batsmen edged to slip or wicketkeeper while four others failed to deal with the line and seam movement, falling lbw or bowled. Pacers accounted for eight Indian wickets. Suranga Lakmal took 4/13.
The bounce and mountain breeze made for a deadly combination. But for batsmen due to travel to South Africa, England, Australia and New Zealand in 2018, being able to tackle such conditions is a primary requirement.
It is too early to take the current crop of batsmen to task, but after such a showing, questions are bound to be asked. Especially, when the next few months will see them playing in challenging conditions against more quality bowlers.
This series is seen as ‘preparation’ for the South Africa tour – the first Test starts on Jan 5. The performance in Dharamsala will give them a reality check.
May be they can take a cue from how MS Dhoni played. Sensing the crisis, he refrained from taking risks at the start, and went for big shots at the end when there were only tail-enders for support.
Younger players will continue to get opportunities with the team deciding to give them an extended run. But learning from such a game is vital to be able to play in all conditions.