India begin prep for ODI World Cup

KOLKATA: In less than 12 months, India will host the ODI World Cup. Realistically it’s their best opportunity to win, not only because they are playing at home but also because this seems to be the format their natural playing style is most suited to. But such has been the structure of World Cup cycles that one-dayers have been kept on the backburners since 2019.

The format-specific experience has thus been pretty sparse — only Shikhar Dhawan has played more than 30 (31) of the 39 ODIs since the 2019 World Cup, Shreyas Iyer (27), Virat Kohli (26) and KL Rahul (22) being the other three to have featured in more than 20 matches in this time.

India automatically qualify for the World Cup as hosts and don’t have to think about the Super League points. So the focus will clearly be on sorting out the final 15 as India get down to playing the first three of the 21 ODIs they are scheduled to play till the World Cup next year.

The World Cup will be held on grounds where the boundaries won’t be big, pitches will be slow and the outfields will be quick. The current series will be played in almost contrasting conditions without Rohit Sharma, Kohli and Rahul but in Dhawan and Shubman Gill, India have a formidable opening pair that has three-century stands in eight matches.

In 10 ODIs since the 2019 World Cup, Gill has scored 563 runs at an average of 70.37 and a strike rate of 105.82. Few more similar innings and it would be difficult to overlook him. Equally interesting will be the way Dhawan’s case is treated. He has a healthy average (45.84) but has been considerably slower (SR of 82.83) since the 2019 World Cup. Kohli (91.12), Rahul (95.62) and Sharma (96.11) have better strike rates but this format can still sustain at least one anchor if the other top-order batters can accelerate. If the new selectors aim to strike a balance by picking Dhawan for the World Cup, a toporder conundrum is inevitable.

This will automatically decide the middle-order. And given the mess India had created by persisting with Vijay Shankar in 2019, they will be well-advised to go through as many options as possible. Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja will be trusted to share at least 10 overs if two specialist fast bowlers (Bumrah and Shami/Arshdeep?) and two specialist spinners (Yuzvendra Chahal and R Ashwin/Axar Patel?) are picked. Deepak Hooda deserves to be looked at as sixth bowling option as well, as do Washington Sundar, Deepak Chahar and Shardul Thakur — all named in the squad for this series.

Six bowling options including two allrounders; five specialist batters, three out of which are top-order, should make up the 11. That basically leaves two middleorder bats, one of them being Suryakumar Yadav. Logic says Rishabh Pant, who is vice-captain for this series, should be the other person since he is the wicketkeeper, bats left-handed and is generally a more reliable option in 50-overs cricket since he gets more time to settle down and go ballistic the way only he can.