Team composition poses problems for India
When a team has so many factors going against them, it is imperativethat nothing is done to weaken the side further
Partab Ramchand
10-Nov-2001
The South African victory in the first Test was expected. What was
unexpected was a nine-wicket win with more than a day to spare.
When a team has so many factors going against them, it is imperative that nothing is done to weaken the side further. The strongest possible outfit must be played, the batsmen and bowlers must do their job in exemplary fashion, and half-chances have to be taken in the field. |
When a team has so many factors going against them, it is imperative
that nothing is done to weaken the side further. The strongest
possible outfit must be played, the batsmen and bowlers must do their
job in exemplary fashion, and half-chances have to be taken in the
field. Then, with some luck, maybe the Test can be saved.
Unfortunately, things did not quite work out that way. True, eve-ofthe-match injuries to Sameer Dighe and Harbhajan Singh were, as the
cliché goes, circumstances beyond anyone's control. But Dighe could
not have done any better than Deep Dasgupta, who in fact had a fairly
good match, and Harbhajan's presence would not have made much
difference to the final result. So marked was the difference between
the two sides in their approach that, at most, the victory margin
might not have been so wide and the match might have gone to the fifth
day. For, if anything, the problem lay more with the batting than the
bowling.
True, the bowling was generally way off the mark. When the bowlers
concede a total of 563, it does put pressure on the batsmen. Certainly
the bowling quartet three of whom conceded over 100 runs each and
the fourth gave away 98 will not remember Bloemfontein with any
sense of pride or satisfaction, even though Javagal Srinath emerged
with some credit. But then, what are the other options available to
the team management? The attack has to have two seamers and two
spinners, and this would have been the case had Harbhajan been fit.
But the seam attack is so weak that Anil Kumble and Harbhajan would
have to be at their absolute devastating best to do an adequate coverup job. Kumble would have to rework the Kotla magic of 1999 and
Harbhajan the kind of wonders he pulled off against Australia earlier
this year. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, these are once in a
lifetime achievements.
And now to the batting. I wonder whose bright idea it was to ask Rahul
Dravid to open the batting. He is not a guinea pig to be tested in a
role in which he has already shown his distaste and in which position
his record is woeful. In the past, the guinea pigs were players like
Nayan Mongia and MSK Prasad and even VVS Laxman before he came good
in the middle order. Since when are highly successful middle-order
batsmen, established players who are among the top two or three
batsmen in the team, with an average of 50 plus, used for lab tests?
Let us stop these foolish experiments pronto. A specialist opening
batsman has been picked for the tour. Does he not deserve a chance?
A disturbing point to ponder over is that there are not many options
for the team management as regards the composition of the final
playing eleven. In the absence of an all-rounder, the only two choices
are six batsmen and four bowlers or five batsmen and five bowlers.
Both options are fraught with danger given the Indian team's
inconsistency. But having gone in for the first choice and lost badly,
perhaps there is no way out but to opt for the second choice, hope for
the five bowlers to dismiss South Africa twice, and hope that the five
batsmen avoid the mistakes they made in the first Test. Or is this
hoping for too much?