CricDigs Blogs

India’s campaign in the T20 World Cup 2009 begins with their warm-up match against the Kiwis. I would have to say that though it is good to get acclimatized with the conditions before the start of any major tournament, the Indians could have done with some rest rather than playing warm-up games and they are carrying a few players with suspect conditioning. Further, they do not even have a second keeper so Dhoni with his uncertain back situation should not be very pleased with this.

On the other hand, the New Zealand team must be happy to get familiar with the format, since not a lot of their players have regularly played international T20 or for that matter the IPL 2009. I guess the best thing would be for India to try and play as many players they think would not be needed immediately at the start of the tournament to keep them warmed-up for the remainder of the World Cup.

For starters, this is not something new to the Aussie team and particularly to Ricky Ponting. He is known to try and play some sort of mental games with the opposition before the onset of every series. So, when the England team is about to take on the Aussies, it was but natural that he would say something to try and ruffle the English media and the dressing room. However, his remarks on Flintoff being ‘prone’ to getting injured and not being able to carry on for an entire series can be best described as a poor attempt at something that Steve Waugh had mastered. These comments should not create any sort of major reactions since it is a fact that Flintoff’s knee and back remain dodgy and his chances of playing regularly for England are always in a limbo. Ponting will have to do a bit better and try to come-up with something a bit more original.

There is some bad news for the Indian team, no matter how much the BCCI tries to play it down. Zaheer Khan — the man in-charge of India’s bowling for the forthcoming T20 World Cup is injured and his fitness may be a cause for worry for the entire length of the tournament. In the given scenario, will it make sense for Ashish Nehra to be sent-in as the back-up for Zaheer?

Nehra was in excellent form in the just-concluded IPL2009 and except for one game of the semi-finals, he bowled brilliantly with reasonable if not lightening pace. Further, he too is in the Zaheer mould, trying to move the ball in a subtle manner to keep the batsmen guessing. Further, he would be hungry for getting back to the international arena and this could be an added incentive for him to bowl hard and the conditions in England too would suit him.

This has to be one of the rare Ashes Series that will be played on an level playing field with Australia still in the mode of fixing a few problems created by the ouster of its regular legends and England still trying to gain a semblance under a new captain and some very conservative cricketing thinking. The fact remains that anyone considering that Australia’s bowling has remarkably weakened with the exodus of Warne or McGrath might be delving too much into the records. Just recently, the Aussies comprehensively beat the South Africa on the Proteas’ turf itself and the likes of Mitchell Johnson, a hungry Brett Lee and Siddle could prove to be more than handful on seaming English conditions. The Poms too are smarting under a conventional but seemingly stable captaincy of Strauss who may be just the kind of calming influence that was needed after the KP fiasco that hit the national team recently.

Anyone who has been following the various T20 World Cup predictions and opinions that seem to be piling-up by the hour would have noted the kind of highlight that Wasim Akram is trying to render to his beleaguered national side. That is how it has to be explained. Agreed that T20 is really anybody’s game and is much more unpredictable than ODI’s but most folks would say that saying that Pakistan are a real contender is slightly miscued.

For starters, their international exposure has been very limited. That might mean that they are the freshest of teams playing in the England World Cup, but seriously the tag of ‘favourites’ just does not seem fit them unless you are trying to patronize a national team that is gradually sinking in terms of audience popularity. I would rather rate the likes of India, South Africa and Australia as the real contenders with all the other teams having an equally great chance of upsetting any kind of prediction.

England has defeated the WEST INDIES in the second one-dayer also and has won the series 2 to nil. However, one wonders how much should we read into this ‘series’ win considering that the West Indies were already reeling under a lot of criticism and internal issues even before the series began and had got the drubbing of a lifetime in the test series prior to the ODIs.

The England team too has not found any noticeable new talents or strategies that they could use in the future. Their captain — Strauss still remains a predicament when it comes to opening the innings in ODIs and KP is still to strike form again. This leaves the bowlers — Stuart Broad won the man-of-the-series award but one would have to question the wisdom of awarding him when the batsmen got out to atrocious shots rather than the claimed ‘over-the-top’ bowling performance. No wonder T20 is taking over. In that format, even mediocre teams like the WI at least look like an international unit.

India has never been in a better position, at least in the T20 format of the game. They have a captain who is the best in the world (yeah leaving behind Ponting, Smith and Vettori), an opening partnership which can destroy any attack, as well as a potent pace attack. But the biggest revelation for India in IPL-2 was the performance of the part-time bowlers.

The following is a possible playing eleven in the T20 WC:
Gambhir, Sehwag, Raina, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma, Dhoni, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Ishant, RP Singh.

If you check the top 7 batsmen, 5 out of those have proved to be effective part-time bowlers. We all know that Yuvraj, Sehwag and Yusuf can bowl good enough, but this IPL has shown that Raina and Sharma are also not far behind! Now in any particular T-20 game, if out of these 5 bowlers, even 2 bowled decently, then we are looking at 8 overs minimum that can be bowled by all part-timers put together. So, then we will need only 3 full-time bowlers. So, suppose we remove Ishant from the above playing eleven (based on a combination of current form as well as over-all experience). So now the playing eleven will look like:

Gambhir, Sehwag, Raina, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma, Dhoni, Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Harbhajan, Zaheer, RP Singh.

I have included another batsman (Ravindu Jadeja, for lack of other options in the 15 man squad). Now, since Irfan has performed so well in the IPL, let us graft him into the team in place of R.P. Singh (just to try it out). So the playing eleven will then become:

Gambhir, Sehwag, Raina, Yuvraj, Rohit Sharma, Dhoni, Yusuf Pathan, Ravindra Jadeja, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan, Zaheer

Now, we can see that the batting depth is very amazing with Irfan coming in at number 9. Bhajji and Zaheer are also decent with the bat. So potentially, India can bat upto number 11.

I really think we should rely on the part-time spinners a bit more. Even if one bowler has an off day, his first over usually will not go for much because the opposition batsmen will take a couple of balls at least to size him up. With so many different options to look at, the opposition batsmen might waste many crucial deliveries.

Just a few minutes back, I checked the score of the ODI between England and WI and the men from the Caribbean do not seem to have recovered from the mental trauma that had been inflicted by being defeated by innings margins in two consecutive test matches. The score was something like 145 for the loss of nine wickets and most of the batsmen seem to be getting out horribly lose shots.

I guess, it is difficult for a team that has been beaten black and blue in two test matches with their captain, Chris Gayle, cribbing and complaining about the test match format and even questioning his own presence in the team. I still recall that many cricketing experts have often questioned Gayle’s ability to play for the team’s cause and though I have never agreed with thoughts like these, I guess some of these critical notions might not have been as misplaced as I thought they were to begin with.

At the very outset, it does look stupid to put-up this question, but the fact is that if you look at the Indian squad for the T20 or even their core ODI team, they really do not look like needing too many specialist spinners. I might be going a bit beyond reasonability when suggesting that Bhajji too needs to keep scoring some runs to keep his chances firmly grounded in the team’s plan. Just look at the team — the number of off-spinning options is multiplying with every passing season.

They started with just Sehewag and now Raina and Yusuf Pathan have joined-in along Rohit Sharma and all of them look good for bowling four-five decent overs. I really do not see Pragyan Ojha or any other specialist spinner being given a chance. Bhajji shall remain the only one who has a genuine chance of playing and that too, as long as he can bowl well and blitz a bit with the bat in nearly every match. There are just too many good seaming options warming the bench every time the team picks-up just four specialist bowlers.

With the final of the IPL2 season being some hours away and the second edition of this premier T20 event about to end, I wonder what have been India’s gain in terms of having discovered players who could play at the international level. Pandey from the RCB is one young guy, only 19 yrs though, who has caught the attention of many folks. Raina’s consistency is something that has been appreciated by many observers and similarly that of RP Singh. But in terms of discovering outrightly new talent, I guess the gains have not been too extensive.

Pandey is just 2-3 matches old and it is too quick to make any judgments right now. Khan — the left arm seamer from Team Jaipur made an initial impact but it is hard to fathom what the future holds for him with his bowling action being questioned by nearly every reasonable cricketing brain with an opinion. What would have been really useful is the discovery to two reasonable all-rounders who could back-up the present squad for T20 and ODI or at least one real speed-rattling fast bowler. With the kind of batting at Dhoni’s disposal, no one is really looking skywards for another batting hero anyways.