CricDigs Blogs

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.