By Upneet Grover
The World Cup has been largely disappointing so far, and neither the quality of cricket nor the match scheduling has any bearing on this. This complaint is reserved exclusively for the number of games that have been marred by the rain gods. Hosting the World Cup in Sri Lanka at this time of the year, when the clouds there are as fragile as India’s bowling, wasn’t surely the smartest move by the ICC. But what’s done is done and now we can only pray that the fans are spared the frustration of having matches like India v/s Pak being washed away. So let’s move on and quickly analyse India’s chances at repeating their 2007 heroics.
Having made a disgruntled, disparaging remark about India’s bowling in the very first paragraph, states in rather unambiguous terms what I feel about our bowling attack {P.S: that it can be called an “attack” is debatable P.P.S: In this case, I would love to eat an apple pie topped generously with my words}. When your top bowler {Zaheer Khan} is consistently and undoubtedly underperforming, you do have an irrefutable reason to fret over it. To add to it, when your supporting arsenal boasts of the likes of Dinda and Balaji, who somehow just manage to claw their way even into their respective franchise teams, you begin to wonder how on earth did they make it to the Indian team? You might also wonder where Umesh Yadav and Praveen Kumar are. They certainly cannot be considered to be weaker bets than the latter two. No argument you present will be cogent enough to convince me. Unless you happen to be my manager. Ashwin, who appears to be the only one who adds some semblance of strength to India’s bowling, will also be rendered a function of how the pitch plays, for the initial matches have uncovered that the pitches, uncharacteristic of conventional Sri Lankan pitches, are more pace friendly than otherwise. One can rejoice over India’s win against England, scripted majorly by Harbhajan and Chawla, thanks to some classic spin bowling. They literally bamboozled the English batsmen, whose inexperience in handling the turning ball was exposed as starkly as India’s ineptness in handling express pace and bounce usually is. But don’t expect that to happen against experienced batting sides like South Africa and Australia. As a side remark and an irrelevant one at that – The country which first played Cricket more than 400 years ago still can’t play spin to save their lives. Ah, the sadistic joys of cricket.
India’s only chance, and they have a reasonable one, is if their star-studded line up, pivoting around Virat Kohli, whose unwavering consistency and stellar batting performances in the recent times can no more be attributed to having hit a “purple patch”, performs up to their potential. We have explosive the fire power of Sehwag, the reliable solidity of Gambhir, the unabating consistency of Virat, languid fluidity of Rohit and then the three best finishers in the game today; Raina, Yuvraj and Dhoni. With Irfan to follow, this is surely an intimidating line up. The only caveat is that these guys might falter in trying to cover up the gaping inadequacies in India’s bowling line up; a very real and one fears, imminent risk of capitulation. Because of this, one gets a feeling that India would fancy chasing through the tournament, placing their bet on their batting prowess, rather than their bowling to perform under pressure -the warm up game against Pakistan being a strong portent of things to come, especially against sides with strong batting line ups such as West Indies, Australia and Pakistan.
Overall, on current form, India stands its best chance if they play to their strengths, which is clearly their batting and spinners. Play seven batsmen {which includes Dhoni}, have Irfan open the bowling with Zaheer and then choose between Bhajji and Chawla to accompany Ashwin, contingent on which side you are playing. There is evidently no place for a Balaji or Dinda in this squad. Swapping Sehwag for the third spinner might also be a tempting option, if all your batsmen are in form. Especially since Sehwag, if we go by statistics, and quite contrary to popular belief, has still not got a hold on this format of the game.
This is one of the very few World Cups where there are no overwhelming favourites since every unit has a formidable array of assets and that one Achilles heel, leaving us with hardly anything to choose one over the other. Hence, it would only be fair to say that the team which shows the most heart, will have the best chance to win the cup.
