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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Vintage Dhoni warms India up for the World Cup

India steam rolled the Kiwis in their final warm up game and strode into the World Cup on a confident note. The superb batting display and the ease with which the Indian team wrapped up the New Zealand chase, must have pleased their supporters immensely.

However, the performance still needs to be evaluated and analyzed. Incredible as it was, still, it wasn’t faultless because no matter what you do, there is always a scope for improvement. This holds true for the mighty Indian team too.

The most heartening aspect of today's batting display was the stroke play of MSD on his adapted home ground of CSK. He was truly at his vintage best and I haven't seen this kind of big hitting from the man ever since he donned the captain's role. This was just a warm up game, but, it gives great satisfaction to know that big hitting is not a 'lost art' for the Captain Cool.

To a great extent, I felt vindicated by the performance of our batsmen and the end result. In a recent discussion where people were talking about Sachin, Gautam and the flavor of the season aka Virat Kohli, I emphasized that this trio is extremely important, but, they don’t hold the key to India’s World Cup win. Now this statement of mine might raise a few eyebrows just as it did that time, but, it is not completely out of context. Indian batting line up traditionally consists of seven batsmen and four bowlers, two of which would be capable of hanging around and hitting a few runs. It has been the same composition since the 1999 WC because we have never had a genuine all-rounder in the team ever since Kapil, Prabhakar etc retired from international cricket.

Sachin Tendulkar is a man who needs no recommendation for his batting. He is so skillful and experienced that he can conjure up a century even when he is not in form, by merely nudging and placing the ball around and finding the odd gaps. His commitment to the game is beyond any questioning and this being his last world cup tournament, there is going to be no lack of hunger in the little master. Gautam Gambhir, though, not as experienced or innovative as the maestro, is still a very confident and in form batsman. Just like Sachin, he also has a very good command over rotating the strike and keeping the scoreboard ticking. The youngest of them all, Virat Kohli is a very confident and consistent player. He has decent technique, great commitment and in the last one year, he has been the most prolific scorer for the team India, often coming up with back to back meaningful knocks. His performances in the warm up games indicate that he is ready to set the World Cup stage on fire. Therefore, my point is that these three guys will succeed more or less on most occasions because they can manipulate and rotate the strike even if they are not at their hitting best.

The difference to India’s batting performance will be made by the other four, i.e., Sehwag, Dhoni, Yuvraj, Raina/Pathan. All these guys are the sort of players, each of whom can make the bowlers feel like retiring when on song. Sehwag is expected to give a blistering start at the top and the others are highly destructive finishers. Therefore, the roles of Sachin, Gambhir and Virat will be more as sheet anchors who will try and see that the innings doesn’t crumble, but, the difference between 250 to 350 will have to be created by the other four. The Indian spinners are on song and on the home pitches they will always do well, but, the pace attack is dull. Zaheer is the only bowler who can be expected to do well and the others merely play the role of getting the shine off the ball for the spinners. In the two warm up games, the seamers failed to have any impact on the rival teams and it was only the spin attack that won the games. Even against a relatively weaker Kiwi side, the opening bowlers gave 70 runs in first ten overs without taking a wicket. We need a cushion for the inept bowling and a score of less than 300 will give each of our rivals a good chance of chasing it down and if we are set to chase then we should be looking forward to chasing around that much on most days.

That’s where the form and consistency of these four big hitters will make all the differenceand that was exactly the point manifested today. Though Sachin failed to get going, Virat and Gambhir contributed handsomely and two out of the three succeeding is a fair ratio. Still, India would have hardly gone upto 300 if Dhoni and Raina had failed because with Sehwag’s failure the blistering start factor was gone. They both did tremendously well and made huge difference to the end total, taking it to 360 which was way higher than the anticipated near 300 total. Pathan didn’t get much to do today, but, he had a good cameo against the Aussies. If India has to win the World Cup then this kind of performance where four-five out of the seven come up with good scores and at least one of them scoring a century, has to become a routine rather than an exception. Sachin, Virat and Gautam can set a game up, but, in my opinion the victory shall be achieved by the performances of Sehwag, Dhoni, Raina/Yuvraj/Pathan. They have got to be the match winners of the day more often than not.

Good luck to the men in blue!

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