The King & his all-trade Jacks

The selectors may load the squad with however many youngsters as they wish but Dhoni will pick in the XI only whom Dhoni wants in the XI. And if for some reason he ends up playing a given cricketer he is not too confident about, he will ensure that said player has an insignificant role to play on the field. An illustration follows.

In the fourth ODI against New Zealand in Hamilton earlier this year, a must-win game from India’s point of view, Dhoni gave the debutant all-rounder Stuart Binny all of one over to bowl, in a match where India could have done well with another bowler. Binny’s solitary over, which was unremarkable to be honest, was two less than what part-timer Ambati Rayudu got in the game. And the fact that Binny didn’t get to bat earlier and barely touched the ball while fielding meant that India, for all practical purposes, might have been playing with 10 men for 89 minutes were it a football match.

A strange obsession

But this is not another story about Dhoni’s unyielding aversion to blood in the youth, and consequently keeping Kuldeep on the periphery (his name is actually used representatively here. You may replace it with any other youngster’s, and the line will still be relevant.) This is about one particular part of his aforementioned statement that tells us about is his obsession with bowlers ‘who can bat a bit’. It is evident that he wants more Ravindra Jadejas in the team, and it would please him no end if there is also another Ravindra Jadeja in the team who can bowl medium fast.

Now, there is no harm in such a wish. Jadeja is a world-class all-rounder, perhaps India’s best in recent times. In ODIs, he averages 35 with the bat, which is nearly the same as Suresh Raina’s, and 31.93 with the ball, which is significantly lower than Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s (37.73). By comparison, Irfan Pathan, the one who got away, averaged 23.39 with the bat and nearly 30 with the ball.

It may become a problem when you let that wish take hold of you and you passionately start trying to fulfill it. Mishra not making way for Yadav because the leg-spinner comes on the back of a match-winning spell is perfectly understandable. And fair. But Mishra not making way for Yadav because he ‘bats a bit’ is being misguided.

In recent times, except for one match at Eden Park in Auckland earlier this year where India pulled off a tie thanks to Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin’s batting, the lower order/tail hasn’t changed the complexion of a game in ODIs. In Tests, yes, Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s batting made the difference in the early part of the series against England, but subsequently the Indian top-order’s ineptness showed. And it showed tellingly.

Dhoni’s men lost that series not because Bhuvneshwar failed them by not batting as well as he did earlier. They crumbled because their frontline batsmen kept failing the team repeatedly.

You may say packing the side with bowlers who can swing the willow as well is a strategy worth pursuing, like Auckland. But then you can’t hold back a genuinely good bowler — and you wouldn’t know if one is a genuinely good bowler till you give him a chance — just because you are “not sure how good he is with bat.” A fact which, again, you won’t find out till you play him. Surely the 4.80 runs per match that Mishra averages with the bat in ODIs is not one that can’t be topped by an up-and-coming bowler.

As he pressed his argument further in the same presser, Dhoni also noted that the West Indies lost the second ODI because their tail couldn’t bat. “We saw in their (the West Indies’s) innings that the tail-enders need to contribute,” he said.

Pieces in bits

It cuts both ways. The West Indies have consciously or otherwise stuffed their batting order with bits-and-pieces players. Maybe they lost because there were too few specialists in the team. By the way, invoking the West Indies also reminds you of certain Courtney Walsh, who couldn’t bat to save his life.

For that very fact, despite his bowling prowess, he might perhaps have been fetching water and towels between overs were he in this Indian team.

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