MS Dhoni has an Achilles’ heel

What about the bouncer, gentlemen? You got to be kidding, who will control it and risk a no-ball. What will you hurl when the batsmen are going hammer and tongs? We will surprise them with length deliveries. You see everyone is expecting a yorker, a slower-one, bouncer and assorted fancy stuff but length-ball will surprise them, no? Two new balls will be used, so some swing? Nope, we have decided to blame it on the Kookaburra ball and also crib about how it negates our reverse swing never mind the fact that we don’t usually reverse anyway. So a consistent line at least, on one side of the pitch? Why would we deprive MS Dhoni his captaincy headaches. What then? Prayers usually work. And length deliveries.

Limited resources

The thing with this World Cup selection is that the matter was taken out of hands of selectors a long time back. These are the best bowlers in the country anyway – incidentally, a line that’s been used for eternity with most Indian team selections. Perhaps, you can quibble over Mohit Sharma and his slower delivery or Vinay Kumar but they are minor quibbles.

Seriously, though, this tri-series in Australia offers a great learning experience for the bowlers to find a way out of their mess. If by the end of it, they at least know what they can trust in their bowling in the moments of semi-crises, it would have done the trick. As things stand, no one really knows the stock ball, the go-to delivery, of any of the Indian bowlers under pressure.

That the Australian pitches, as witnessed in the Test series, are the flattest they have ever been in memory offers the greatest hope. India will still depend on the spinners, and batsmen who can bowl, to offer them some control. The selection of both Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel, almost mirror images of each other, stands out for exactly that. They offer Dhoni the most priceless thing he is always after: control. A look back at 2011 team reveals that apart from Zaheer, the clear leader, India had Ashish Nehra and Munaf Patel, two men who were extremely self aware about their bowling, and who had the skills, and the mental strength to trust themselves in pressure situations. This Indian team lacks such men.

Lower order void

Indian cricket is surely living in post-ironic world. Lower down the order, comes a batsman who doesn’t bowl nor is a specialist big hitter. Ambati Rayudu is a rarity in modern day one-day cricket. He usually bats at a spot that is generally reserved for allrounders and big hitters or at the very least, batsmen who create an illusion that they can also bowl. Though he can bowl some harmless off-spin, Rayudu doesn’t provide that luxury for India; he isn’t even a big-hitter, in the traditional sense of the term, someone a team can reserve for the end overs.

Ditto Stuart Binny. Can he be trusted to win a 80-ball 100 runs situation when he is the only specialist batsmen left?

And so we come back to the importance of the tri-series. It offers a great chance for all these bowlers to operate in the World Cup conditions and find out what they can trust in their own bowling. If by the end of it, the bowlers can give the confidence to the batsmen that they can defend a total of 280 (too ambitious? How about 300?), the tri-series would have done its job as a preparation for the biggie.