Follow Us
Rohit Mahajan
Tribune News Service
London, July 12
The beautiful ground at Old Trafford, Manchester, wasn’t a crime scene on Wednesday, when India lost to New Zealand: No one is ‘match ka mujrim’. This is sport. There are no guarantees. The best laid plans can go awry due to a thousand variables, of which the excellence of the opposition is just one — they’re there to try their best to win, too! India had no more right to win the World Cup than any other team.
But there are controllable factors that must be analysed, such as the grooming and selection of personnel to do the job. On that point, questions must be asked, and answered.
First, the selectors. Just how did they send a team to the World Cup that had a huge, gaping hole in the middle-order? Isn’t it a failure of the selectors that the team didn’t have a reliable player to bat at No. 4, and the players coming down the order just didn’t have the ability and experience to take the team through in a chase?
In India’s two successful chases, against South Africa and Sri Lanka, Rohit Sharma scored 100s — 122 not out off 144 balls in the first win, 103 off 94 balls in the second, in which fellow opener KL Rahul added his own century. In the two failed chases, against England and New Zealand, Rohit made 102 and 1; Virat Kohli scored 66 and 1 in these two games.
These were the toughest matches for India — a big run chase (338) against England, the best team in the world, and a tense chase of 240 in a high-pressure semifinal against the best new-ball attack in the World Cup.
The Indian middle-order just couldn’t deal with the pressure.
Mid-Order Crisis
India’s XI in the semifinal had three players who were not in their first-choice XIs — Rishabh Pant, Dinesh Karthik and Ravindra Jadeja. Injury to Shikhar Dhawan was a major cause of the instability, but the squad was unsettled anyway: That’s the reason Kohli had been stressing on the flexibility of the middle-order; instead, what they really needed was reliability in the middle-order.
Mr Brains
MS Dhoni is still a useful batsman, but it’s clear Kohli values his brains more than his hitting prowess, which has been in a decline for the last few years. Kohli prefers to leave the team and the field settings to Dhoni, especially in the late stages of the game, when Kohli is patrolling the boundary or fielding at point or long-off. This begs the question: How long would Kohli, well into his 31st year, require to take over completely from Dhoni? Coach Ravi Shastri, whose job is to guide Kohli, mentor him, should do well to answer this question.
80 runs 5 innings: The injury to Shikhar Dhawan, in only their second game, did the team in. The middle-order was brittle anyway --- moving KL Rahul up the order to replace Dhawan left the middle-order weaker still. Kedar Jadhav was the biggest disappointment --- 80 runs from five innings, 52 of them in one innings against Afghanistan, was way below par. Sure, he had a tough job --- sent in at No. 7 three times, Nos. 5 and 6 once each. He had to either start attacking right away against Australia, Pakistan and England or consolidate against Afghanistan and West Indies. He had only one success.
226 runs 9 innings: Hardik Pandya made 226 off nine innings, at an average of 32.28. Twice he was used as a hitter at No. 4 after the team had got excellent starts, against Australia and Pakistan --- and he succeeded both times, smashing 48 off 27 balls against Australia, 26 off 19 against Pakistan. At Nos. 5, 6 & 7, he didn’t play a single gamechanging innings, though his 38-ball 46 against West Indies was very useful. His 45 off 33 against England was good but inadequate; his innings against New Zealand in the semifinals could have been India’s best innings of the tournament, but he ended up with 32 off 62, ending with an atrocious and ugly slog in the air. Kohli later said that the players suffer horribly after making such errors. “They are the ones who feel the most disappointed when a mistake happens,” he said. “On the outside it looks like it was an error but the person who makes it, trust me, they are the ones who suffer the most with it.”
116 runs 4 innings: Rishabh Pant batted at No. 4 in four innings he played, getting 116 runs at an average of 29, and a scoring rate of 89.23. He’s one for the future, and throwing him in the deep end, in a World Cup, was very challenging to him. Sadly, the job was too much for him, and he too would regret the ugly slog he attempted against New Zealand in the semifinals.
Vijay Shankar batted at No. 6 once and No. 4 twice, and ended up with 58 runs at an average of 29, and a strike rate of 77.33, clearly inadequate.
Dinesh Karthik batted at No. 7 and No. 5 once each, ending up with 14 runs from 34 balls in all, scoring rate 41.17. Against New Zealand, he scored his first run off the 21st ball he faced, and got out to a fantastic catch by James Neesham. Unlucky? Yes. Not good enough? That, too.
77 runs off 59 balls: Ravindra Jadeja didn’t get to bat against Sri Lanka, and his only innings of the World Cup, against New Zealand in the semifinals, was breathtaking — 77 of the best runs off 59 balls. New Zealand captain Kane Williamson later noted: “The innings that Jadeja played, it was like he was playing on a different wicket, really. He timed the ball beautifully well. He was very clear in how he operated in that partnership with Dhoni, sort of swung things to parity, perhaps even them having the momentum going into the last few overs.” That brings us to Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India’s greatest limited-overs captain who turned 38 during the tournament. Dhoni made 273 runs from eight innings, batting four times at No. 5, three times at No. 6 and once at No. 7. His scoring rate was 87.78 runs every 100 balls — seems good, but in chases, it was only 84.56: When India needed quick runs against England, he did score at a rate of 135.48, but that’s deceptive because he was able to find the boundaries only when the match was lost. Against New Zealand, a strike rate of 69.44 showed he had to do the job of consolidation after coming in at 71/5; it also showed that he couldn’t change gears and score runs at 10 or more per over. “He was batting with Jadeja and there was only Bhuvi to follow after, so he had to hold one end,” Kohli explained later. “Because Jadeja was playing so well, you needed a solid partnership and to get a 100 partnership from that situation, it had to be the right balance of one guy holding an end.” Kohli has repeatedly said he’s grateful to his captain Dhoni for giving him opportunities, and for leading the Indian team. All Indian fans are grateful to MSD for that, no doubt. But there comes a time when hard decisions have to be made. Sentimentalism doesn’t win you a World Cup.
1
9