Indian bowlers need to check more boxes
When Kushal Bhurtel missed Mohammed Siraj‘s 147 kph bumper in the midst of the sixth over of Nepal’s innings, Siraj approached Bhurtel and gave him a dirty look. Siraj’s hostile display may have been motivated by irritation over a shaky start after Rohit Sharma chose to use his bowlers after winning the toss in another Pallekele match that was going to be interrupted frequently by showers. Even though he had played in whites as recently as July, India’s top ODI bowler had his first appearance in the 50-over format since March against Australia, and his rustiness was evident.
India had the exceptional chance to fine-tune at a camp in the second half of August before departing for the Asia Cup, where responsibilities and talents were discussed and game situations were recreated at the charming KSCA Cricket Ground in Alur.
Rahul Dravid had said at the conclusion of the camp, “With the white-ball team, this is the first time we’ve had a camp where everyone has been able to come together,” summarizing the situation of the Indian team’s unbalanced cricket schedule, which saw two different looking white-ball squads play on either side of the North Atlantic Ocean (In West Indies and Ireland) within a space of five days last month.
“Over the past few days, [we] completed a lot of highly precise match simulation work. As a coach, it provides me with some really good time to work on certain specifics with the players and some really good time to talk to them about their roles and skills,” Dravid continued.
The dominant theme in the 2011 champions’ preparation for their home World Cup, which starts in exactly one month, has been finding the proper batting combinations. India’s middle-order plans were thrown into confusion when KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, and Rishabh Pant, the top candidates for positions No. 4 and No. 5, were all three forced to undergo surgery as a result of injuries. They have put in a lot of effort to get two of those three back, but one is recovering more slowly than the other. Ishan Kishan demonstrated his value as a reliable backup option against Pakistan.
In order to correct for the middle-order instability, India added some batting insurance up to the no. 8 position, which is why Yuzvendra Chahal was disqualified from the Asia Cup and, most likely, the World Cup. This has also required trusting Shardul Thakur to bowl alongside two frontline quicks, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, and Hardik Pandya, while also carrying a portion of the workload.
On Monday, Thakur struggled and was only given four overs, during which he was inconsistent and guilty of failing to bowl to his field. Normally, Thakur would have broken through against the flow of play. Thakur and Pandya, who has a strong asterisk next to his name in terms of bowling, began out together.
The team management has had to carefully balance monitoring and increasing his bowling effort ever since his back injury, which coincidentally occurred in the Asia Cup of 2018, changed his bowling career. Pandya’s own appraisal of his current status as a bowler in the format a little more than a month ago was: “My body is fine. In order to increase my workload and bowl more innings in time for the World Cup. Right now, I’m a turtle rather than a rabbit. wishing for the best as the World Cup starts.
Pandya took a step in that direction by bowling eight overs against Nepal, despite his effort waning slightly toward the end. Considering that it was only the third time in 24 completed ODIs since bowling all 10 in the 2019 World Cup quarterfinal that he had bowled as many as eight overs, this was still progress. Jasprit Bumrah’s attempt to complete as many overs as possible has also been put off due to personal issues.
The fast bowler acknowledged conditioning his body to bowl 10-over periods in advance of the World Cup before making a much-anticipated comeback in T20Is in Ireland last month. But he had to miss the match against Nepal. With three wickets, Ravindra Jadeja performed admirably; but, India will look to their top wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav to be decisive and penetrating in the middle overs, rather than just economical like he was on Monday (0 for 34).
Another indication that India’s bowling squad is currently underdeveloped is Nepal’s relatively simple 230-run total, which came just days after India folded for 104 against a well-oiled Pakistani attack. After defeating Nepal by a score of 10-wickets in a rain-delayed match, they now have a minimum of three Asia Cup games remaining—four if they advance to the final—as well as three more One-Day Internationals (ODIs) against Australia in September to complete their preparations and find their bowling cohesiveness before their opening World Cup encounter on October 8.
