The Blame Game

It is not what the ‘pundits’ thought it would be. A fairly inexperienced Australian side did give Team India a run for their money in the recently concluded ODI series, but the hosts eventually held their nerve to win the final ODI and the series 3 – 2.

Barring the two games that were washed out, every game was a run fest. India at two instances chased down scores in excess of 350 and Australia almost chased down 380 in the final game. Many blame it on the flat sub – continental pitches which are a graveyard for the bowlers, but to a certain extent, the bowlers are equally responsible for them being carted around the park. The bowling in all the five games was nothing less than pathetic.

Lets take the Indian bowlers first. Barring Mohammad Shami and R Ashwin (in the last two ODIs), the rest of the attack of completely off colour. And competing with each other as to who is the worst bowler of the team were Ishant Sharma and Vinay Kumar. While Ishant became the villain in the eyes of the nation with a ‘lolypop’ 48^th over to James Faulkner in Mohali, Vinay Kumar jumped into the game by conceding over 100 runs in only 9 overs that he bowled at Bangalore. It was really over optimistic of them both to bowl at speeds of less than 130kmph, bowl length balls in the slog overs and expect them to be respected by the batsman. As Harsha Bhogle rightly mentioned, “The Yorkers have gone out of fashion.” With lack of such basic knowledge, you cannot blame the pitches for them conceding that amount of runs. The Australian bowling attack looked resigned to fate once the Indian openers got going. Barring a Mitchell Johnson, no bowler looked half as threatening as him.

Every story has its flip side; the new rules of the ICC (which makes it mandatory to have five fielders inside the inner circle at all times) have indeed made it difficult for the bowlers to contain the runs, but if the ball keeps sailing over the ropes at the rate of knots, it is irrelevant whether they are in the circle or on the boundary. This has given the bowlers a chance to develop themselves into better bowlers and develop new skills to contain the batsmen. Unfortunately, they have spent their time cribbing over the rules rather than working on their own game.

India will take heart from the fact that Rohit ‘talented’ Sharma is finally justifying his ‘talent’ which we were hearing of since the past six years. His talent is finally translating into runs. Whether he gets a chance to make his test debut against the West Indies remains to be seen.

MS Dhoni sounded worried about the future of the ODI game in context of the new rules. It would be better if he looks for better bowlers for his team while we all shift focus to the final series of the ‘GOD’ of cricket – Sachin Tendulkar!