Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly believes that India shouldn’t lose sleep over Kochi defeat. Maybe Sourav is right, but the margin of the defeat must ring the alarm bells for Team India, and they must analyze what went wrong.
In this piece, The Cricket Lounge’s Kaushik Narayanan analyzes the key areas for India.
In the last 2 years or so, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has been more keen to chase in the shorter format, especially at home. Although, it’s is very difficult to analyze Dhoni’s decisions, there can be two possible reason for this:
• Over-dependence on the batting-unit.
• No confidence in his bowling to defend the target.
Well, to be fair, his batsmen (including himself) have responded well to his plan, especially at home, and India have chased down very big totals with ease. In the last home ODI series against Australia, targets over 300 were chased down with balls to spare by Team India. It would be too early to be over-critical about India’s batting, but having said this, it’s very important for Mahendra Singh Dhoni to quickly finalize his middle-order so that they get enough opportunities before the all-important Cricket World Cup 2015.
Talking about India’s bowling, Mohit Sharma has been ruled out of the remainder of the series due to an injury and Ishant Sharma has been called as his replacement. In the first ODI, India’s spinners Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra were not able to make any kind of an impact on the game. In fact, Amit Mishra looked completely out of form and gave 72 runs in his 10 wicket-less overs. In the second ODI, Dhoni must replace Amit Mishra with Kuldeep Yadav, as the wicket at Feroz Shah Kotla is going to be a slow-tuner. India’s fast bowlers, other than Bhuvneshwar Kumar were also very expensive in the first ODI. In the post-match conference after the first ODI, MS Dhoni said that he was quite happy with the bowling. He also said that due to hot weather conditions, he wasn’t able to rotate his bowlers properly. It’s important for Dhoni that he has the right bowlers bowling at the right time of the innings.
Sourav Ganguly rightly said, India shouldn’t lose sleep over Kochi defeat. But, I would like to add that they must introspect and find the right balance, otherwise coming back into this series will be a difficult task against the power-packed and spirited West Indies team.
EXPECTED CHANGES FOR THE SECOND ODI:
Kuldeep Yadav will replace Amit Mishra
Ishant will replace Mohit Sharma
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by Kaushik Narayanan
image source: ESPNCRICINFO
