With the Asia Cup coming up and the triangular in Holland, the Champions Trophy and the Australian/SA tours on the horizon too, the Indian think tank must be busy evolving strategies, Plan As and Plan Bs. The Indian team has performed excellently in the past year or two but they will surely be trying to improve further as all champion sides do.
Here in this article I focus solely on the Indian team for the one-day format and more specifically on the top order in the team.
The Indian team has more openers than it has space for; that is good from one angle but it also leaves the impression sometimes that talent is being wasted in the race to pick the two best openers; talent which would be utilized in other places. I believe the batting line up India has picked in the recent past is the best we can conjure up but I also believe that the order in which they come in is not perfect yet.
We had a brilliant opening combination in Tendulkar and Ganguly till Sehwag cracked a 67-ball 100 in Sri Lanka and emerged as yet another possibility.
What followed was a lot of experimentation - rightly so in my belief - to get the perfect line up. With Sehwag doing all that Tendulkar did and more at the No. 1 position, Tendulkar was moved down to No. 4 to provide solidity to the middle order in a move that was largely condemned but again, in my belief, a move that had a lot of substance to it. The move failed and Tendulkar moved back up and Ganguly moved down to try and achieve the original objective.
Since the emergence of Laxman in the ODI team, Ganguly has been hopping around the No. 3 and No. 4 slots and like Tendulkar, has not been largely successful. Laxman added to the top-order confusion by having a brilliant ODI series in Australia at No. 3, cracking centuries at will while Tendulkar looked mortal and Ganguly got injured.
Confusion galore, indeed.
My analysis goes thus - Tendulkar and Ganguly both have failed when sent down the order while Sehwag has succeeded when sent up top. Laxman looks very good at times but a misfit at other times (talking only about ODI cricket). The rest of the batting line up consisting of Yuvraj, Dravid and one of Kaif / Badani / Gavaskar is just fine. The problem is up top where our best one-day bats Tendulkar and Ganguly are having an identity crisis.
I would have included Laxman in the problem above but his is a different case. I believe that in the shorter version of the game, Laxman's success depends on one factor alone - how soon he comes in. If he bats at No. 3, and comes in soon enough, he has enough overs to build his innings and he does well. If he comes in lower or even at No. 3, doesn't get enough overs or comes into a situation where he has to press the accelerator, his game isn't suited to do well in this situation.
Yes, he can change all that; Dravid is a shining example by the way he has changed his one-day game over the past two years. But today, Laxman is not always a good one-day player, only under circumstances. However, by limiting his existence to the No. 3 slot, he creates more complication by moving Ganguly, who is not very comfortable at 3 further down to 4.
My solution is simple and yet highly controversial - Take the players having a problem at their current positions and move them to the positions they are most comfortable at. Take the players who have proven to be the most adaptable of them all and despite their success, put them into a new place and ask them to adjust yet again. They have adapted before; they will adapt again. Specifically speaking, Sachin and Ganguly, who have both proven themselves inadaptable at other positions, should open and Sehwag should move down, not to No. 3 where Laxman has to be to exist in the team (in my book, Laxman is not one of the good adjusters), but in my opinion somewhere in the vicinity of No. 5 or No. 6 where he can do more damage.
The entire drama of opening slots was created when Tendulkar was injured and Sehwag grabbed the opportunity. From Sehwag's point of view, excellent, but from the Indian team point of view, I feel more of a problem than a solution. Simply because the two best players in the team, Tendulkar and Ganguly, had to find new places for themselves. History has shown that neither has succeeded. The Indian team has matured to such an extent that despite this misfit of two important players, they have continued to play well but sooner or later there has to be a solution to this. Just think, if we can play this well with either of Ganguly and Tendulkar always floating around in a position they can't handle too well, the possibilities are infinite when you extract the maximum out of both of them by putting them back in their original slots.
Yes, one point of view might suggest that this is unfair to Sehwag and also might cast aspersions on the abilities and responsibilities of Tendulkar and Ganguly. They are the senior players; they should be the ones providing the flexibility rather than requiring adjustment. Sehwag is always the fall guy, it might be argued. He was the guinea pig in the Test matches when an opener was required and he is the guinea pig now. My answer to that is - this is about forming the best cricket team possible, not about fairness or egos.
Sehwag's contribution to the team should not be measured against Tendulkar, Ganguly or Dravid; simply put the maximum should be extracted from each player in the team, without comparisons. Sehwag's adjustment should not be dependent on someone else's adjustments. Yes, tomorrow if this move fails then it is the team management's responsibility to do something for Sehwag to find his niche just like it is happening now for Tendulkar and Ganguly.
More important is the question - Can Sehwag succeed where such stalwarts like Tendulkar and Ganguly failed? I say yes; he made the transition from being a middle order bat to being a Test opener which is a far greater task than the one facing him today and I for one believe he has the makings of a devastating middle order bat in one day cricket. Before Sehwag moved to the top of the ladder, he played some good knocks in the middle order and a couple of times, showed some explosive power in the slog overs that only Yuvraj among the current middle order is probably capable of. Thus, as far as Sehwag is concerned, a slot is very much present where his strengths can be used; he is capable of knocking the ball around if playing in the middle overs and smashing it to high heavens in the end overs. He can do that while opening too but again the question comes up - if Sehwag doesn't move down then who will? The other two possibilities have already tried and failed.
Yes, this move might fail too and Sehwag might not be able to create the magic down at 5 or 6 that he creates at 1. But what is the alternative? We let things be; Tendulkar and Ganguly constantly shuffle the other opening slot between them and thus one weapon is always defused before the match starts. Or we take a shot at something different with only instinct supporting the theory. Remember Sehwag moving upto open in Tests; that was instinct too [Related story - http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2002/jul/15sri.htm]. It just might succeed. I think it is worth the risk.
Send in your comments to the author at sriram_ranga@hotmail.com.
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