Monday's five-wicket triumph at Guwahati came courtesy a clinical performance, giving India the early edge in the five-match series. Pakistan will admit that they were comprehensively outplayed in a match dominated by India’s spinners.

As a leg-spinner myself, it gives me great joy to see the continued impact of spin, even in the limited-overs game.
Increasingly, things are loaded against the practitioners of the art of spin bowling, with flat tracks, shortened boundaries and vastly improvd bats combining to make life difficult for spinners.

At the first hint of a half-helpful surface, Harbhajan Singh and Murali Kartik positively thrived to choke Pakistan in the middle overs.

Magnificent returns

No praise can be too high for the manner in which Harbhajan and Kartik bowled. Twenty overs for 65 runs and one wicket between them are magnificent returns, especially against batsmen who are no slouches against the turning ball. Kartik can consider himself extremely unlucky to have finished wicketless, but to his credit, the left-arm spinner didn’t allow frustration to get the better of him.

Much like batting, bowling is also about partnerships. It is essential for bowlers to bowl in tandem. If wickets don’t come your way and your partner is bowling well at the other end, then your job is to keep the pressure on by not giving away easy runs, and that is precisely what Kartik did.

Partnership

As they showed during their intelligent partnership that took India to the threshold of victory, both Dhoni and his deputy Yuvraj Singh have wise heads on fairly young shoulders. It will not be lost on them that the next World Cup will be played in the sub-continent, and therefore, spin will necessarily be a vital component.

It’s nearly four years to the World Cup, but it is never too early to plan and strategise, is it? We must don our thinking caps and start looking ahead without losing focus of the immediate present if we want to prevent a repeat of what happened in the West Indies earlier this year.

Despite the victory, India’s bowling in the last part of the Pakistani innings was less than impressive.

Ball-change rule

And that’s putting it mildly! Since the mandatory ball-change experiment has come into effect, India’s bowlers have struggled to keep the opposition in check. Against the Australians, we conceded 122 runs on an average in the last 16 overs, and on Monday, 113 runs were leaked with the harder ball. You just cannot afford to concede so many runs in so few overs on such a regular basis if you aspire for higher honours.

The yorker is a difficult ball to bowl, I acknowledge, but it is a component that is a must in the armoury of every bowler bowling at the ‘death’. I know Venkatesh Prasad is working very hard with the boys on this and other aspects relating to bowling at the end of an innings.

What I do feel is that, particularly with the spinners bowling so well at the moment, it may not be a bad idea for either Harbhajan or Kartik, depending on whether a left or right-hander is batting, to also start bowling in the slog. It will give Dhoni an extra option if one of his pacers has an off day, and will also force the opposition to think on its feet.