Time for India to address their finishing touches

It’s alright to learn from your failure, but it’s even more important that you learn things while enjoying the success as well.

Like in life, in sport too, it’s easy to ignore the shortcomings when everything else is moving along well. Three wins in as many matches in this World Cup are a fair indication that India have been doing most things right. Two 300-plus totals reflect that India’s batting has been in good health. 

The 76-run win against Pakistan, the 130-run drubbing of South Africa and the bundling of UAE for 102 in 30.3 overs mirror the excellent work done by the bowlers. The high intensity on the field through all three matches has been one of the highlights of India’s campaign so far. Rarely do all these aspects stay in sync
with each other at the same time for such duration.  

While it might sound like nit-picking, the one area that India will have to look to improve is their batting in the slog. Indian bowlers often in the past have come under flak for their profligacy in the back-end of the innings but in this World Cup, at least in the first two matches, their batsmen have shown a tendency to implode despite having the right platform to build a bigger total. During the tri-series, Dhoni, on more than one occasion, pointed out to lack of good partnerships that hindered the lower middle-order.

With only four fielders outside the circle, India, like any other side, have looked to bolster their attack by playing five specialist bowlers as against their usual 7-4 combination. A batsman less has meant that Dhoni has been forced to bat at No 6 but in the absence of Jadeja (for the first two matches of tri-series) and an extended tail, he had to bat with caution. That he frequently got out early, neither accelerating nor anchoring the innings, didn’t help the team’s cause.  “Once I go into bat at No 6, it becomes like you have to hit but you can’t get out either,” he had said then. “It’s a very difficult thing to match up to. I feel with Jadeja coming back, whenever he becomes fit, it becomes slightly easy for us because we all know that he can also hit. You may bowl short-pitched deliveries to him but he is someone who can hit the ball. We feel a bit comfortable when he is around,” he had reasoned.

Jadeja is back in the set-up now and while his left-arm spin bowling has been encouraging, he has looked far from the batsman he used to be. With Dhoni yet to find his mojo with the bat, India have failed to provide a big push in the final 10 overs despite the top-order setting a solid base. Against Pakistan, they were going strong at 273/2 after 45 overs and all they could manage in the next five overs was 27/5. It was no better against South Africa in Melbourne where they could muster just 36/3 in the last five after being 271/4 at the end of 45 overs.       

It didn’t help India’s cause that in both matches, the set batsmen departed in quick succession, leaving the following batsmen with little time to size up the situation. In the game against Pakistan Virat Kohli and Suresh Raina were dismissed in the space of 13 balls while Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane made exit in the space of 14 balls against South Africa. Kohli and Raina were batting on a century and a half-century respectively against Pakistan while Dhawan and Rahane were in a similar stage against South Africa.    

“It's not easy to accelerate especially if you have lost wickets,” noted Dhoni. “If you have set batsmen they know that pace and the bounce (in the pitch) and they can score, and even if your settled batsmen get out, the specialist batsmen coming in can be expected to score… I was batting with Jadeja (against South Africa) and until that time we were scoring at a decent pace. But we can't expect (R) Ashwin and (Mohammad) Shami to score that eight or nine or 10 runs an over because more often than not the opposition doesn’t allow us to score that freely. Until the batsmen were batting, I thought we were scoring at a decent pace. But slowly with more games and seeing the conditions, I think we'll start getting more and more runs,” he hoped.

Good death bowling by opposition, set batsmen getting out, Dhoni struggling to manufacture his big shots… It’s been combination of factors that has denied India the flourish they need in the final overs but it’s an anomaly they would like to set right before the knockouts begin.