The third seamer has been India's Achilles heel in their previous visits to South Africa. He has been doing no more than the holding-up job to strike bowlers. But India's batting coach Sanjay Bangar is gung-ho about their pace group on this tour and believes the third seamer would be as effective.
"All of them have got enough experience under their belt," said Bangar on the eve of the first Test here. Bangar was addressing the media in place of Virat Kohli who surprisingly didn't turn up for the customary pre-series captain's press conference. The Indian captain's decision left the local media men upset as they waited for nearly two hours for his arrival.
In fact, none of the Indian players trained on the day, the eve of the Test, which is unusual. Only Ravi Shastri and the support staff made it to the ground to assess the pitch.
"We have got Ishant Sharma who is probably having his third tour of South Africa and all the bowlers have been rotated really well keeping into account the workloads that they are going to encounter here. So, if you see the consistency that they have displayed in the home season where they bowled on pretty flat pitches and made sure that they gave the support that was required for the spinners on home soil. They have built a great sense of discipline in their bowling and I am pretty sure that that discipline will help us in maintaining the pressure on opposition batsmen," he elaborated.
Bangar felt there was no need for India to deviate from their bowling strategy which they have been having for the last two years – five bowlers if conditions are good for batting and four bowlers if conditions favour bowling.
"Well, more or less, that has been the pattern for the last 24 months or so wherein the team management has made the choices about the team composition," he noted. "Whenever the wicket suits, if it's a bowling-friendly track then obviously we might go with four bowlers and if the conditions are perceived to be batting-friendly we might opt for five bowlers. So that's been the case right through the last 24 months and I don't think it will be anything different here."
