India-SA: Lots of Experiments, Not Many Answers

By Gaurang
November 17 2006

One would have thought that the year and half of non-stop experimentation by Greg Chappell would have prepared the Indian team for any contingency. Yet, on the eve of the first ODI in Johannesburg, with an injury to vice captain and key batsman Virender Sehwag, India seem less prepared than ever.

The question that probably concerns the Indians the most, especially in light of the brittle batting display in the warmup game save for captain Rahul Dravid, is: who will open the batting for India?

The logical answer is to have Wasim Jaffer open with Sachin Tendulkar, and most likely India will opt for that option. It is the easy option. But Jaffer has not played a single ODI in his career so far, and thrusting him into the position in the opening game of a key series may not be the best solution.

The harder option would be for Rahul Dravid, who showed that he was willing and reasonably able to open the innings and did so quite a number of times in the past few months, to raise his hand and make the bold decision to lead from the front by opening the batting on the fast, bouncy pitches of South Africa.

In doing so, Dravid would be taking a leaf out of Sourav Ganguly’s book. Last time around in South Africa, Ganguly did precisely that and scored over 350 runs at an average over 60 and strike rate of nearly 90 runs per hundred balls, including two centuries in seven games. Significantly, his highest score in the series came in the first game versus South Africa in Johannesberg where he smashed Pollock, Ntini, Nel, Kallis and Klusener to the tune of 127 runs off 126 balls with 14 fours and 5 sixes.

The final and least likely option is to have Dinesh Karthik open the batting with Sachin Tendulkar. This would be a huge gamble and would not be recommended.

This final option, if taken, would also beg the question of why an experienced campaigner like the injured Yuvraj Singh was replaced with Karthik, a greenhorn who has so far averaged 1.00 at a strike rate of 8.33 in his three ODI matches. Clearly, far more experienced batsmen were available in the form of VVS Laxman and Sourav Ganguly, or even Gautam Gambhir.

But for reasons only best understood by them, the selectors chose Karthik to replace the injured Yuvraj. Were they concerned about having a backup wicketkeeper in case Mahendra Singh Dhoni got injured? That hardly seems logical when an experienced ODI keeper in the form of Rahul Dravid was already in the side.

But regardless of whether Dravid decides to open, Jaffer makes his debut, or Karthik faces the music in the cauldron of the Bull Ring, the larger question is why is India short of good options when only one of their key players is injured? Isn’t this the type of challenge which all the experimentation with the batting order that Greg Chappell insisted on pursuing, even as India bumped along to defeat in West Indies and Malaysia and then at home in the Champions Trophy, was supposed to address?

Yet the team looks unsettled, lacking a solid core, containing players unsure of their roles and responsibilities. Not the best way to prepare for the World Cup, which has been cited as the purpose for all of this experimentation.

As more than one expert commentator has pointed out, time is running out for the team to gel before the big dance. The next few days will show whether Dravid and Chappell were right and India have now benefited from their experiments with the batting order, so that batsmen are able to perform regardless of where they bat. For the sake of Indian cricket one hopes they are indeed correct.

Especially so, because the option of going back to the drawing board and building a team for the World Cup around a fixed batting order with a stable core of batsmen who know their job may already be too late.