Zaheer Khan
As the cliché reads “a team is as strong as its weakest link”. Nobody exemplifies this more than India. Bowling has let them down time and again. The scores India put on the board for England and South Africa to chase weren’t bad. In both the games they looked set for more than 350 though the lower middle order didn’t quite grab their chances.
The absence of a good partner for Zaheer in the death overs almost cost us the game against England. Munaf has the control to bowl with the new ball but seems inept with the old ball completely exposing his inability to reverse the ball or bowl Yorkers, two most important aspects that the modern-day pacemen embrace. Nehra isn’t the right person to pick given his fitness and form.
Yuvraj reminds me of the student who is more engrossed in extracurricular activities as opposed to his academics. His batting looked better against the minnows but he failed to capitalize on the platform that the top three batsmen set, in the game against South Africa. Yuvraj’s bowling, though, has been a greatest asset for team india in the middle overs. He operates with a kind of control rarely seen in other part-time bowlers. He has a very good arm ball deceiving flight and also the one which gave Kevin Pietersen nightmares a year before, the straightener. So Yuvraj at the moment covers up the sins of the other bowlers, let alone his own batting.
India definitely needs to realize that there must a bowler who could operate in the death with a control. Zaheer Khan every time is running out of partners. In the last game the last but one over with 5 runs wasn’t good enough to build the pressure and win the game. These stats are very revealing. There is no point in picking a bowler who is not useful towards the end. India needs someone who could thrive in pressure, who could bowl in the powerplays and also in the death overs.
All these criteria remind me of one name – Ravichandran Ashwin, the bowler who rose to the occasion when his IPL franchise wanted him to. His breath taking spells in the powerplays yielding less than 6 runs per over and also picking up important wickets acted as an undergird for Chennai’s success in the IPL and Champions league.
The only thing that comes in the way of his selection is India will be bowling three off-spinners, Pathan, Harbhajan and Ashwin, in case he is picked. But given the variety and more importantly the temperament he has, he becomes an automatic choice in his home ground against the West Indies.
Tags: Bowler, Cricket, Cricket India, England, India, Indian Cricket, South Africa, World Cup
