An athlete who had started well and finished even better than normal yet struggled to win means he had done something wrong in the middle that broke his good start and pushed the need for better finishing.

Batting order let India down in posting good score

Out of the 4 matches in the ODI series so far against England, India had both superb starts and fantastic finishes one can think of with the core of team is missing with injuries when they batted in three matches but the truth is, in all those three occasions India fell short of par score not by much but still the difference that could be between winning and losing especially when you are playing a bowler short.

Although bowlers failed to deliver the goods, they still managed to bring the match as close as till the last over in all three matches. India found themselves short of 20 runs in all the matches of this series since they played with 4 regular bowlers only. In 2^nd ODI when they par score was 200 runs, India ended up short of 17 runs even after blazing start from Parthiv Patel and amazing hitting towards the end by Raina. India ended up losing that match with 5 balls to go. In 4^th ODI, India had a lucky start after edges found the boundaries more often from the bats of Patel and Rahane. Once Patel was dismissed at the start of 16^th over, India scorecard read 74/2 with Dravid and Kohli in the crease. Considering how hard the conditions is, it was a great start for India. But what happened in next 10 overs is complete tussle for runs from Virat and Dravid as they scored just 39 runs and also managed to lose their wickets in the end. That 10 overs of play totally undone the good start and it required some big hitting from Dhoni & Raina to take India to 283 runs but still short of the target they should have got with that kind of finishing after the good start i.e. 300 runs

Is Dravid the culprit who undone the good starts?                                                                                    

Yes, you could say that. Dravid found his going very tough as we saw how often he tried to play rash shots to keep the scoreboard ticking. He scored 55 runs at the Strike Rate of 67 in the 4 matches so far. A player who is coming into the ODI series on the back superb test series, surely lot better performances needed to justify his selection. His slow running doesn’t help either him or his partners (especially Virat). With Virat in the ODI team, don’t know what exactly the role for Dravid. If it is anchor, then what is for Virat? Virat is not a big hitter too. His style of play is almost similar to Dravid. This mistake surely cost Indian team more than few runs and played huge part in the outcome of the matches where they actually should have had either Dravid or Virat playing at 5 allowing more attacking batsmen at No. 4.

With just a game to go in the tour and search for elusive win is still on the cards for India, Dhoni should consider moving himself up and pushing Dravid to No. 5 (the position where he contributed immensely to Indian ODI team).

It’s been that kind of tour for India where small mistakes were made to look bigger with their continuous poor performances.

Tags: Batting, Cricket, England, India, Indian Cricket Team, ODI Series, Rahul Dravid