The only team to really gain from the Kuala Lumpur sojourn is the West Indies team. Sure the Australians won the Cup to emphasize their superiority in spite of not always playing their best 11, but it was the West Indian performance that caught the attention and perhaps it may have been due to the fact that the team hasn’t been performing at it’s best for some time now. Whatever the reason, there’s no doubt that while the fragility of the men from the Caribbean can be exploited by teams like the Australians, they have certainly come a long way under Lara’s third stint as skipper. Their bowling is much better than it was say a year ago and while the no-ball and wides problems are still there, as for other teams as well, at least now they have some good bowlers in the death overs like Bravo and Bradshaw and Dwayne Smith and the younger bowlers are not looking the other way when the captain is thinking of whom to bring on to bowl. It’s still the batting which is the problem for the West Indians for it is still pretty much who is in the mood to do his bit that day and that is not the best way to go into a game. Far too many are relying on one or two scores in the tournament instead of trying to be consistently scoring for the team. Gayle and the skipper are two prime examples of players who fire only in the odd game and who with their experience should be leading and showing the way to the others in the team. A player like Bravo might actually benefit by being given a bit more responsibility and sent earlier than he is at the moment. He is a great talent with both bat and ball and needs to be pushed to perform.
The Indians gained nothing from this event and have actually got a bit more muddled than ever before. The batting experiments are continuing, which means nobody knows what role they have, and what’s really expected of them. Thankfully there’s no mixing of the bowling, so no spinner has been asked to open the bowling and no seamer has been given an old ball to bowl with. There’s nothing wrong with experiments but there’s got to be a purpose behind it and at the moment that purpose is certainly not evident to others outside the team. What has happened is that the confidence of some player has been shaken and while nobody should be in a cocoon and think he is indispensable, at the same time nobody should feel so insecure that he forgets that it’s a team game and goes on to play for himself rather than the team so that his place is secure for the next few games.
The other message that the team’s management needs to get across urgently to some of the players is that there’s a place in limited overs cricket for the odd dot ball.
There’s no way any team including the Australians can score off every ball that they receive. What they do better than others is to make up for the dot balls by some aggressive running between he wickets thus taking the extra run that other teams won’t even think of. Suresh Raina is a top prospect but he needs to be told that he can defend the odd ball and play with soft hands. At the moment all he is doing is try and smash every ball which is what is making him get attractive 20s and 30s but at the highest level these aren’t good enough to win the games especially if he is batting at number three and four and there are plenty of overs to come. It’s pretty much the same problem with Wavell Hinds and the difference is that Hinds is 30 years old while Raina has time on his hands as he is not even 20.
The Australians came with a playing squad of 18 which really shouldn’t have been allowed by BCCI who were the hosts of the tournament. India went with 15 of whom one knew he wasn’t in the Champions Trophy that follows and so playing him wouldn’t have made any sense simply because it was better to give an opportunity to a player picked for the Champions Trophy than to one who wasn’t selected. India did not play all its players unlike Australia who played all the 18 that it brought to Kuala Lumpur. Therein lies the difference for a lot of planning went in to the event and the team was told from before who were going back after the first stage of the tournament irrespective of their performances so a Mitchell Johnson had to go back in spite of rattling the Indians. Imagine that happening to an Indian player. There would have been so much pressure to keep him even if it meant upsetting the balance of the team and that is the difference between the Champions and the others. It’s the courage of conviction.
