Ishant Sharma's World Cup absence won't affect Indian bowling: Sourav Ganguly

Sourav Ganguly speaks about Ishant Sharma’s absence from the World Cup

Former India captain Sourav Ganguly believes that Ishant Sharma’s absence will not make a huge difference to India’s bowling attack in the 2015 World Cup. The 26-year-old right-arm pacer was ruled out of the mega event after he failed to clear a fitness test last Saturday.

"One player's absence won't make much of a difference. The rest will also have to bowl well,” Ganguly said, prior to his departure to Australia for his commentary stint.

It takes longer for a bowler to regain his fitness: Ganguly

The 42-year-old added that it takes a bowler lot more time to regain his full fitness as compared to a batsman and also disagreed with the thought that Ishant tried to hide his injury in a quest to play the World Cup.

"I don't think Ishant hid his injury. When a player gets injured, you give him time to recover. Michael Clarke has recovered. He (Clarke) could recover because he's a batsman.

“He might not have, if he was a bowler. There's a difference between a batsman and bowler," the former left-hander said.

Despite India having won just a solitary game in Australia so far, Ganguly sounded optimistic about the team’s chances in the tournament.

“They will do well, let the tournament begin,” he said.

One of the pressing debates leading up to India’s World Cup campaign has been star batsman Virat Kohli’s batting position. Ganguly opined that regardless of where Kohli plays in the batting order, the team management must ensure that he gets to face at least 80% of the overs.

“Team management will decide that but they should ensure that Virat gets to play at least 40 overs,” he said.

The current Indian team is not short on experience: Ganguly

Ganguly further said that the current outfit has got enough experience and a new group will eventually take over the mantle at some point from the senior players.

“No doubt, there's experience in the side. You cannot have all the players with 300 matches, then you've to keep playing for 13-14 years.

"New players come and the seniors (eventually) go away...This is the rule of sport. But still the team has a lot of experience in Dhoni, Virat with more than 400 matches between them," he said.

"Rohit Sharma has played 120-odd matches. When I first played the World Cup in 1999, I hardly played about 60-70 matches,” he added.