Problem of plenty? Not really

India won the last group match convincingly by beating England by 90 runs. The stars of the victory were Harbhajan Singh, Piyush Chwala and Rohit Sharma. Well, no one was expecting these 3 guys to be in the team and they featured together in India’s Playing XI and did the job. And now not only MSD, but fans across the nation have started thinking on what should be the team combination in Super 8s.

Before the England game, team’s main concern was the bowling and just after one game, bowling looks like India’s strength as India won the game without Zaheer and Ashwin, who is probably the most important team member in T20s. MSD himself admitted in the post match interview that the reason for going with two genuine spinner was both the wicket and the England team, which isn’t good at playing spin. No doubt that Harbhajan and Piyush bowled well but that performance came against the English team which was further hampered without the likes of KP or Collingwood who are good players of spin bowling. I feel India was lucky enough to get two wickets up front as Alex Hales played a rash shot and Luke Wright’s LBW wicket wasn’t the best of the decisions by Simon Taufel. Those two wickets also created the panic in England dressing room and made it even easier for Team India to take the wickets and win the game.

India failed to defend the score of 185 vs Pakistan in the warm up game and if Afghanistann had taken the catches, they could have created history and the biggest upset of recent times by beating India in a WC match. Zaheer Khan hasn’t looked good since the test series vs Kiwis. Balaji did well in a T20 match vs NZ at Chennai but has struggled since then. Dinda went for few runs in the 2 overs he bowled. Irfan is probably the one bowler who has got few wickets (luckily though). The good thing about Irfan is that he is getting the ball to swing at a decent pace. In spin department, Ashwin has done really well in the recent past and I feel that he, along with Kohli are the two most crucial members of the team as of now. Harbhajan and Piyush did well in the last game but went for plenty in the warm up games, especially Harbhajan who conceded many against Pakistan – a team good at playing spin.

Not only bowling, but India also has few issues in batting. The openers have failed to provide a good start. Gambhir scored 43 in the last game but that came off 35 balls which isn’t great in T20s. Sehwag has also failed but I don’t like the idea of keeping him out as he is a kind of a player who can win the game single handedly. Remember what Adam Gilchrist did in 2007 WC? He failed in the whole tournament but played a a great knock vs Sri Lanka in the final and helped Australia win the 3^rd WC in a row. I guess Sehwag is also a similar kind of player and that’s why I would like to have him in the team. It was nice to see Rohit Sharma doing well as I feel he loves this format and is at his best while playing T20.

So I still believe that batting is the real strength of Team India and not bowling. Zaheer is a world class bowler but I still feel that Ashwin is the only bowler whom India can rely on. Also, we don’t have fast bowlers of such quality that we should play with 3 of them if we are playing with 2 spinners. And there’s also no need to play with 3 spinners as our part timers Raina, Yuvraj and Rohit Sharma are good enough together to play the role of the 5^th bowler and the 3^rd spinner. So I guess the question for Dhoni should be whether to go with 3 seamers and 1 spinner or 2 seamers and 2 spinners. According to me, the question is still about selecting a couple of “not so well performing” bowlers.

MSD said in a press conference that “I can assure you, a problem of plenty is better than not having that one extra guy”. But I feel MSD is actually missing that one extra good performing guy. I would be very happy if I am wrong, but I don’t think “problem of plenty” exists for Indian team in a positive manner. India will have to play out of their skin to make it to the semifinal of WC T20.