Despite having 87 wickets from 47 matches at an average of 24, Mohammad Shami is playing his first ODI in 829 days.
Unimaginative team selection. We were all crying out loud for Shami to be playing in the CT. On dead wickets, you need bowlers who can force out a wicket in the middle overs which is not Bumhrah`s forte. Kuldeep, Shami, Umesh bowling in the middle overs will be a constant wicket-taking threat. Bhuvi, Umesh, Shami, Kuldeep and Pandya will be my ODI bowling lineup till Bumrah improves his overall skills. Sometimes, too much is made of death bowling. Yes it is important, but taking wickets from 1-40 is more important. No matter how good a death bowler you have in the XI, if you do not pick wickets earlier on, you risk leaking runs in the final 10. I hope we realize this going forward. How well you do as a team is not always directly proportional to the resources, unless you use them well. We have the resources but we picked the most defensive lineup we could from the resources we had. Counter that to the 2011 WC or 2013 CT where we had far fewer options in the bench but clicked because the overall combination of the bowling lineup was good. Sometimes, its an issue even if you have too many options making it tough to pick the best combination.
The more I see Virat captain, he seems to be a defensive option. It makes me wonder if a lot of the aggressive selection in test cricket in the last one year had Kumble`s mark on it. Wonder if we would`ve played the lineup we did at Dharamshala (Kuldeep ahead of Shreyas Iyer) in that deciding test against Australia had Kohli been the captain and not Jinx.
On another hand, India`s batting reserves look healthy as well. I assume Karthik and Yuvraj will now not feature in the ODI plans anymore. We have Nohit Sharma, Rahul, Pandey, Pant all in the bench. With all these reserves, we should be fielding a far more aggressive lineup than now, Also, we should be playing far more aggressively, given the side.
My ODI squad/team going into the away tours and the 2019 WC would look like:
Dhawan/Rahane
Rahul/Pant
Kohli
Rohit Sharma/Rahane
Kedar Jadhav
Dhoni/Pant
Pandya
Bhuvi
Umesh
Shami
Kuldeep
Reserves:
Bowling: Jadeja/Ashwin/Krunal, Chahal, Bumrah, Sran
Batting: Pandey, Shreyas Iyer, Nair, Sanju Samson
Yes, I would`nt play Rohit Sharma as an opener. He is neither someone who can withstand pressure nor a dasher like Pant. Ideally, we need one opener who takes the bowling on. I would assign that role to Rahul or Pant and bank on someone like Ajinkya or Dhawan to play through and absorb pressure. Rohit coming in at No.4 gives us that aerial hitting power in the middle overs, especially against spin and average medium pace which Rohit can be devastating against. He is makes far too many soft runs as an opener and has not yet stood up against good attacks in any format of the game (bar CB series 2008). We need to challenge Rohit and make him do well out of his comfort zone. Yes, he might have good stats in ODIs but far too many of those are soft runs. We need a team management which is bold enough to point this out. If he is far better against medium pace and spin, lets use him in a role where he faces that the most. Guys with test match pedigree like Rahane and Rahul would be valuable as openers because you need those skills to withstand spells like the one Amir bowled in the CT final. Rohit, sadly, does not inspire confidence against quality attacks.
Even with the current setup, this side will win more ODI series than they lose but I feel we are getting satisfied with far too little. This side has the resources to play a very attractive brand of cricket with bat and ball and needs to push themselves a lot more. Resourcewise, we are probably ahead of most sides on the road to 2019 WC but the approach needs serious shakeup. However, I do not see that coming with a mediocre cricketing-mind and hyperbole king Shastri as the coach.
Sometimes with the amount of cricket that fans watch, I wonder if they`d pick better sides than the team management. I feel egos and friendships get in the way of picking best sides way too often. So very often, the guys that the fans keep shouting for perform well instantly (Fakhar Zaman, Junaid etc in the CT, Kuldeep for India, Stephen Cook for SA etc).
