My thoughts on India's performance in this series:
1. Too much experimentation by Greg Chappell. Imran Khan hit the nail on the head during INdia's tour of Pak in the third ODI or second ODI, I think. Pathan came in at 3 when the ball was swinging around and India had just lost Sehwag. He put the question "Is he your regular no.3 now? ". Greg Chappell and Dravid certainly thought so and over a whole season, with the aid of flat tracks and good batting performances by others, it kept looking like a success, even though a few here at CW (including myself) were criticising it all the time. It is one thing to send in Pathan as a pinch hitter in the odd game when quick runs are needed, quite another to play him at 3 every game. Thankfully, the windies tour and this series have helped realize that he is WAY out of his league at that position. Is he really our answer to Ponting, Sarwan, Jayawardene, Younis Khan, Fleming etc.? And thankfully, the experiment with Dravid at the top failed now than at the CT or at the WC. It is time for us to write down a settled side with players for each position and only deviate from it depending on the match situation. Pathan coming at 3 in every game is not exactly a surprise, was it? It would have been a surprise had it only happened once in a while.
2. Sehwag, DRavid, Yuvraj, Kaif and Raina all collectively failed in this series. That is our whole batting line up except Sachin. Sehwag has always had issues in ODIs especially on tracks that did a bit. I am planning to start a seperate thread about him where we can discuss this issue further. Yuvraj looked like he has been out of match practice. Having had a bout of viral fever during the camp, he should have been eased back into the side. It looked as though he was rushed back instead and it showed. It might have been a better idea to have left him out of this squad and got him back in through the Challenger Trophy. The guy is still class and I expect him to come up with good knocks in the Champions Trophy. Kaif and Raina are basically not carrying on with their good work. If they continue like this, they may need to be dropped. I think we have had enough of guys who score the good 20s and 30s. And the thing with Kaif is he should bat at 3 if he is in the side or otherwise, we might as well drop him. He is certainly not the best option at 5,6 or 7 for us right now.
3. Dinesh Mongia made a good comeback. I have been one of the few here who has always been advocating a comeback for him and it was wonderful to see him do well against a very good bowling line up. Hopefully, he can make this comeback count unlike the last time. He can a steadying presence for us at 5.
4. Harbhajan is back to his best with the ball. IT was a pleasure to see him defeat batsman after batsman through flight and length. The fact that he is getting a lot more caught and bowled and stumped dismissals (the classical off spinner's dismissals over the years) shows how good he is at the moment. He probably is up there among the top 3 spinners in ODIs right now and that is a HUGE advantage for us right now.
5. The pace attack did okay. Munaf shows good control even though I really think he is a little too young in international cricket to be talking about giving up pace etc... McGrath certainly used to bowl a lot quicker than Munaf at his age while still hitting the same lines and lengths. Agarkar is still a little blow hot and blow cold with the ball but at least now we need not have any pre-conceived notions of him bailing us out with the bat. He is officially a tailender now even though he has been one since the day he came in. RP Singh is a waste in the national side, AFAIC. He bowls with an economy of 4.5 to 5 in good bowling tracks and it shoots up to above 6 on batting tracks. He can't bat and he can't field. Sreesanth is a better option any day of the week. Even if he goes for more runs, he is atleast more likely to get a batsman out. RP Singh is a one trick pony and if he is gonna be in our side every game in the CT, we might as well kiss our slender chances good bye.
6. Lastly, Dhoni... The man has appeared in more ads than the runs he has scored in international cricket in the last season. Honestly, I don't mind how many ads a guy comes in but when the guy keeps failing and you have to see him in every commercial break, it gets on your nerves. His keeping is still suspect and he probably cost us the first game against the Windies by failing to stump Brian Lara. His batting again, is a bit of a one trick thing. He can hit it well and clean and long if it is in his slot but apart from that he really does struggle to get going. He is still a valuable one day player once he gets his act right because of the power he brings to the lower middle order. But I think he should be left out of the test side now, he really isn't our best option in that form of the game.
Ideally, I think this is our best XI at the moment for ODIs:
Sachin
Sehwag
Kaif/Yuvraj
Dravid
Mongia/Yuvraj/Raina
Mongia/Raina
Dhoni
Harbhajan
Agarkar
Sreesanth
Patel
.
), but I don't think this contradicts my argument. It's not as if the only poorly behaved cricketers out there who get noticed are captains of the best team in the world. We can hypothesize till we're blue in the face about Ponting's general character, but empirically, I believe it's true that captaincy brought out his worst behaviour, and before he was appointed, I don't think anybody saw his on-field conduct as a particular problem - certainly many people critical of the way the Aussie team conducted itself saw his appointment as a strong move in improving these standards.
