Expert Blog

Setting benchmarks!

Harsha Bhogle evaluates the respective bench strengths of Australia and India, and finds much disparity between the two.

I must confess I am not surprised that Australia won the one-day series. Very often, while looking at teams, we do a man-to-man analysis and that can be illuminating. But, as it was with the Rajasthan Royals in the first year of the IPL, there is one other factor that you cannot quantify and that is attitude. The more players Australia lost, the harder they tried. And in doing so, they showed the depth they possess in their domestic cricket.

It is now a cliché to say that the strength of a side is the strength of its bench. But clichés are true and Australia’s bench was of high quality. There is a reason for that. When a young man qualifies to play for his state in first class cricket, he has already gone through a fair level of competition and so is largely ready to play at that level. Our domestic cricket, in spite of the two tiers, creates a readiness gap; if you are excellent at domestic level, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are good enough at international level.

India have a few other problems to solve. Too many of the younger players are hitting a wall. Suresh Raina is the latest. Since England and the West Indies bounced India in the T20 World Championship, he hasn’t been the same cricketer and dropping him down the order, maybe in search of a safe position, isn’t helping him. When a player is down, he needs to be fed confidence and the only way to do that was to see that he played at number 3. Now, in case the leadership has lost confidence in him, then he shouldn’t be in the side at all.

I think we need to worry about how good cricketers like Raina, Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa, RP Singh and Piyush Chawla are losing their way. Maybe there are cricketing reasons but maybe there aren’t and it is time we looked at that. And we need to worry about our medium pacers (I would have loved to say fast bowlers but that would be a touch dishonest!). The selection of Sreesanth, who has played cricket and been in the news for the wrong reasons, is an admittance of shortage. Irfan Pathan and RP Singh are in no form, Munaf Patel rarely inspires confidence and Ashish Nehra cannot yet play four-day cricket. Sreesanth has not been selected, he is the last man standing after an elimination process!