We could actually play
1. Tendulkar
2. Ganguly
3. Dravid
4. Yuvraj
5. Uthappa
6. Karthik
7. Dhoni
8. Gambhir
9. Rohit Sharma
10. Chawla
11. Zaheer
Pile uo 600 runs, open the bowling with Ganguly and Zaheer and use Chawla, Tendulkar and Yuvraj as the other three bowlers. Sure formula for success.
Seriously, India played four bowlers (most agreed it was the thing to do) and got slaughtered. Suddenly everyone seemed to be screaming their heads off on how stupid it was not to have played another bowler.
They played five bowlers bringing in Powar in the next game and won (with some tension towards the end) with Powar playing an important part and everyone told themselves "I told you so".
They continued the same formula and lost inspite of Powar again bowling magnificiently and we are back to play-four-bowlers.
Really.
It would be much better if we looked at things dispassionately without the baggage of prejudice or the doubtful merits of hindsight masquerading as enlightenment.
One day format needs 12 players. Five bowlers, six batsmen and a keeper who can bat. The five bowlers have to be specialists and a sixth bowler (made up of one or more part timers) is still required if a specialist has an off day. Unfortunately the game allows for only eleven players. Hence the need for an allrounder other than the keeper who has already been pencilled in as a batsmen of some merit.
Unfortunately, the allrounder is not a very common commodity. Hence teams lacking genuine all rounders started resorting to so-called buts-and-pieces players to make up not twelve but seven players and four half-of-a-bowler-half-of-a-batsman types. This did nothing except reduce the standards of the game in both batting AND bowling. Teams like England were amongst the foremost in such devaluation of international standards with the Ronnie-Irani-types. Thank God for Flintoff. But we digress.
India has always had a problem with only two world class allrounders in 75 years of international cricket. Pathan offered a ray of hope but that has been temporarily (one hopes) extinguished and we are stuck with one player short.
To make things worse, while for most teams, the last three batsmen add up to at least one whole batsman, for India, by and large, the last three just represent one big hole ! So we are actually two batsmen short. But does that justify playing one less bowler ? Not so sure.
We have a problem which is not going to go away till we have a decent all rounder in the team and our tail understands that while not everyone has to bowl, everyone DOES need to bat sometimes.
But then everyone also has to field and not sometimes but ALL the time and yet these Indian players seem to think fielding skills are optional. Why shouldn't bowlers field the same about rudimentary batting skills the same way.
