Sachin should do a Scholes-esque re-entry

It’s not even been a fortnight after Sachin announced his retirement and the Indian cricket team has started showing that they don’t really promise anything for the future. The losses to England both home and away, the two tied T20 matches, and recently the loss against our favourite opponents Pakistan show that nothing is going well for Indian cricket at the moment. While our bowling has never really looked strong, our batting has been the weaker aspect in these losses. At crucial times in the past, it was our batting which more often than not worked wonders for our team, leaving little for the bowlers to do.

Looking at individual contributions to our batting, nobody except Virender Sehwag looks to be in bad shape. With batting averages of 42, 45, 39, 65 in the calendar year 2012 (ODI), the Indian batting order doesn’t qualify to be deemed weak or not in form. While individually they have clicked, as a team they haven’t. We saw Gambhir, Kohli, Dhoni and not to forget Rahul Dravid waging lone battles against oppositions. The captaincy of Dhoni is also being questioned now. The next World Cup is in Australia-New Zealand and with such huge losses at home, that looks a daunting challenge for Duncan Fletcher. What Dhoni and Fletcher have been trying to do is to allow the youngsters an opportunity to prepare them for the stage.

Now let’s concentrate on our options. Opening combination hasn’t clicked since forever. Ajinkya Rahane has done some good and deserves a chance ahead of the struggling Sehwag. Gambhir is doing fine, but should start playing for the team as stated by the captain. At no. 3, Virat Kohli looks a good option. However he is yet to prove his merit outside the subcontinent. At no. 4 we have Yuvraj Singh. He has not played many matches and looks little shaky and struggles a lot at times. His experience and style of play is something that India cannot leave behind in the race to 2016 WC. His Man of the Series performance in the World Cup ’11 was an answer to all the questions on his selection. At no. 5, Suresh Raina has not contributed much. He continues to fall prey to short-pitched deliveries and that is the factor that will matter the most in Australia. It’s high time for him to prove his worth. No. 7 looks perfect in the hands of Dhoni, though the team may need him to promote himself at crucial times.

Bowling is a scenario that I don’t want to think much about. We don’t have many options there in terms of experience with Zaheer and Harbhajan looking the only dependable ones and they have been way out of form. Dhoni and Fletcher will have a tough task preparing a strong bowling attack from our limited options and inexperienced youngsters. However Dhoni often succeeds in managing the bowling with the help from part-timers Raina and Yuvraj.

What we see now is a team that looks fairly well in pieces but fails to live up to even half of its potential. The need of the hour is the revival of the spirit, the revival of some confidence into it.

Manchester United was also suffering from a similar fate after Scholes announced his retirement. While they definitely looked good on paper, they were having a disastrous time by their standards. Sir Alex Ferguson was forced to call Scholes back and he proved to be the difference and provided the much needed confidence back in the squad. Talking about a similar comeback of Sachin will be too early now, but if our team continues to struggle like this, his comeback at a later stage may prove as significant as Scholes’ comeback was.