'India Needs To Get Its Act Together'

It is natural for the Indians to feel a bit concerned about their main spinners.Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh are proven match-winners but they haven't been aforce in the first two games of this one-day series.

Saurav Ganguly has a headache in this area.

Let us first discount the handicaps which any bowler, spin or pace, faces ina one-day arena. You could have attacking fields in Test cricket but one-dayersleave you with no such support. Spinners suffer more since there are lessclose-in catchers. Also, unlike pacemen, they don't get many of their victims byway of bowled.

The wickets in the first two games have been good one-day strips. It hasn'tgiven the Indian spinners the kind of assistance they enjoyed in the Testseries. They have seen far better days in the past than they have in the lasttwo games. It has been the batters' turn to hold centrestage.

The worry for the Indians is that not only these fine bowlers have failed totake wickets, they have also gone for runs. They are the leading Indian bowlersand yet have gone for five-six runs an over. It is not easy to replace themeither. It is difficult to opt for such an extreme option.

The next World Cup will be staged in South Africa and as we all know the wicketsthere are seamer-friendly. Both India and West Indies could have a problem inthe spin area. Both prefer to have 20 of their 50 overs bowled by spin bowlers.In India's case, with someone like Virender Sehwag turning his arm over, itcould be more than half of your overs bowled by tweakers. This is an area whichIndia needs to examine closely.

There is no need to write off the spinners on the basis of just two one-daygames. They are match winners in their own right. Still, both Kumble andHarbhajan will need to bowl much better to be a force not only in this remainingseries but also in world's premier event next year.

India has also experimented with their batting line-up in the first twogames. Ajit Agarkar has come in at number three position and I can understandtheir point of view. They want to be flexible with their seven batters and tryout different combinations so everyone knows what one could be asked to do in aparticular situation during the World Cup. One needs to experiment to test thenuts and bolts of a team for a tournament as major as World Cup.

It is important to ensure though that in this quest for experiment, theteam's confidence is not damaged by a run of defeats. A team should prefer to goto South Africa with the confidence of having played good one-day cricket,preferably the winning type.

I had little hesitation to opt to field first on winning the toss in the secondgame. These are small grounds and it is difficult to know what is a good scoreon these fields. You could make a score in excess of 300 and still not be sureif it is a safe total. The wickets have been good and all it needs is for twobatters to have a partnership going. If two batsmen fire together early in theinnings, it becomes easier for the following batsmen to pace the tempoaccordingly.

India are still not out of this series and they are good enough to come backany time. But they have played a lot of cricket in this past few months and afew of them could be jaded. A couple of their regulars, Sachin Tendulkar andZaheer Khan, are also missing. But it is no excuse for losing matches. The teamneeds to find its own motivation to stop a downward slide. Nobody acceptsfailure these days.

As for us, we are happy at this marvellous start to the one-day series. Ourbatting is beginning to jell well and it would look still better when Brian Larais back. It looks to be a good nucleus for the World Cup. Barring an injury ortwo, we are in the process of identifying the men we will need for the WorldCup.

Vasbert Drakes is experienced and on a given day could perform the role of agenuine all-rounder -- an all-round cricketer every team needs in one-day arena.

The match wasn't over without a few worrying glances at the stands.Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as Jamshedpur. I don't think they should bespoiling a good day's cricket.

PTI