Over dependence on spin and pinning faith on one day players may cause doom for an ordinary side. With the absence of Rohit Sharma, the list of in form players is reduced to the minimum. We need to have proper thinking before selection of the team rather than thinking only about present perfect and forget about the future. Abhinav Mukund could have just as easily taken over Gautam Gambhir’s place in the team. Hardik Pandya is a reasonable selection and would be interesting to see what he can do at this level. Our top order batsmen shows signs of weakness against new ball and fall of early wickets keep our team in check and we depend on the likes of R Ashwin and Wriddhiman Saha for rescuing the team. How long our top order will fail repeatedly and we bank on tail to build a moderate total. Gambhir is getting a fresh lease of life under Virat Kohli but his sliced cut will spell doom early in the innings as the English professionals are good in slip catching and their wicket keeper is an experienced customer behind the stumps.
Nickil Akhilesh Krishnan
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
