It is easy enough to rummage through the results so far in this Samsung series to see where India’s problems lie in Pakistan. Peshawar was no different to Rawalpindi or, for that matter, to Karachi. As feared, the bowling, along with injuries to key bowlers, makes it a tough battle for Saurav Ganguly’s peace of mind.To win this series now needs an attack to match that of Pakistan’s, as well as a strategy to support this plan. This also means including players in the lower order who come with experience and knowledge of how to win the endgame; to back themselves and outmanoeuvre a captain handicapped by an attack still limping along.Yet when India were in with a chance on Friday, along came a couple of stage veterans in Razzaq and Moin Khan to show off their expertise and take the game away from India to make it 2-1 with a four-wicket victory. Razzaq and Moin knew what they had to do and it was Razzaq who showed up the bowling attack available to the Indian skipper on a dodgy surface.In Pakistan, India’s batting has been established as their strong point but if your gunpowder is wet it should be understood how any gameplan can go awry at crucial times.So where does the final selection policy lie? Ganguly knows he is in trouble when the bowling he has cannot finish off the job. Here we have to look at how he handles the attack with bowlers who, in a decent game, would be horribly exposed. Irfan is not a bad replacement for Nehra but are there no better lower-order players than Powar?Introducing such an all-rounder into such a high-profile series suggests that there are selection problems. Or that his role has not been thought through. Peshawar is known to favour the seam and swing bowlers yet Ganguly relied on the patch-up job offered by Powar and Sachin.Perhaps Ganguly can learn from the Peshawar game. Certainly Razzaq’s coolness under pressure put together the type of innings which showed up India’s lack of batting depth in this series. Sure Hameed did much to set up the earlier platform, but it was the old stage hands Razzaq and Moin who carried out and executed the plan. It was clever batting and left Ganguly bereft of ideas at the end.It also suggests that in Razzaq, Pakistan have a captain in waiting as he had long worked out his own gameplan. And, as in chess, if you want to win, you have to have the perfect end game.
