Bowling not settled yet

Sudeep Tyagi ran down to bowl his third over to South African opener Loots Bosman and the attacking player charged him towards mid-on for four....

Sudeep Tyagi ran down to bowl his third over to South African opener Loots Bosman and the attacking player charged him towards mid-on for four. Two balls later in the third and final ODI,Tyagi tried to bowl much faster but was hit for consecutive fours in the next two balls. The ineffectiveness pointed to a greater woe.

As the Indian team management starts its homework for World Cup 2011 to be held in the subcontinent next year,there are more worries then relief coming from the speed department. Since the beginning of the new season,the Indian side has tried various options to find the right combination but still on the searching route to form a strong pool of talented pacers.

Leaving the experience of Zaheer Khan aside,the Indian line-up is still not sure of its components. Since the last season,the Indian dressing room has seen pacers like Ashish Nehra,Ishant Sharma,Praveen Kumar,RP Singh,Sudeep Tyagi,S Sreesanth,L Balaji,Ashoke Dinda and Abhimanyu Mithun go through the revolving door. And as the musical chairs continued,coach Gary Kisten hinted that there will be more experiments in coming months.

Kirsten explained how his team has started his work on finding a right combination before they reach the World Cup. Injuries and lack of pacers who can bowl consistently at 140 kmph have always been weak points and before the South Africans had arrived in India,the selectors had sent an SOS to search for speedsters from domestic cricket before zeroing in on Mithun.

Were continue to work on that,and in the last year or so we have found a few young talents. We have tried eight or nine seamers and that is one area we have not yet decided as who our core four-five bowlers will be, Kirsten explained.

Economy worries

But even though the team experimentation continues,the other worry regarding the pacers has been the shoddy economy rates and the number of runs they have given away in the past couple of series. Even skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has often expressed his disappointment at not having a bowler who excels in the death overs. One look at the statistics of three one dayers against Proteas explains how the pacers have been most expensive in recent times.

In the last three one-day series,the pacers economy rates read: Nehra 7.05,Praveen 5.92 and Sreesanth 7.38. In the tri-series in Bangladesh,the pacerss struggle was more pronounced than ever. Nehras series economy rate was 6.27 while Sreesanth finished with figures of 6.68 in five matches.

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We are trying to give a chance to players who have been on the bench. Sudeep had two games in Bangladesh but what we want to see is how these pacers tackle the pressure, Kirsten added.

Thanks to the powerful batting line-up,Indian pace bowlers have found a place to hide. But its not a place in which they can stay concealed forever and will need to overcome the challenge sooner than later.