Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Amidst the hullabaloo of Indias 38-run win over Australia in the warm-up game on Sunday night,Mahendra Singh Dhoni picked up a stump,rather unnoticed and walked into the dressing room.
On a day when nine Australia wickets fell to four of the spinners in the Indian line-up,including Yuvraj Singh,the skipper perhaps kept the wicket to hand it over to Piyush Chawla.
Dhoni could be tempted to replace his 3 medium pacer-one spinner combination with two seamers and two spinners.
After the game on Sunday,Dhoni said that talent in the side gave him the option of playing around with the final XI combination. Its a bit of headache8230;. who to play and who not to play with the kind of talent we have in the team but it is good for the team. We need a good start and the batsman need to contribute in the middle-order too. The positive thing from the match is that only two batsmen contributed and we still scored 214 runs. The performances of spinners is also a positive, Dhoni said.
The Indian skipper was also talking about the batting combinations,which actually is well set,but the skill of off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin and the confidence Chawla displayed will give him options,if he decides to add a frontline spinner to back Harbhajan Singh.
The pitch at the Chepauk has come in for criticism from South Africa skipper Graeme Smith for being too slow and for offering too much turn.
If the wicket remains of a similar nature for Indias second warm-up game,Dhoni will be tempted to experiment and get the bowling combination right keeping in mind that the Shere Bangla National Stadium,Mirpur,where India play the World Cup opener on Saturday,should be on the slower side.
India has just once in the recent past during the One-day series in South Africa played two specialist spinners.
Even medium-pacers can be rotated around with S Sreesanth playing in Sundays warm-up game and opening the attack with Ashish Nehra,while Munaf Patel bowled first change as Zaheer Khan was rested.
Sachin Tendulkar bowled seam-up for long hours,after a while,in the nets during the Bangalore camp,while Virat Kohli can also be called to bowl his variety of gentle spin.
On Saturday just nine overs were bowled by the pacemen on a wicket that increasingly took turn and chances are not many more will have to be bowled by the medium-pacers in Dhaka on Saturday during the opener.
Yet,Dhoni knows that whether it is spin or pace he has to depend on during a game,he has options to choose from during this World Cup.
