STATISTICS AND STRATEGIES ABOUT INDIAN CAMPAIGN @ WORLD CUP

STATISTICS

1. From 1992 world cup onwards we never beat Australia and South Africa in a world cup.

2. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly are the only century makers among current batsmen for India at world cup after 1992.

3. Their centuries were against only Kenya, Namibia and Srilanka (only test playing nation).

4. We never lost a match to Pakistan in the world cup.

5. In last three world cups Indians are the leading scorers in each edition.

1996 World Cup – Sachin Tendulkar
1999 World Cup – Rahul Dravid
2003 World Cup – Sachin Tendulkar

6. The best players of their team always had come good for world cup winning team at finals.

Wasim Akram – 1992 – Pakistan
Aravinda de Silva – 1996 – Srilanka
Shane Warne - 1999 – Australia
Ricky Ponting – 2003 – Australia

Ok who is our best one-day player? Sachin! He was, but he is not. Then, who is? In my view it is YUVRAJ SINGH, who is currently injured. I pray to God that he is fully fit and in top form for the coming world cup. But never discount Sachin; he always had done well at the world cup. I hope that first three stats don’t repeat in 2007 world cup.

STRATEGIES

There is a saying in cricket that put your best batsman at No.3. I think it holds good for a test match not for shorter version. What are the batting slots for our players? Greg Chappell actually tried to create flexible batting slots for our batsmen. But his idea was widely criticized by so called media experts. Media and former cricketers are of the opinion that Indian team batting line-up must have fixed batting slots for our batsmen. I feel this flexi-batting slots concept would be actually very handy for our team in the world-cup. Anyway this strategy should be followed with some restrictions.

Rahul Dravid is the only batsman in the world who can bat at any position successfully. Still I am against him opening the batting. Sachin has some kind of allergy for batting in the middle-order. My batting order would be like:

1. Sachin
2. Shewag/Uthappa/Gambhir
3. Ganguly
4. Yuvraj
5. Rahul
6. Dhoni
7. Pathan/Joginder Sharma
8. Harbhajan/Pawar
9. Zaheer
10. Sreesanth/Agarkar
11. Kumble

I would like to have Rohit Sharma in the playing XI. But judging by the selectors intentions I feel they are going to try him only after the world cup. The positions of Ganguly and Rahul can be interchanged according to the situation. There is an opinion that Sachin and Ganguly should open the batting because they were the best opening pair in the world. I feel Ganguly could be very effective against part timers like Gayle, Samuels, Jayasuriya and Andrew Symmonds. So he should bat in the middle-order. The worrying factor would be Ganguly’s and Rahul’s running between the wickets.

Anyway whatever the batting positions of our batsmen our success will be proportional to success of Rahul and Yuvraj. That is they must bat most of the overs. They pace their innings very well. Atleast one of the openers must be in good nick. We need good starts. Robin Uthappa or Gambhir may be the surprise package. If Shewag regains form it is well and good. We have Dhoni and Pathan (if he plays) to finish off. Let us pray to God that Pathan regain his bowling form.

Our bowlers must match their bowling performance in 2003 world cup except for the performance in finals. Somewhat I feel Sachin’s bowling will be a crucial factor for our success. Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh are more economical rather than wicket taking in shorter version. Rahul must use Sachin effectively as a wicket taker. We definitely need initial breakthroughs from our pace bowlers. Our problem is in death overs. In recent years we gave too many runs in death overs. There is no one in the current Indian team who would bowl well at the death. Ajit Agarkar may be the best of the lot to bowl at death. And also we allow the opposition to bounce back after getting their top order cheaply. Somehow team-management must address these problems. We have a balanced attack, which is our strength, but problem is about giving final punch.

For God’s sake we must raise our fielding standards. Our catching needs to be sharp. Rest is in our players’ hand.