Batsmen too win matches

By winning the cricket world cup on April 2, 2011, Indians have proved wrong the saying that it is the bowlers who win matches. India’s strong batting line-up alone helped it to emerge as champions for the second time in the world cup history.

India had gone into the world cup with a formidable batting power led by Sachin Tendulkar and Virendra Sehwag. Its bowlers except Zaheer Khan were quite average. Harbhajan Singh was a far cry from the turbaned magician who bamboozled the Australians ten years ago. Though he didn’t get many wickets he was able to contain the batsmen as his name perhaps evoked a kind of awe in the minds of the opposite team based on his exploits in the past.

In 1983, it was the Indian bowlers who did the trick after the team score a paltry 183. Who can forget the banana swing of Sandhu which fetched Greenidge’s wicket. It started the slide. West Indies lost because their batsmen were totally off colour, something which was rare. Their batsmen let them down.

West Indies and Australia dominated cricket when they had champion bowlers like Holding, Garner, Roberts, Marshall, McGrath, Warne etc They were sure to get wickets when they came on to bowl. India had fearsome bowlers in spinners in the seventies. After that Kapil Dev carried the burden as a strike bowler. After he faded out, Kumble was the only wicket-taking bowler India had. But he was not that effective outside the sub-continent.

The strong teams in 2011 world cup like South Africa, Australia and Pakistan had good team of bowlers who could bowl out the entire team. New Zealand’s entry to the semis was a fluke. South Africa had a rare off day. That was the biggest upset in the world cup. For, they had the look of the champions on paper.

If you look at the world cup champions down the years, you can see that they always had a good bowling attack to back up the batsmen. It is sort of 50:50 effort from bowlers and batsmen. If bowlers failed, the batsmen rose to the occasion and vice versa. It was the insipid bowling of India that let Austalia off the hook in 2003 final.

The 2011 Indian team was 70: 30 in favour of batsmen. Most of the teams had batted well against Indian attack in the league matches. India’s batsmen saved the day on most occasions. But chasing anything over 250 in a final is quite tough and challenging. More than skill, it is a test of mental strength of the team. What turned the tide in favour of India were its matches against Australia and Pakistan. Two demanding matches saw that Indian team did not wilt under pressure in the crucial final game against Sri Lanka after the twin strike by Malinga to dismiss Sehwag and Tendulkar.

Yuvraj’s reincarnation as a spin all-rounder couldn’t have come at a more apt time. Since the exit of Kapil Dev, India never had a pace bowling all-rounder except Irfan pathan for a brief while. That slot is still vacant. So is the position of a tearaway fast bowler.