Trust the regulars!

For quite a few months now, the Indian tail has wagged with fair consistency in all the forms of the game and the contributions and support has been substantial. Bowlers like Harbhajan, Zaheer, Praveen Kumar have chipped in with handy contributions with the bat on numerous occasions.

On a couple of occasions earlier in addition to the mammoth 414 run pile of today, I have been extremely disturbed by the decision to send Harbhajan Singh above seasoned batsmen like Raina, Jadeja and sometimes even Dinesh Karthik. I have a very different take on this strategy and I beg to differ on its viability.

Does he have a complete batsman’s game? Does he have the capability of building an innings? Does he have the skill to stick it out the way a seasoned batsman would?
The answer to all of the above is a convincing NO and there is no shame in admitting the fact simply because at the end of the day these are bowlers who can bat a bit and use the long handle. But that’s that!

Every skill in the game has its place and needs to be given its due respect and only the due respect.

Batsmen like Baji are very very handy with the bat but only at the position that they are supposed to play at. They simply lack the ability to build an innings by extending support to the set batsman at the other end and build an innings when it’s a more than a run a ball like situation and we have facts and scorecards that prove this.

When you get such batsmen to jump the batting order and they fail more often than not, not only do you end up mounting the pressure of another wicket loss on yourself and the batsman that follows but also you miss out on a good tail-ender batsman later in the innings. Let me not mention the confidence boost that the bowling side derives from a wicket.

In my opinion the trick lies in not getting carried away.