Pak of worries

Coach Gary Kirsten will have to draw on all his experience of playing cricket in South Africa to get strategies spot on when India begin their Champions Trophy campaign against Pakistan on Saturday.

He will have to tweak the roles of some of his players as injury and lack of form threaten to upset plans. If bowling and fielding were skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s concerns, over the past 48 hours, he would have spent a lot of time thinking about the batting order.
A 300-plus score is not considered safe at Centurion even keeping in mind that the team bowling second will have to deal with a slippery ball. India need to give someone a freehand in the batting line-up. But without Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh the others have to be willing to be pulled out of their comfort zone.

Sehwag’s derring-do isn’t first nature to others in the line-up, while there is no Yuvraj to dictate terms in the middle overs. At the top of the order, one among Sachin Tendulkar or Gautam Gambhir will have to adopt an aggressive approach. Gambhir is coming off a groin injury but will have to find form from the word go.

The team may also toy with the option of opening with Virat Kohli or Dinesh Karthik and drop Gambhir to No. 3 like they did during the successful CB Series campaign in Australia. Karthik hasn’t looked confident as an opener and Rahul Dravid had to open with Sachin Tendulkar against Sri Lanka in the Compaq Cup tri-series. Kohli made runs during the Emerging Players tour in Australia but the question remains whether he’ll be able to handle the pressure and deliver in the big matches.

Rahul Dravid’s role in the side will be crucial. With one of the best records against the top teams overseas, Dravid will have be the fulcrum which links the top-order and those coming in after him.

Lower down the order, the team must find a finisher. Mumbai allrounder Abhishek Nayar played a quickfire knock in the warm-up game against New Zealand. Yusuf Pathan has a maverick streak in him and continues to be inconsistent. Suresh Raina instinctively looks for the big drive off the front foot and bowlers will use the short ball to sort him out.
Failure of one among Raina or Yusuf will put added pressure on Dhoni but the skipper has the ability to move from second gear to overdrive in a flash.

The absence of Yuvraj has dented India’s batting prowess and their bowlers—without the experienced Zaheer Khan to guide them—have looked ordinary. Ishant Sharma still isn’t a match winner yet, while Praveen Kumar, RP Singh and Ashish Nehra can look ordinary when batsmen attack them early on.

Having been in South Africa for nearly a week would have helped the team acclimatise.
They’ll also quickly have to adapt to the requirements of a team missing some of their top players.