You know Indian cricket is in a strange place when batsman Cheteshwar Pujara takes up bowling to try and get into the ODI team and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh talks about the need to out-bat Ravichandran Ashwin (another off-spinner) in a bid to break in. Once upon a time, the way to get into the team if you were a batsman was to score tons of runs – force your way into the team with the sheer weight of runs. And similarly for the bowler, picking up bagfuls of wickets was the only way to convince selectors of your quality.
But now having multiple-facets to your game seems more important. Specialisation can take a back seat simply because you have nothing to fall back on if you fail in your chosen area, which will make it easier for you to be knocked out of the team. Greg Chappell first introduced Indian cricket to the concept of three-dimensional players – players who are good batsmen, fielders and bowlers; who provide tremendous value to the team while batting and bowling.
But now having multiple-facets to your game seems more important. Specialisation can take a back seat simply because you have nothing to fall back on if you fail in your chosen area, which will make it easier for you to be knocked out of the team. Greg Chappell first introduced Indian cricket to the concept of three-dimensional players – players who are good batsmen, fielders and bowlers; who provide tremendous value to the team while batting and bowling.
But he promptly forgot to mention that such players are rare or else every second player would be a Garry Sobers or a Kapil Dev. In the last two series – we have seen Ambati Rayudu (who has also donned the keeping gloves for Mumbai Indians in the past) get a bowl. Suresh Raina, struggling with his batting, turns to bowling. Rohit Sharma bowls as well. Yuvraj Singh’s bowling is almost as important to the team as his batting now. Virat Kohli gets a bowl from time to time and so does Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Then come the bowlers who can bat. Ashwin and Jadeja are leading the way in that department. During the tours of South Africa and New Zealand, Ashwin’s batting seemed to be keeping him in the team as he just wasn’t able to take any wickets – so much so that he seemed to be morphing into the next coming of Ravi Shastri (who went from left-arm orthodox spinner to opening the batting). Jadeja, on the other hand, is a scorer of triple-centuries at domestic level who only managed to get into the team as a bowler. Even now, it is as a bowler that he makes the cut...
Source: Cricket News
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