Zaheer Khan and Nehra cannot take their places in the team for granted
The first one day international match being played between India and Sri Lanka at Rajkot is the 2932nd match in the history of one dayers. With India recording 414 for 7 in the first innings it is only the seventh time n close to 3000 one day internationals that a score of 4000 or more has been recorded.
Once a score of 400 is recorded by the team batting first, it is a foregone conclusion that the target is out of reach of the team batting second. Bowlers can bowl with the confidence of a monumental target behind them. They can always attack from the first ball knowing fully well that they have the luxury of switching to containing mode should such a situation arise. On the contrary the batsman are always under pressure because irrespective of the fact how freely they get runs they know that it takes the fielding team only a few dot balls or a couple of good overs to put the pressure back on batting team. Another thing which goes against the batsman that however well they play or how good is their shot selection it takes only a delivery for them to get out.
All the facts mentioned above go against the team batting second and in this case Sri Lankans were at a disadvantage even before the chase and yet they managed to almost win comfortably speaks a lot about our poor bowling. In fact the first success for a regular Indian bowler came at the fall of second wicket in the form of Sangakkara with Sri Lanka already having scored 316. It took a specialist Indian bower 36.3 overs to pick up wicket and that really speaks as to how poor our bowlers are. The statistics have been arrived after discounting the fall of first wicket which was taken by Suresh Raina who is a part time bowler.
Almost in every match our front line pacers have been thrashed for runs. The pacers have been thrashed for runs even in matches were India won like the second Twenty 20 encounter which India won. It is high time that skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni conveys a clear message to the bowlers that they cannot take their places for granted and they cannot expect batsmen to bail them out every single match.
Everytime a bowler goes for runs there is sympathy coming from the media putting the blame entirely on the pitch. The simple line of thinking is however bad the pitch is for bowling and however bad the bowler bowls, a bowler needs only one delivery to pick up a wicket and he has a possible 60 deliveries to pick a wicket. If a bowler is not capable of picking a wicket or two in his spell then is unfit to be called a bowler. India almost lost the match with Zaheer Khan going for 88 runs in 10 overs without picking up a wicket while Nehra performed just a shade better picking up a wicket in 10 overs conceeding 81 runs.
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