India’s bench strength will be an advantage as they work out their best combination for the ICC Cricket World Cup next year, said Sanjay Bangar.
After the final one-day international against England, India will still have 21 one-day games before the start of 2019’s marquee tournament.
“We are looking at the games remaining, [in terms of] settling the middle-order slots,” said Bangar, India’s batting coach, on the eve of the 17 July decider at Headingley.
“We will see which players are available, the fitness of the players. A lot of spots are open. The good thing is the bench strength we have in Ambati Rayudu or Manish Pandey or Ajinkya Rahane.
Pushing Virat Kohli down to No.4 and promoting KL Rahul in the recent Twenty20 International series worked for India. However, Bangar said India would not experiment with their captain’s batting position in the ODI format, “looking at the performances that Virat has got at No.3, especially in the last series when he scored three hundreds against South Africa in five games”.
India’s top batsmen have done well in recent times, while the middle and lower order have been up and down. Bangar put this down to fewer opportunities for the middle order, and people not playing all formats of the game taking a little time to find their feet.
It’s not easy, he pointed out, “doing the kind of things that are expected of you, especially in this format. So the continuity factor also plays a part”.
MS Dhoni was the middle-order batsman coming in for criticism after the second match. The former India captain could only add 37 in 59 balls, and his poor rate of scoring was a point of contention.
Kohli backed Dhoni in the post-match presentation, saying, “We totally believe in him and in the abilities of all the other players.” Bangar too explained why Dhoni couldn’t go for his shots at Lord’s.
“When the team loses four wickets, the lower order – at least with the combination we are playing at the moment – we do not really have the depth at Nos. 8, 9, 10, wherein the batsmen at Nos. 6 or 7 could play with that sort of a freedom. We kept on losing the wickets and the set batsmen could not really exploit the situation.
“Dhoni was just hoping that somebody would stick with him. There was a chance when he and Suresh Raina were batting together. We were just hoping they could bat through till the 40th over and they could take the bowlers on.
