The first installment of experimentation is over and going by the results, you have to admit that it has been a successful attempt. The results, however, can be misleading at times.

As part of “Mission 2019 World Cup,” India tried several combinations and tested players at different slots and different situations during their demolition of Sri Lanka in the ODIs. While some were moderately successful, some others were utter flops. It has to be observed that majority of those who were used for testing in this project didn’t pass the scrutiny with KL Rahul leading that pack. Kedar Jadhav, who batted at No 4 (once) and 5 (twice), had one fifty from three innings; Hardik Pandya failed in both innings he got to bat at No 7 and 4. It’s only Manish Pandey who impressed with 50 n.o. and 36 at No 6 and No 4, the two positions he has batted the most in his short international career.

India registered their 5-0 win on the exploits of usual suspects Virat Kohli (330 at an average of 110 runs), Rohit Sharma (302 at 75.50) and Shikhar Dhawan (190 at 63.33) who all batted in their usual positions in the batting order. Only once Kohli walked in at No 5 and he was out for four. MS Dhoni (162) was another success story but given his experience and expertise in the middle and lower-middle order, where he bats matters little. On the other hand, the experimented ones had poor returns. Rahul aggregated 28 runs at 9.33, Jadhav 64 at 21.33 and Pandya 19 at 9.50.

While the wins are there to defend the trials, it is hard to justify that the results were the outcome of those trials. Skipper Kohli, though, insisted that the experiments would continue to provide the team a cloak of unpredictability.

“We spoke about experimenting with a few guys going up and down the order,” he said while talking about shuffles in the batting order. “We have to try a few things. If you go out to play against India you know that there’s going to be one pattern that’s going to be followed. So people can prepare. Once we start playing like this and get more confident with the roles that we’re given then we can be more unpredictable and with the kind of talent that we have in the side, if we can be unpredictable as well then it becomes a lethal combination,” he explained the rationale behind his thinking.

These experiments may have affected the confidence of someone like Rahul who just before he got injured was the team’s first-choice opener in limited-overs cricket. A little less than three months down the line, he finds himself out of the playing XI, wondering when and from where his next chance would pop up.

“It’s important to embrace that change and the guys have done it,” Kohli emphasised. “Some guys will perform and some guys won’t - that goes in limited-overs cricket and it’s not an alarming thing for us, we’ll keep doing these things in the future as well before we reach the World Cup.”

The spinners were handled with a little more care. In the absence of R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, India tried left-arm spinner Axar Patel and wrist spin duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav and all three of them got decent opportunities to present their cases. Axar and Chahal got four matches each and both bowled their full quota of 40 overs while Kuldeep, who played the last two games, sent down almost 19 overs. Kohli said the team’s intent was to create an X factor in the bowling as well.

“These guys were brilliant, all three of them,” he gushed. “You might see changes in the bowling attack every now and then but these guys have grabbed the opportunity really well. It’s going to be a challenge among all the bowlers and the spinners that are going to be in the part of the bigger group to make it to the 2019 World Cup. We want to have an X factor, if possible, with the bowling attack as well,” he offered.

Kohli has walked the talk, so to say, in this series but the real challenge is to do the same when Australia come home for the five-match ODI series. They are not going to be pushovers like Lanka, even if the conditions are Indian.

DH News Service

WC experiment yields mixed results for India