For a change

Hats off to the black caps, especially Daryl Mitchell and Will Young, who milked our bowlers to stitch a mammoth match- winning partnership to pip our men in blue, in the second ODI to square the three match series to level one all.

Ironically, our bowlers, who used to be the match winners, proved to be the weak link at Rajkot. None of them were able to dominate and stop the marauding Mitchell. Unfortunately, for a change, both our stalwarts — Rohit Sharma & Virat Kohli – failed to take off. But, as usual KL Rahul came to our rescue and bailed out our team, in company with our tail, to post a fighting target, which our bowlers failed to defend.

It was a real surprise to see the selection policy of our captain/coach. They preferred to bench one of our frontline pace bowlers, Arshdeep Singh, instead of the much hyped Harshit Rana, who never shines, either with the bat or with the ball. Basically, he is in the team as a front line bowler. Similar is the case with spinner Ravindra Jadeja, whose bowling is at his lowest ebb.

Shivam Dube is a better bowler-batsman than Rana. Incidentally, the most glaring omission is the non-inclusion of Mohd. Shami, especially when Bumrah has been rested.

Vinay Mahadevan
Al Nahda 1, Dubai