Why the Indian ODI team needs to experiment

The Indian team have had a fabulous year in ODIs since the beginning of the year. Virat Kohli’s team has won 17 out of their last 23 ODI games and have the second-best win-loss ratio for the year, behind only England.

But while the record has been brilliant, the team has failed to build the bench strength in the batting department during that time.

The year for India began with a three-match ODI series against England. The series saw the comeback of Yuvraj Singh, who had not played an ODI for India for a while. He scored a century in that series but, apart from a 50 in the game against Pakistan, he struggled to contribute consistently.

The team also failed to integrate young players into the squad. Rishabh Pant, who was part of the Indian squad to the West Indies, ended up not getting a single game and Lokesh Rahul, who was the third-choice opener for India in the ODI format, finds himself out of favour.

Virat Kohli, who has been excellent in handling the bowling resources at his disposal, has not been very efficient in doing so in the batting department. The team has played safe throughout the year and the captain hasn’t been too keen to experiment in the batting department. The Indian team haven’t tried out any young player except for Lokesh Rahul and Manish Pandey over the last year or so, which is baffling.

(Image: AP Photo/Rui Vieira)

The recently concluded Australian ODI series also did not see much experimentation in terms of the batting. The bowling attack was rotated for one game, but the batting line-up remained the same. The world cup is just under two years from now and the Indian team needs to try out new combinations to make sure they pick the right squad for the tournament.

In recent times players like Shreyas Iyer, Vijay Shankar, Karun Nair, Deepak Hooda and Sanju Samson have impressed on their A tours, and these players deserve a chance to showcase their talent at the international level. The way the Indian team has handled Lokesh Rahul, who was an integral part of the Indian team in all three formats, has been poor as well. Rahul, who was the first-choice backup to Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma, now finds himself out of favour in the shorter formats.

Even though the team has had a great year, there does not seem to be any planning keeping the future in mind. The Indian team still does not have a proper back-up for MS Dhoni in the ODI squad. Dinesh Karthik has been picked for few games but, again, I don’t think he is the long-term solution.

The team will be playing more ODI games later this year and I hope that the selectors pick some young players in the squad. This will give the team chance to rest their Test players to try out some young batsmen so that they can get some international games under their belt. They would need to gather as much experience as they can get to be prepared if they find themselves in the world cup squad.