India set-up a mouth-watering ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 quarter-final clash against Australia after comprehensively beating West Indies by 80 runs in their last league tie at Chennai on Sunday. Former Pakistan skipper Wasim Akram feels that for this big clash in Ahmedabad on March 26, India should play with three specialist spinners to exploit the Australian batsmen's traditional weakness against the turning ball.
"If the wicket in Ahmedabad is a slightly turning track, then MS Dhoni should definitely opt for three spinners since the Aussies don't play spin that well," opined Akram during an exclusive conversation with Mobile ESPN from Colombo on Monday.
Sri Lanka had adopted a similar strategy during their clash against the Kangaroos on a turning track at the Premadasa stadium in Colombo on March 5. However the Lankan spin-trio of Muttiah Muralitharan, Ajantha Mendis and Rangana Herath did not get a chance to showcase their skills as the match got washed out.
However Akram added that in case the pitch at Ahmedabad is a flat one, then the ploy to stack the side with spinners may backfire on India . "Playing so many spinners on a batting track may spell doom for India since the slower bowlers will not get much assistance from the surface," said the ESPN-STAR Sports expert.
India have played with two specialist spinners in four out of the six league games in this tournament. However they haven't played a single match yet with all three spinners (Harbhajan Singh, R Ashwin and Piyush Chawla) in the eleven.
One major worry for Team India , going into the knockout stages, will be the back-to-back batting collapses against South Africa and the West Indies . While they lost nine wickets for only 29 runs against the Proteas in Nagpur , Dhoni and company performed marginally better on Sunday, losing their last seven wickets for the addition of 51 runs.
Akram mentioned that despite this recklessness by the most-famed batting line-up in the world, fans shouldn't be overly concerned.
"Yes, the India batting has collapsed badly twice. But I don't think there is any major reason to worry as these things happen by chance. At the same time, you have to plan your innings and cannot afford to slog every delivery. I am quite sure the experienced Indian middle-order will learn a lot out of their mistakes," concluded Akram. —ESPNstar
No comments:
Post a Comment