World Cup 2015: Scaling a peak

Even as Umesh Yadav was leaking runs in his first two overs against Ireland, MS Dhoni had seen that the ball was holding up a touch and that it would be a good track for the spinners. He took Yadav off the attack but didn’t bring on the spinners; he went for more pace. Later, he said that if this wasn’t a game against Ireland, and was an important encounter like knockouts, he would have gone for spin at that juncture but that he wanted to give his pacers a go to see how they cope and also as something to learn from.

Even at the toss he had said that this was the slowest track in New Zealand and “spinners gets a bit of assistance here”. By the time spin was introduced in form of Ravindra Jadeja and R Ashwin from the 10th over onwards, Ireland were 57 for 0 and looking good. But the spinners struck immediately, dragged back the run-rate and soon, had India on the top. From there the game meandered on towards an unsurprising end. That it was unsurprising has been the real surprise of this World Cup. The Indian bowlers have found ways to stop the batsmen, and more importantly, managed to take wickets. This was the fifth time in as many games that India have bowled the opposition out.

It’s been a “remarkable” transformation to use the words of Dhoni. But what did it? Was it implementing the advice from the think-tank better, the new bowling coach in Bharat Arun, emotional words from the captain himself or did they just get tired of getting hit?! “Probably a mixture of everything,” Dhoni smiled. “Probably they got tired of getting hit. They would’ve seen other bowlers too. We’ve been here for four months — the bowling performances in the Tests were both good and bad. Maybe for a long time we couldn’t manage a good performance. But the learning —especially after the tri-series, we looked at other bowlers, even during the England series we looked at other bowlers. When bowlers honestly tried and said, ‘Let’s do it,’ and it worked in their favour, that’s something that triggered a spark. Hopefully this learning will remain in their mind always.”

That taste of success has got the pace bowlers going and it did on Tuesday as well. They came back with pretty good second and third spells after Ashwin and Suresh Raina did the damage. Ashwin got it to flight and loop and Raina varied his pace smartly and it was enough to force mistakes from Ireland.

Paul Stirling was lured by Ashwin’s flight and length into an injudicious chip that carried straight to long-off and Ed Joyce should have done better but he tried to cut a ball that wasn’t short enough and had the pace off the track to beat his shot. Ashwin also got the ball to bounce, a loopy sort of bounce on this track, and it had Andy Balbirnie to top edge his sweep.

Bowling to a field

The seamers came back strongly after those wickets by the tweakers. Mohammed Shami got the ball to straighten from a length around the off stump and one such delivery got Kevin O Brien nicking through to Dhoni. Shami also bowled to his captain’s field settings. Often in the recent past, he and Umesh Yadav have been guilty of creating headaches for the captain by straying on either side of the wicket, but both have been pretty disciplined on that front.

Sample of that came in the dismissal of Ireland’s top score Niall O’Brien. With a strong off-side field, Shami kept pinging the off-stump line and in an attempt to score on the leg side, Niall tried to shuffle across and create something out of nothing but could only miscue a catch. With his fall, Ireland slipped to 226 for 7 and the tail played cautiously, but smartly, to set a target of 260.

India didn’t start the chase too well – Shikar Dhawan was dropped on 5 and 10. The first chance was relatively easier, a return catch to John Mooney who couldn’t react quickly to the ball hit at his body. The second was lot tougher, a slice to point had William Porterfield diving to his left but the ball didn’t stick.

And from then on it was a one-way street. Rohit Sharma helped himself to another fifty against a soft attack and Dhawan started to strike the ball cleanly enroute his second hundred of the tournament. It was Ajinkya Rahane, though, who really timed the ball superbly and showed lots of class in a brief innings of 33 as he and Virat Kohli finished off the job without much fuss. But it was the bowlers who set up this victory.

India have now taken 50 wickets in five games. Who would have bet on it at the start of the tournament?

Source:: Indian Express