Lack of purpose from Jadhav and, to an extent, Dhoni late in chase against England left a lot to be desired
If there's one trait about Rafael Nadal that stands out, it is his mindset of not throwing in the towel without summoning the last drop from his ocean-size fight tank. Game after game, set after set, match after match he gives it his all, even on days he realises are not his. It's what makes him a champion tennis player.
India are a champion cricket team, and they are proving that in this World Cup so far. However, the last five overs of their run chase against England on Sunday showed that maybe the ever-rising outfit could do better during the rare times it is going down.
When Hardik Pandya was dismissed after a 33-ball 45 that kept his team on track to trace down England's 337/7, India needed 71 off 31 balls.
Uphill sure, but by no means unconquerable.
What followed was what Nasser Hussain termed "baffling" and left his co-commentator Sourav Ganguly with "no explanation".
Out of the 31 balls that MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav faced after Pandya's departure, 13 were nudged around with the sole purpose of collecting a single. These do not include mistimed shots with the purpose of hitting the ball, strikes fielded by the boundary riders or balls that left the batsmen beaten.
These were deliveries in which neither Dhoni nor Jadhav showed any intent of trying to cross the finish line. The duo scored 39 runs in those 31 balls that included just two fours and the innings' first maximum in the last over.
The issue wasn't that Virat Kohli and his troops lost the match by 31 runs on a pitch that got slower when India batted; the issue wasn't that India's middle-order didn't stand up to some disciplined English bowling and fielding.
The issue was that during the course of those last five overs, India thought it was best to shut shop rather than keep knocking on the door despite five wickets in the shed; the issue was the lack of intent, a word captain Kohli flaunts on his chest with capital letters and wants his team to follow suit.
The slow nature of the pitch can explain the defeat, not the desire.
Dhoni has received maximum stick for it from various quarters. However, to be fair to him, the former India captain was the more enterprising of the two in his unbeaten 42 despite suffering a bloodied knock on his right thumb.
He dished out a few pull shots with the England bowlers aiming for his armpit, but the slow nature of the deck meant Dhoni just wasn't able to get the required power behind it to find the fence.
It is Jadhav whose 13-ball 12* left a lot to be desired, with the 34-year-old failing to show the skills and, more importantly, the resolve to threaten the target. He seemed all too happy to place the ball, find the gaps and play second fiddle.
It, thus, raises the question that if Jadhav is not going to bowl and is only to be used as a bit of a floater between Nos. 5 and 7, wouldn't Dinesh Karthik be a better option for that? If nothing else, he'll at least show some spark and be funky with his shots when the situation demands, like it did on Sunday.
Apart from the slow pitch, another possible explanation to that approach by Dhoni and Jadhav was Net Run Rate (NRR), which, if anything, only reeks of a more negative mindset.
Teams generally tend to think about NRR when all hopes of a victory are lost. An equation of 71 off 31 balls in the modern-day ODI game is anything but that, especially with two proper batsmen, one of them an experienced finisher, still out in the middle.
Plus, NRR should be a headache only for when things are expected to get tight between teams. With India sitting pretty at second in the points table and with two games still to play, looking at NRR is jumping the gun.
An argument could also be made that India's slow start hampered the chase as much as the finish, with India only managing to score 28/1 in the first 10 overs.
But restrain from Kohli and Rohit Sharma was the need of the hour at that point with England's new ball bowlers finding their zone, especially after the loss of an early wicket. The captain and vice-captain then picked the pace up and laid a foundation for the late flourish that never came.
When Australia played India last month, they were in a similar situation chasing 352/5. The Aussies needed 69 off the last five overs with three wickets in hand, up against Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
The Australian batsmen missed, mistimed, connected, were beaten, were outfoxed. They went down swinging, and were bowled out in the last delivery of the match. Yet, they lost by 36 runs, around the same margin as India.
Perhaps, the champion team could take a leaf out of the defending champions' book in a battle it feels is slipping out of its hand.
N Zone
- 3 No. of boundaries hit by MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav in the last 30 balls (2 fours and 1 six)
- 20 No. of singles taken by MS Dhoni and Kedar Jadhav in the last 30 balls of the run chase
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The issue wasn't that Virat Kohli and his troops lost the match by 31 runs on a pitch that got slower when India batted; the issue wasn't that India's middle-order didn't stand up to some disciplined English bowling and fielding.
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