The fast track to No 1 in cricket

India's thumping win over England in the first ODI, with none of the fab four in the team, again underlines the fact that the emerging talent in India has the potential to take it to number one in all forms of the game.

England is no push-over, considering it beat the number two side South Africa 4-0 before coming to India. The triumph in the tri-series Down Under, the conquering of Mendis in Lanka, and the awesome depth of talent on display Friday clearly show the ODI and T20 teams led by MS Dhoni are on a rapid trajectory to the top.

The same cannot be said of the Test team, despite its comprehensive victory over the number one side Australia in the series just concluded. It has to be remembered that it was only an injury to Anil Kumble that enabled the inclusion of Amit Mishra, whose five-wicket haul on debut in the first innings at Mohali helped India surge ahead of Australia in the series.

Apart from Kumble's bowling and captaincy, there were other glaring weaknesses in the Test team. It's easy to brush these weaknesses under the carpet when a team beats the world champions as thoroughly as India did. But that is precisely what can prevent India's climb to the No.1 spot in Test cricket. Let's take them one by one.

MUDDLE ORDER
The middle order remained unreliable during the India-Australia series, although obviously not to the extent it failed in Sri Lanka. The pitches were easier, and the Aussies did not pick a quality spinner until the last Test.

And yet, India was on the verge of losing the first Test in Bangalore until an improbable partnership between the bowlers Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan came to the rescue.

Then at Mohali on the first day, three quick wickets in the second session had India floundering until Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni took them to an imposing total. In Delhi, on a sleeping beauty of a pitch, India won the toss and almost squandered the advantage by losing two wickets in the first hour.

Finally, in Nagpur, at 166-6 in the second innings India was staring down the barrel until Dhoni and Bhajji took them to safety thanks to Ricky Ponting's decision not to use Shane Watson after tea in order to improve the over-rate and avoid a ban.

In each of these cases, the collapse was triggered by the failure of the one-down batsman. Dravid's awful form meant that India invariably lost two or three quick wickets even after the openers had got them off to good starts against the new ball. Dravid has averaged less than 30 in the last four series: that's 14 Tests.

He had his chance to announce his retirement along with Ganguly with whom he had started his career at Lord's. Now, in all fairness, he should be dropped because over the past year or two Ganguly's performance had in fact been better than Dravid's.

In any case, with the available talent - Rohit Sharma, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Badrinath, Robin Uthappa, Murali Vijay - there is no reason to continue to wait and hope that Dravid comes out of his slump. He should be asked to try and do that in domestic cricket.

SLIPSHOD CATCHING
The five dropped catches on the fourth day in Delhi probably squandered an opportunity for India to win that Test too. The same thing happened on the last day of the Nagpur Test.

That India still managed to pull off a victory was only because the Australians had nothing to lose and were going for their shots to try and square the series instead of
playing for a draw.

Two of India's best catchers over the years, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, were among the worst offenders as they let catch after catch slip through their fingers in the slips. And most of them were straightforward ones too.

Remember what Adam Gilchrist said had prompted his retirement? He dropped a catch off Brett Lee's bowling in the infamous Sydney Test against the Indians. It was a routine catch that hit the heel of his hands and popped out because he was slow to get his hands in position. This indicated to him his reflexes had slowed.

That's something India needs to consider because bowlers with Ishant Sharma's potential don't deserve ageing slippers. India should immediately groom younger players for these positions. The trouble is Dhoni will be hard-pressed to find some other position where Laxman can field, given his weak knees.

INSTINCTIVE CAPTAIN
There is no doubt MS Dhoni is already the best captain India has had since the first four years of Ganguly's tenure (until he went into a decline in both batting and leadership). Most people are calling Dhoni an "instinctive captain", but obviously a lot of thought had also gone into the kind of restrictive bowling and fielding that reduced Australia to a crawl on the third day in Nagpur before the wheels came off.

Under Kumble and Dravid, the game more or less followed a set pattern, but Dhoni will get off the beaten track to do whatever it takes to win it seems, and that's great. He's also willing to stick his neck out, as he did in Australia when he insisted on a young team for the one-day series, something that could've backfired if he had lost because then people would've questioned why the experience of Ganguly and Dravid had been ignored.

But in all this euphoria over Dhoni, which is understandable after the largely unimaginative stints of Dravid and Kumble, let's not forget he's still quite inexperienced and has a lot to learn. For example, for three hours on the last day in Nagpur, the match-winner of Mohali, Amit Mishra, did not get a single over to bowl.

Dhoni probably thought a leg-spinner would be canon-fodder for the two left-handers Hayden and Hussey who were looking to score quickly. He forgot the rough outside the left-hander's off-stump that Mishra eventually exploited to take Hussey's wicket and break the threatening partnership when he finally got a chance to bowl an hour after lunch.

Mishra was similarly underbowled in the second innings of the Mohali Test despite taking five wickets in the first innings. If Dhoni takes a spinner out of the attack every time he starts going for a few runs, Mishra will end up bowling flat like Harbhajan Singh. India needs Mishra to remain the attacking bowler he is, and not turn defensive in the way Harbhajan has become.

REACTIVE SELECTION
The two most important factors in India's win over Australia in the Test series were the replacement of Anil Kumble, the leg-spinner, with Amit Mishra in Mohali, and the replacement of Anil Kumble, the captain, with MS Dhoni in Mohali and Nagpur.

Both these replacements were fortuitous events brought about by injuries, rather than proactive moves by the selectors. And that's a worry, because it's quite conceivable that India might have missed the chance of such an epochal victory if Kumble had not been injured.

Now again, the selectors will have an opportunity to be proactive when they pick the team for the Tests against England: Dravid's prolonged period of poor batting coupled with the form of upcoming batsmen calls for putting the team's interests above those of an individual, however great may have been his contributions in the past.

Already the selectors have missed an opportunity to be proactive by not including Amit Mishra in the one-day squad. If he could bamboozle the Aussies, do you think the likes of Flintoff would pick his googlies?

c_sumit@dnaindia.net