Put on your thinking cap, Dhoni

After the tied game with England, Dhoni chided his bowlers for failing to defend a big total like 338. After the loss to South Africa, he slammed his batsmen for playing to the gallery as they collapsed from 267 for one to 296 all out. As for the fielders, he gave up on them even before the World Cup.

You would think the poor Indian captain was trying to conjure up an improbable World Cup triumph out of a bunch of no-hopers. In reality, however, the Indian batting line-up still looks the most formidable of the lot in this World Cup, their bowling resources are potent enough for these conditions, and even if two or three fielders have to be hidden, that has not prevented India from rising to No 2 in the ODI rankings over the past couple of years.

The core of the problem lies elsewhere, and if the Indian captain has used his week off to figure that out, it wouldn’t surprise me to see India win the next four games and the Cup. On the other hand, if the same muddled thinking persists, they would again squander a great chance of winning a World Cup on the subcontinent, just like in 1987 and 1996.

Don’t let off the pressure
Dhoni blasted his batsmen for going for big shots in the match against South Africa, but think about this for a moment — if he wanted them to play normal cricket, why would he promote our hardest hitter Yusuf Pathan to No 4?

I’ll tell you why — a batting powerplay was on and the Indians thought they needed 350-plus because 338 proved too little against England.

That two set batsmen holed out after consuming all the middle overs, that the rest had to come out and hit out, and that Dale Steyn started reversing the ball meant everything went horribly wrong. We’ve seen this happen before.

Harder to understand though was why India did not take the batting powerplay earlier, why great players of spin like Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir were content to chug along at four runs an over against the likes of Johan Botha when we had nine wickets in hand, why Graeme Smith was allowed to hold Steyn back for the end.

In other words, why did India allow SA back into the game instead of keeping up the pressure? Dhoni should also ask himself why in an earlier match he let Strauss and Bell pile up a 170-run partnership mostly in singles and twos in a well-spread field.

Why are our spinners bowling to such defensive fields instead of piling on the pressure?

Pick the right team
The Indian captain was again barking up the wrong tree when he lamented giving the last over to Ashish Nehra, and not Harbhajan Singh.

Getting 13 off the last over was not that big a deal on such a track and, in fact, it can be easier to tonk a spinner in these circumstances. Where we went wrong was in picking Nehra in place of the second specialist spinner.

It’s simple, really. Our seamers, except for Zaheer Khan, are not as good as those from South Africa or Australia, on these flat tracks. So, if we have an attack based on medium-pace in these conditions, it’s going to be cannon fodder.

Dhoni realised as much after the first game, but after giving leg-spinner Piyush Chawla three games, he went back to square one. It’s true that Chawla lacked confidence and control, bowling too many loose balls and panicking in a crunch, but he was still more of a threat than Nehra. In any case, if Chawla was under-prepared, Dhoni should have turned to his IPL teammate R Ashwin, who can also be called upon to open the bowling.

He was hoping part-timer Yuvraj Singh would do the trick again, but you do need a specialist to get wickets against the more established teams. Whatever Yuvraj provides is a bonus.

Dhoni and Kirsten just don’t appear to be thinking things through. If they can do that, they certainly have a team that can win the WC.