AHMEDABAD: Two of India's assistant coaches -- Ryan ten Doeschate and Sitanshu Kotak -- were left to firefight in the immediate aftermath of their big defeat to South Africa on Sunday night.
While both of them said they were disappointed -- the batting coach actually said the target of 188 could have been chased down on the surface -- they were clearly let down by some of the plans. The Dutchman, known for giving his opinion and being frank in his assessments, once again reminded the batters that there are multiple ways to go about a chase.
"I think, again, it needs a little bit of assessment and application and it's a fine line between putting the reins and stopping guys from playing the way they play but I think it's come to the point now where the intervention of saying 'guys, there's different ways to go about a chase, even setting a score. And like I say, we've spoken about it a lot, but we haven't implemented it across the board and I think that's cost us in some of the performances with the bat so far."
It has been fairly clear for some time on tracks prepared for the World Cup, batting wouldn't be like turning up for bilaterals. Ten Doeschate had mentioned it previously and he was at pains to say the same thing. "Look, I've sort of banged the drum about it, but I think the biggest challenge to us is finding a way to play on wickets that are not typical to what we're playing on," he said when asked about three of the problem areas the team would be focusing on between Monday and the game against Zimbabwe on Thursday.
He was also critical of Suryakumar Yadav's captaincy in the field. "... tonight, to have that strangle on South Africa, 30 for three, wherever they were [3/20 after four overs], and then to sort of adopt a defensive bowling strategy, again, I thought that was a missed trick, where you again sum up the conditions, and you say, look, if you bang length on this pitch, it's pretty hard to score.
One big area of focus would be on whether they 'stick or twist' with the batters up top, a phrase Ten Doeschate used when asked teams bowling off-spin in the powerplay to target the left-handers. "In the five outings we've had now, four teams have opened with part-time off spin and it's got a wicket every time apart from the USA game where we lost Abhi (Abhishek Sharma) without score in any case. So, to start every inning zero for one, I think it's literally been zero or a couple of runs for one every time is obviously putting pressure on the link players. Tilak (Varma) and SKY, their role is to link up with the guys at the back end and it hasn't gone that way.
"Look, there's a lot of inexperience in the team and you want a settled team. These guys have done it all before. They're all fantastic players. So, do you stick or twist? You stick with the guys who we feel have performed really well over the last 18 months and who are maybe shy of a few runs now? Or do we twist and bring Sanju, who's also a fantastic player and obviously helps tactically with having a right hander at the top of the order and I'm sure that'll be a talking point over the next few days going into these two very important games."
With an NRR of -3.8, the hosts not only have to win both games but they have to target big wins in those games to give themselves the best chance of getting to the semis. Otherwise, it could well be curtains.
