Batsmen do not quake in their cricket boots when Ravi Rampaul or Darren Sammy are bowling with the new ball. It appears batting at the Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad these days is more difficult when spinners are bowling. It was not always like this. It is also a measure of the decline of West Indies that the pitches have crumbled into slow turners.

Making the most of the opportunity are a young Indian side that may be struggling to win with élan like the main Team India that had a certain Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag opening the ODI innings in the World Cup. Shikar Dhawan and Parthiv Patel cannot even be termed the poor man’s Sachin-Sehwag and yet they do their job, which is what the new Indian cricket professionalism is all about.
It is important that Team India are still winning, getting their batting together in time to put away a T20 and an ODI win in the course of three days in Trinidad, a venue with some unpleasant recent memories as in the disastrous World Cup of 2007. The current team may be way short on batting class but the wannabes are coping with the pressures well enough to keep the victory sequence going.
‘Bench strength’ is a loose sporting term that was thought of as pretentious in cricket in which a team is always supposed to put the best XI possible on the field save when there is a ‘horses for courses’ theory at play. What Team India need today is a huge amount of bench strength because injuries and the cramped schedule are taking their toll.
Step in Rohit Sharma to take care of the batting blues and India can breathe a little easy. There is little doubt he is the classiest of the lot outside the top seven of the batting lineup. To have someone around like Yusuf Pathan, who did not figure in the World Cup final, can’t be a bad thing but in Rohit’s case we are talking of a batsman who is capable of stepping up into the top seven in any format, including Tests.
Rohit was batting in T20 mode when he walked into a typical mini crisis that nervous batsmen playing for their international career are likely to create. While everyone would like to believe his attitude was his letdown, the batsman himself thinks otherwise. Truth is he is just emerging from his shell and that is a big positive.
Virat Kohli may be far more street smart, which is why he climbed the pecking order above Rohit. But would anyone complain if the classy Mumbai batsman regains his rightful place as a regular? It is comforting to know there is huge talent beyond the Galacticos of Indian batting.
It was always important that someone like Rohit was not wasted from sheer lack of opportunity.
Young batsmen do get confused when their roles are not clearly defined. Rohit was an early entrant into the Team India scheme of things but was not given sustained chances to establish himself after a flashy start in T20 in 2007 and ODIs in 2008.
Although it is said that the best way to train a young player mentally is to drop him from the squad, too much of shunting in and out can leave uncertainty in the mind.
Already there is healthy competition for places in the T20 and ODI teams. There will also be Test places up for grabs after the tour of Australia this Indian winter after which legends like Rahul Dravid and V.V.S. Laxman are likely to put up their feet.
Winning in the West Indies is an important step for the young Indian squad even if the opponents are only a pale imitation of the champions of yore.