The Indian cricket team’s batting order experiment in the first ODI against West Indies didn’t reap the desired rewards, with the team losing 5 wickets while chasing a paltry total of 115 runs. The likes of Ishan Kishan, Shubman Gill, Hardik Pandya, Suryakumar Yadav and Shardul Thakur all got to bat before skipper Rohit Sharma while Virat Kohli didn’t even get an outing. Former India cricketer Aakash Chopra, baffled by the experiment, said the fact that Ishan opened and scored a fifty had little meaning for him.
“There was a big question in batting that whether Sanju Samson or Ishan Kishan will play. Ishan Kishan opening and scoring a fifty has not told me anything. I already knew that Ishan Kishan is a good player.”
“Ishan Kishan was slotted to bat at No. 4, from which you could understand that this team is looking at him as the second wicketkeeper who will bat in the middle order – makes a lot of sense. However, you got him to open, and he scored a fifty. He is going to do that. He has scored a double hundred in ODIs,” said Chopra in a video on his YouTube channel.
Suryakumar Yadav was expected to grab his place in the ODI team by both hands. Coming out to bat at No. 3 spot, Surya only scored 19 runs, much to the disappointment of the Indian camp and Chopra.
“Then came Suryakumar Yadav – that’s another question. This was an opportunity for him. I had kept Suryakumar Yadav in my World Cup team but for that, he will have to score runs.
“He was sent to bat at No. 3 so that he goes and collects runs, and his name continues to remain in the audition,” he said.
Highlighting certain flaws in Surya’s batting, Chopra gave a detailed analysis.
“He was batting decently, but the way he got out – he first hit a sweep which went for a four, another sweep and got beaten, another sweep and a leg-before appeal, and then another sweep and got out leg-before. These were four consecutive balls and not four separate events,” he highlighted.
Suryakumar, one of the finest T20 batters in the world, would need to deliver a better show in the following matches if he is to remain in contention for a spot in India’s ODI World Cup squad.
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