While reading the scoreboard during the break between innings yesterday, one aspect of our effort in the field had struck me; Derek Pringle underlines it here in his piece in the Telegraph:
Despite the lack of boundaries, Cook and Bell gelled well in their 178-run partnership. One of their tactics was to run India ragged in the field. With the visitors containing three players older than 30 and two pace bowlers inclined to move like 40-year-olds, the pair pinched at least 25-30 runs a more athletic side would have prevented.
Their other ploy was to ensure that India's small army of part-time bowlers, Sachin Tedulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh, were treated like the lower ranks rather than top brass. With barely a slog played they ensured the trio's 13 overs cost 79 runs, expensive given their use in the middle part of the innings.
It was not the only shortcoming among India's bowlers. Without swing, Zaheer, Ajit Agarkar and Rudra Pratap Singh present a fairly tame bowling force, one made weaker by geriatric fielding. Dravid rang the changes, but they could not stem the heavy toll extracted by Bell's bat and Cook's clips and cuts.
It is early days yet and you don't want to go making your mind up after one game, but I suspect this policy of going in with just four bowlers is going to cost the team dear, especially in the shorter format where the Kookaburra will provide less swing than the Duke's did in the Tests, and where attacking fields cannot be maintained for too long, and the lead bowlers are themselves struggling to switch from their attacking roles of the Test series, to the containing function they must for the most part perform in the ODIs.
That problem is further underlined in this Richard Hobson piece in the Times:
The turning point came in the precise middle overs when Dravid decided to employ weaker bowlers in tandem. Piyush Chawla, 18, found little turn for either his leg break or googly, while the combination of Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh conceded more than a run a ball without threatening.
By the time that Dravid recalled Zaheer, his best bowler, for the 35th over, both Cook and Bell were seeing the ball clearly enough to keep going undaunted. They were more than happy to see Dravid posting five men on the boundary because it allowed them to pierce the wider gaps among the infield and bump up the run-rate with little risk.
That comment exposes another key problem with the over-use of part-timers: employing them in the middle overs (which is the only place you can use them) works only if the opening overs have gone your way, the lead bowlers have gotten you wickets and kept the run rate in check. Absent that, you end up having to throw part-timers at well-set batsmen; add to it a fielding unit that converts ones into twos as regularly as, when they bat, they convert threes into ones, and your problems reach overwhelming proportions.
Also see: Bengal Tiger roaring again
India in the United Kingdom 2007
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