NEW YORK: A quaint, little community park tucked away in one corner of a posh Long Island locality isn’t quite the venue that you associate with an Indian practice session, that too ahead of a World Cup opener.
But it’s a changing cricket world and India are the brand ambassadors of a movement which aims to take the sport beyond the noise and bustle of South Asia. Close to Eisenhower Park, in a newly-built, born out of scratch Nassau County Ground, Rohit Sharma‘s boys start their journey in the T20 World Cup against a team that they are supposed to blow away in a jiffy.
Ireland, ideally, shouldn’t pose a serious threat to the Indian juggernaut. But there’s an air of unpredictability about the venue, and more importantly the pitch in play, ahead of the day-match, a rarity in T20s. All of India’s games are at 10:30 am local-time starts, which allows the Indian audience back home to latch on to some 8 pm cricket entertainment at the end of day’s work or the roller-coaster of Lok Sabha results.
But morning starts with white-ball has its pitfalls – the ball tends to do a lot more than normal. On Monday, Sri Lanka managed only 77 against South Africa on a drop-in pitch at the same venue and they made it extremely tough for the Proteas to go past that score. “Had we got 120, it could have been a different game,” Sri Lankan captain Wanindu Hasaranga said, which may not be music to the ears of any team which will be playing here.
The worrying bit about the pitch is the up-and-down nature of it, which makes it incredibly difficult for stroke-play that we are used to on a daily basis. Ire land aren’t full of stars who can scare India, but on a pitch where it can be a bit of a lottery, you can never be sure. From an Indian perspective, there is no scope of a let’s-take-it-easy approach, because any adverse result can make it a do-or-die situation for them in the game against Pakistan, something that India would be desperate to avoid.
Interestingly, it was 17 years ago in an ODI World Cup in West Indies, where India’s outgoing coach Rahul Dravid was the captain, India lost to Bangladesh in the opener and consequently crashed out before the Super-8 stage.
The Indian batting legend surely wouldn’t want a repeat of that trauma on his coaching farewell and that’s why he insists on “adaptability” before the ball rolls.
“All venues will not be the same. It can always happen that we will have pitches where 140 will be enough. The challenge is to adapt and play accordingly,” Dravid said on Monday ahead of a practice session.
Captain Rohit Sharma added to that on Tuesday when he said “it is about dealing with the unknown”. “Everything is unknown, the venue, the pitch, the opposition. But we have the experience,” Rohit said, his usual nonchalance written all over.
If all goes to plan, Virat Kohli and Rohit should open the batting, leaving the middle-order duties to Suryakumar Yadav, Shivam Dube, Rishabh Pant, Hardik Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel.
The three allrounders Pandya, Jadeja and Axar should give the team the flexibility in the bowling line-up, whereby they can play six bowlers –the other three being Jasprit Bumrah, Arshdeep Singh and Kuldeep Yadav.
Left-arm pace Arshdeep bowled quite splendidly in the practice match that India played against Bangladesh on Saturday, where he moved the ball around in the first few overs, making life difficult for the Bangla batters. Mohammed Siraj, though, isn’t far behind, especially with the pitch affording variable bounce, and it could be a coin-toss between the two.
“We have some plans but we’re not divulging anything for now. It’s the start of a journey and we don’t want to look too far ahead,” Rohit said.
We don’t mind that one bit, as long as India are there in Barbados 25 days from now.
