ICC Cricket world cup 2019 is around the corner. And the Indian Premier League is a nice appetizer for what promises to be an amazing experience. Cricket fans are seeing the performances of their favourite stars in the IPL as they anticipate their performances at the world stage. The roster for the upcoming world cup is scheduled to be announced around the end of April. Most of the matches of the IPL will have been played by then which leads to speculations that the roster for the world cup will be based on the players’ performances in the IPL. Kohli is probably going to lead the Indian cricket team for this event.
Virat Kohli debuted back in 2008 and was appointed as the vice-captain of the Indian cricket team by 2012. He took over as captain in 2017 and has been leading the Indian cricket team ever since. He has proved to be a fantastic captain and has done a wonderful job in leading the Indian cricket team across international fields.
Cricket fans eagerly hope that he will be the third Indian cricket captain to lead a team into winning the cricket world cup. There are a lot of expectations about the cricket team in this world cup as well as a pressing amount of anxiety. Here are some speculations about the Indian cricket team led by Virat Kohli.
Strength : Fearless Captain and Experienced Captain Duo
Virat Kohli is the test captain for the Indian cricket team since 2014 and is the ODI captain for the Indian cricket team since 2017. Since his start as the captain of the Indian cricket team, he has shown a fearless yet steady captaincy, where he is willing to give younger and less experienced players a chance.
Adding to the help of former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the dazzling captain who lead the Indian cricket team into multiple victories over the last decade, the Indian cricket team knows what it is doing on the field.
Strength : Amazing Bowling Line-up
The Indian cricket team had a weaker bowling line-up compared to its batting line-up back in the 2000s. But now Indian cricket team has an abundance of both pace and spin bowlers in the last few years. Now the BCCI has the trouble of selecting the best among all the available bowlers. With top wicket-takers and pace controllers available, Indian bowlers are capable of giving opposing batsmen a hard time.
Strength : Good Batting Line-up
The batting line up of the Indian cricket team is very stable and capable. There are stable openers like Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma, and formidable batsmen after them like Hardik Pandya, MS Dhoni and the skipper Virat Kohli himself.
Adding to this the inactive batsmen who are slowly making themselves known in the ongoing IPL like KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant and Suresh Raina, there is an abundance of talent for the batting line-up of the Indian cricket team.
Strength : Mix of Youth and Experience
Indian cricket team maintains a balance of experienced, long time players and young talent. For example, in the current roster experienced players like Rohit Sharma and MS Dhoni are there to hold down the fort, while new players like Rishabh Pant and Vijay Shankar also get to play.
Weakness : Inconsistent Team Selection
The overabundance of talent seems like a good thing, which it is. But it also comes with its own problem like trying to fill 15 members among more than 25 qualified cricketers is always a difficult problem. So, to give all the qualified players a chance, the team selections have been quite erratic while team shuffling has become frequent.
This frequent change of members has its fair share of the problems, as it can impact the batting orders and familiarity between players. This has caused no small headaches for skipper Virat.
Weakness : Out of form Batsmen and Bowlers
Though the IPL serves as an amazing practice round for cricketers preparing for international matches and the world cup, the truth is that matches played in India can be totally different from the matches overseas, due to the change in pitch, climate, and other conditions.
So, the players who show amazing performances in the IPL may not necessarily perform the same overseas. Hence batsmen and bowlers who did not have the opportunity to much play any international matches in recent years are at a severe disadvantage. There are many batsmen and bowlers like Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina and Ishant Sharma who are quite out of form.
Weakness : Batting Order Weakness in the Middle Order due to Constant Changes
With the abundance of batting talent, the order of appearance on the field while batting has been constantly changing. While the openers remain the same, and the one-down is usually the skipper himself, the choice of the batsmen after that is quite problematic.
With choices like MS Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, and Kedar Jadhav, the batting order is constantly being changed to identify the best order. The ideal order is still not completely clear, and thus the middle order still remains a weakness in the batting order of the Indian cricket team.
Weakness : Spinners inexperienced in Foreign Pitches
The duo of Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have shown amazing performances in the recent years and have been sometimes portrayed as the next star spinner duo after Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja. But while they have shown amazing performance in domestic matches and the IPL, they are less overwhelming in international matches. They have lesser experience in foreign pitches. While it is not certain, the possible return of spinners Ashwin and Jadeja may replace these younger spinners to make up for their faults.
These strengths and weaknesses are identifiable not just by cricket fans, but also by the captain of the Indian cricket team, Virat Kohli. But it is not simple to fix these problems just because it is identified. The BCCI works to the best of their abilities to pump out a superior roster that can shine on the international field. In spite of all the problems with the Indian cricket team, it is still one of the top cricket teams in the world.
Also Check:
