Karthik again fails to impress on the third spot

Aug 30: India after winning toss elected to bat first against England in the fourth ODI of the NATWEST series at Old Trafford. But Indian openers again fail to impress as Ganguly was the first man to go scoring only 9 runs while he mistimed a ball of James Anderson. However, again the controversial first down spot again proves unfortunate for India in its repeated experimentation putting Dinesh Karthik on number three.

Karthik again fails to deliver in the number three and got out while aging a ball that went straight to the keeper. He only scored 4 runs facing 22 balls. It is not understandable why Indian management is doing the same mistake when there are experienced batsmen like Captain Rahul Dravid and MS Dhoni who has good track record on the very spot.

England bowlers especially James Anderson and Stuart Broad with their consistence line and length don’t give much width to Indian batsmen and as a result India lost its first three wickets just scoring 32 runs. Sachin Tendulkar was still at the crease when Rahul Dravid got out by Andrew Flintoff while edging an in-swing delivery and wicketkeeper Matthew Prior did not make any mistake behind the stump.

The manner the first three wickets fell certainly force the Indian management to think about the exact position of a batsman instead of doing experiment that puts extensive impact on the later batsmen to come.

Again this time India is playing with a team having 6 specialist batsmen and 5 regular bowlers and that is understandable as it wants to have a balance result in the both the departments. However the decisions to play Ajit Agarkar in such a crucial match when England has already an edge of 2-1 lead in the series. Ajit Agarkar in the last two matches has not performed well and struggling to get his rhythm back and even fails to get a single wicket the third ODI. This leaves a question mark in everyone’s mind regarding the kind of selection procedure.

Mockingly, as per Indian selectors Ajit Agarkar has been selected as an all-rounder but he himself counted himself as a specialist bowler who occasionally, I mean mistakenly bat sometime. There is a big dilemma in the present scenario and it seems India will be unable to level the series by winning the fourth match.

Meanwhile, India after losing three quick wickets is struggling to get runs and did not capitalise much in the first fifteen over. If from here Indian continue to loss wicket at regular interval then will be a tough task for the bowlers to compete against a firm English batting lineup with a small total on the board.

India: Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Dinesh Karthik, Yuvraj Singh, Rahul Dravid (captain), Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ajit Agarkar, Piyush Chawla, Ramesh Powar, Zaheer Khan, Rudra Pratap Singh.

England: Alastair Cook, Matthew Prior, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Paul Collingwood (captain), Andrew Flintoff, Owais Shah, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, James Anderson, Monty Panesar.