Baffling batting order

As I write this at the half way mark of the ODI between India and Sri Lanka at Rajkot, India have posted their highest score in one day cricket – 414/7, giving themselves more than an excellent chance to go up 1-0 in the series.

The batting display was superlative. Sehwag continued his excellent form and smashed 146 off 102 balls, aided brilliantly by Tendulkar (69 off 63) and Dhoni (72 off 53). With 43 hits to the fence and 12 over it, there were plenty of excellent strokes. Being a Tendulkar fan, I immensely enjoyed the two upper cuts he played in 15th over against Fernando’s bouncers – first, initially ducking, before deciding at the last moment to cut to third man and the next, even better, swaying slightly and delicately cutting it fine, just wide of the keeper.

Despite the batting heroics, I found Dhoni’s shuffling of the batting order, baffling. Instead of using his experience to shore up the inexperienced lower middle order (especially, with Yuvraj out to injury), from his usual position at five, I couldn’t understand why he had to promote himself to three. This is even more baffling considering that he came up at the expense of Gambhir, who arguably is the best top order batsman currently in the team. Gambhir, pushed down to five,  looked totally out of sorts in the lower order.

Next, Harbhajan was promoted ahead of Kohli and Jadeja. If the Dhoni – Gambhir swap was baffling, this was outright illogical! I mean, with more than 300 on the board and more than 10 overs still left to be bowled, what was the need to send a bowler to throw his bat around, ahead of a specialist batsman and a batting all-rounder? And what kind of message does that send to the youngsters – that their captain thinks a bowler with no batting technique, can bat better than them on one of the flattest of the batting pitches you would ever see? In the end, after Harbhajan’s ugly swipes failed, both Kohli (27 off 19) and Jadeja (30 off 17) played smart cameos proving Harbhajan’s promotion wrong.