One-day series loss leaves more questions than answers for India

Gautam Gambhir's coaching debut saw T20 success but ODI struggles, highlighting areas for improvement in the Indian team.

Gautam Gambhir’s tenure as head coach started promisingly with a 3-0 whitewash of Sri Lanka in the T20Is before his side was shocked in the 50-over format, going down 2-0 in the three-match series.

The conditions in the one-dayers were on the extreme side, considering how spin-friendly the surfaces were, and batting got progressively tricky as the game went by. A case can be made that such pitches are an outlier, and one shouldn’t read too much into the results.

Wake-up call

However, the reverses in the ODIs might be a timely wake-up call to the team management, considering India fielded almost a full-strength side, missing only Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya.

Gambhir’s big vision for the team indicates that he wants more all-rounders and the batters to roll their arms over. The likes of Shubman Gill and Rohit Sharma bowled a few overs. In last year’s 50-over World Cup, once India lost Hardik, it had only one genuine all-rounder in Ravindra Jadeja and had a long tail. India’s batting depth in this series extended to eight and even nine in the final one-dayer by playing all-rounders Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar and Riyan Parag.

Another aspect evident throughout the tour, in both the T20s and one-dayers, was the preference to have a left-handed and right-handed batter in the middle as much as possible. However, whether the think-tank persists with this remains to be seen.

In terms of individual efforts, Washington and Parag’s bowling were the big positives.