India's Bowling Department Woes

By Alakshendra Mishra
The Indian team has had many successes in producing world class batsman like Ms Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Sachin Tendulkar and many more but when it comes bowling department the Indian side is yet to leave a mark on the international stage. After India's emphatic win in 1983 world cup which was solely based on the bowling department the BCCI's focused shifted to the productions of more specialized batsman instead of bowlers. Till date this move by BCCI is considered to be a partial success as India has successfully produced world class batsman in abundance.

Now to observe the effects of this decision that was taken by BCCI we will have to look back at the poor bowling performances of Indian side at International level and ICC Tournament which led to India's exit from the world cup

To retrospect, India reached the 2003 world cup final solely due to Sachin's blistering batting which continued throughout the tournament. In the finals the Indian balling department was brutally exposed after Ponting’s magnificent innings which helped Australia to post a dominating total over the Indian side, this led India to receive a humiliating defeat at the biggest stage of world cricket. Though nobody questioned the bowling department, we can still observe that if the bowling department had been a little more consistent with their lines and lengths, the result might have been a little different.

Similar instance occurred 12 years later when the Indian side met their arch rivals Australia in the semi final of 2015 ODI World Cup, the confidence was high and the young Indian side was full of rage, but again the Indian department was let down by their below average bowling which enabled Australia to score a massive total of 328 at the end of 50 overs at the loss of just 7 wickets. The Indian batting side was not able to capitalize on the brilliant start given by the openers and suffered a brutal loss as they managed to only score 233 and lost by 95 runs

To summarize this grieve situation which is being faced by the Indian side, even though the instances mentioned above are of high pressure world cup situations the bowling department has constantly let down the team even in bilateral series and T20 WCS after getting a brilliant score to defend by the batsmen. If this situation continues to persist in future instances, the Indian team will constantly face defeat at high stages and will never be able to leave a mark on world cricket solely because of their bowling.