Accounting for India’s 1st warmup game

India has kick started its world cup campaign with a comfortable win over defending champions in a warm up game. Holds not that good significance but there were few positives out of this game coming out leading up to the tournament opener on next Saturday.

Batting did not click, the usual suspects with the bat continued to fail, the seamers in their whatever quota of overs they got, did not impress. But the biggest positive of this game was the way Chawla bowled. Sure, the aussies set panic for a modest target and they could have won had they got patience.

But Chawla got them to play those foolish shots and thus earn a very good chance to play ahead of Ashwin in the finall 11.

Ashwin as usual was at his restrictive best not looking for wickets. Thats what he is good for. Restrictive line and length, good for blocking runs. But dude we need wickets too in the ODIs to win games, not just stop runs. We dont need defensive mindset spinners. There are lot of part timers — Pathan, Sehwag, Yuvraj and Raina who do that precisely.

Another baffling question is why the hell did not Tendulkar play in the warm up game? Is he going to go in the world cup on the back of just 4 ODIs in a  year? Has he recovered fully? We got no clue from what MS had to say in the post match talk. Tendulkar has to be in imperious form along side Sehwag to provide fiery starts which India has not got in 2010 thanks to rotating opening pairs and injuries.

The next game is against Kiwis and thats when India would need to finalise the starting XI against BD in the revenge game on 19th.