India’s misery in overseas conditions will continue as long as they choose to play too many ineffectual all-rounders. The fact that they don’t have a single specialised extra batsman in the squad is enough to make one wring their hands in despair.
In England, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, no matter how batting-friendly a wicket is, it’s not going to play like the ones back home. Even regular batsmen struggle in these conditions; imagine what will happen when a side decides to play three half-batters. And two of them are not experts at anything. Axar Patel has shown his importance across formats for quite a few years now, so he is not the problem. Shivam Dube and Washington Sundar are.
Neither do they give confidence with their bowling, nor with their batting. If Hardik Pandya was available, neither of them would play. In the 2nd ODI at the Sophia Gardens in Cardiff on Thursday, this problem resurfaced.
In the 32nd over, Virat Kohli got out for 65 against the run of play with India placed at 178/4. In less than five overs from there, they totally lost the plot, and instead of scoring 290-300, they came up short by several runs. In fact, they were bowled out for just 233 in 44 overs. Because Sundar, Patel and Dube didn’t have the technique to take the team forward. In the previous game, Sundar and Patel came good with the bat, but there they were chasing a modest total on a good wicket. At Cardiff, the pitch overwhelmingly favours fast bowlers, and they just didn’t know what to do against Jofra Archer & Co.
Both Sundar and Patel fell to short-pitched deliveries. Moments before his departure, Sundar appeared to pick up a hamstring injury, which definitely made him less nimble at the crease. In that case, he should have moved away or ducked under that Saqib Mahmood delivery, but instead, he went for a shot, and Jos Buttler took a simple catch behind the wicket. Axar went for an upper cut off Archer, the slayer of Virat Kohli earlier, and again Buttler was brought into play.
Dube has no confidence whatsoever in these conditions. He can get by in T20Is to some extent, but in ODIs, he is like a bull in a china shop. Since his ODI debut in December 2019, he has played just six games, and nobody knows how he managed to break into this squad and then into the playing XI. He was caught and bowled by Archer for a duck, and when he bowled, he was largely innocuous in his six overs. The team management’s blind faith in him has cost India dear, even in the prior T20Is. He can come good in the shortest format now and then, especially in friendly conditions, but that’s all there is to him.
It’s really embarrassing!
A country that has a reputation for producing one quality batsman after another, it’s nothing short of baffling that, for alien conditions, they couldn’t find a proper extra batter. The man Dube replaced was also an all-rounder: Niti Kumar Reddy.
There is something terribly wrong with the team management as well as the selection panel. India have had a good last couple of years in white-ball cricket, and that may have made them complacent or overconfident, but those successes were in different conditions. They won the 2024 T20 World Cup in the West Indies, the 2025 Champions Trophy in the UAE and the 2026 T20 World Cup at home. The BCCI need to call someone to account. One can safely say now there was no planning or preparation for this UK tour, and these defeats India have tasted since June 26 are a direct result of that. The four-wicket loss in the 2nd ODI was their seventh in their last nine international games.
