According to Bahutule, the India’s bowling coach and former leg-spinner, they will continue allowing top order batsmen to bowl. He hopes that this strategy could surprise the opposition.
Shubman Gill who opened the innings in India’s first one-day international against Sri Lanka on Friday was given a chance to demonstrate his skills as a bowler. While admitting that he gave away 14 runs for just one over he remains confident that they would still use the same formula going forward.
“I think as a matter of fact our batsmen are also good at bowling. You know they focus primarily on batting, so sometimes bowling isn’t their main thing. However, they do have the ability,” Bahutule said during the post-match press conference. When Charith Asalanka discharged 8.5 overs taking three for thirty against his team-mates including Shivam Dube and Arshdeep Singh who went consecutive balls it emerged he had managed an important all-round performance that was instrumental in Sri Lanka tying with India.
This is evidenced by examples when Rinku Singh and Suryakumar Yadav were handed the ball during T20I series against Sri Lanka.
The valuable presence of these part-time bowlers in playing XI shows importance of multiple choices for bowling within this shortest game format.Case-in-point in T20Is you saw Rinku and Surya contributing with the ball. So here an opportunity was given to Shubman. One day will be all-rounders’ match.
“That way if about two or so from above can bowl it is surely advantageous to the side depending upon situations and circumstances like pitch conditions,” he added. “Moreover, if one of your batters can bowl that’s definitely going to be stunning news for your opposition.”
“Consequently, there shall be numerous opportunities for batters to turn their arm over moving ahead,” Bahutule added. Thus he suggested that his visiting team had chances of building stronger alliances for greater scores especially after having launched a vigorous start.
“To have a tie in ODI is always exciting. We should have got that one run and finished off the match.” However, I thought we bowled really well.
“We had some good patches with the bat, and maybe we could have built a few partnerships which would have got us over (home) with less wickets going,” he said. Bahutule admitted that Sri Lankan spinners used the conditions to their advantage.
“I mean as per wicket conditions and things like Hasaranga and Asalanka were doing it was good. So, we just tried to get into partnerships – Shivam (Dube) batted very well and so did Shikhar Dhawan. But yes, we could have done that extra bit by getting that single from our side.”
One-time Indian leg-spinner believes the team failed to ride on captain Rohit Sharma’s start.Having scored a splendid 58 off 47 balls, Rohit helped India’s reach 75 for 3 in 12.4 overs.
The beginning provided by Rohit was amazing, and at various points it looked as though we would avoid losing many wickets. It was crucial when the ball was still hard and coming onto the bat. I believe it is his first ODI innings following the (50-over) World Cup.
“There seemed to be no gap at all”. He carries the can, sets the mood against any opposition, any bowling attack. Very positive in his approach.”
