Team India despite wins

                   India’s success so far in the ongoing Border-Gavaskar series is a perfect example of getting success on short-term priorities which may not translate into building a solid team for the future. The main concern for Indian batting is their opening pair. One of the reasons why India became number one was their brilliant opening duo of Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir. Once they lost form, the Indian team started struggling. But the team continued to keep faith in them for three years. Finally, the selectors had to drop Gambhir for the Australian Tests but persisted with a struggling Virender Sehwag. Despite getting so many chances, Sehwag could not show any improvement. And the result was that he too was dropped for the last two Tests. That means India would be opening with two inexperienced batsmen in South Africa which will be a huge task for them.
                  Meanwhile, Murali Vijay, who got the opportunity to open in place of Gambhir, scored a classy ton in Hyderabad, but given his flashy style of batting he remains a susceptible candidate against the swinging ball outside the off-stump.The reason as to why we shouldn’t cheer this victory as much is that this Australian team looked completely out-of-sorts against the moderate Indian spinners. R Ashwin is not an Anil Kumble. He may have taken wickets against the inexperienced Australian batsmen, but his performance outside India is horrible to say the least.  The way our batsmen struggled against English spinners Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar highlights their technical ineptness even against the turning ball. But the question is: what do we want to achieve? Do we want to develop a team which will win only on Indian pitches or do we want to be a team which will win irrespective of conditions?Looking at the Indian squad which played in the last two Tests, it doesn’t seem like we are serious in building a team which will win us series across the world.Apart from Cheteshwar Pujara and, to some extent, Virat Kohli, not a single Indian batsman has the required technique to do well on hard and bouncy pitches against a quality pace attack.