'Straight Drive' by Chandresh Narayanan
 
India's biggest problem at the upcoming ICC Champions Trophy is going to be the lack of seam bowling all-rounders. The Indian team lacks one solid seam bowler who can bat as well especially on the fresh South African pitches.

Every other team in the competition has one at least. But India have chosen a flawed team with no attention paid to this problem. The problem lies elsewhere with the selectors not paying attention to it in the first place.

Admittedly the likely contenders for this seam bowling all-rounder are not too many, but then there is no harm looking at them. Irfan Pathan has fallen from grace. He does not command the same respect as a one-day bowler any more even though just over a year ago he won India a Test at Perth. He played as fifth bowler cum batsman there and played a huge part in tilting the balance in India's favour.

Then you have the chosen one Abhisek Nayar. Now the problem is that the well-spoken Mumbai lad is neither a specialist batsman nor a specialist bowler. He cannot hold his own in either of the departments. So you will find that the skipper has no faith in his ability. It showed in the way Mahendra Singh Dhoni did not give him a bowl in the two one-dayers that he was chosen for on the West Indies tour.

Praveen Kumar is the other candidate who is in the XV, but does not have the pace to back his claims at least in the subcontinent. But in South Africa he should be chosen ahead of a RP Singh to boost the batting. It is surprising the same Praveen gets to open for his state side Uttar Pradesh, but does not rank high when it comes to his batting for India.

In India there is suddenly a paucity of seam bowlers who can bat.

Rewind to the 1980s and there were a surfeit of them. Kapil Dev, Madan Lal, Roger Binny, Manoj Prabhakar, Bharat Arun, Mohinder Amarnath et al. They all were not in the same class as the great Kapil, but they all could bat. In fact during the 1985 World Championship of Cricket, skipper Sunil Gavaskar had a line-up which could even expect the No. 11 to score runs. But times have changed.

India now has a number of spin bowling all-rounders. This is perhaps dictated by the change in pitches in the country. The pitches are getting flatter by the day and the spinners have to be called in to stem the rot. The seam bowlers just do not have anything to fall back on.

So now you have a Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Pathan and even a Suresh Raina. We are not even counting Sachin Tendulkar, who cannot bowl anymore. Overall it is an interesting time for the Indian ODI team which looks to stay on top of the world.

But they have to remember one thing - the best ODI teams in the world always had some top quality seam-bowling all-rounders, with West Indies possibly being an exception, though Malcolm Marshall and Eldine Baptiste weren't bad.

Take Australia for example: Mitchell Johnson can bat, Shane Watson opens the batting and so does James Hopes. South Africa have Albie Morkel and Jacques Kallis. Dark horses New Zealand have Jacob Oram, Ian Butler, Jesse Ryder, Brendon Damianti and Grant Elliott to bowl a few tight overs and also bat with purpose. Then the Sri Lankans have Thilan Thushara and Angelo Matthews. England, despite all its problems, have someone like Stuart Broad to fall back on.

Maybe India cannot have everything. They have a fantastic opening pair, a great middle-order, a cool captain, a young and inspirational fast bowler and a fiery spinner. The all-rounder, maybe, will have to wait a little longer.

Chandresh Narayanan is a Mumbai-based freelance cricket writer and formerly with the Times of India and the Nimbus-owned cricketnirvana. 

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