Batting Solution: Back To 7-4 Strategy With Batting ARs

[sensible-indian]

Most of the ODI teams have an explosive batting for today's flat tracks and high run scoring games. We are still lagging behind depending on Top 3 for everything. What we need to have is Top 7 batsmen who can strike big and accelerate regardless of situation....2 ARs among the top 7 who are great at batting but can bowl a few overs....plus 4 front line bowlers. This would ensure that we have 8 bowlers (4 front line, 2 ARs and Raina and Kohli) to finish 50 overs while having a power packed batting lineup. Guys like Ashwin, Jaddu and Axar must strictly compete in the 4 frontline bowlers category. Look at Aus. They have 3 main bowlers. Johnson, Starc and Hazlewood. The rest 20 overs is filled with Watson, Maxwell and Faulkner. Now we may not have that quality of ARs so we can go with 4 front line bowlers along with 2 ARs who are semi decent with the ball and use up 8 bowlers to finish off 50 overs. Aus, SA, England (current side), NZ and Bangladesh have similar kinda lineups. The effectiveness of those lineups may vary but the batting strategy is the same. Its in having power packed lineups where the team is NOT dependent on 2-3 batsmen to score the bulk of the runs. This is what we need. All teams barring Pakistan and India are following it (dunno about SL lineup) What would be your lineup if you went this route?

[zen]

It is about picking quality in-form batsmen. If Ind does that 6 batsmen should be enough. If not even playing 8 may not be enough (I recall Ind went in with 8 batsmen vs. SL in one of the ODIs when SL was in red hot form in the mid to late 90s) Looking at the big picture, Ind needs to have a team that can attack both with the bat and the ball - which means: 5 top quality in-form batsmen, 1 WK AR, 1 bowling AR, and 4 top quality in-form bowlers

[HippoSucks]

This is obviously the best solution. In this batsman friendly format, while quality batsman are needed, you still need 4 quality bowlers to restrict the opponent's batsman. But if you run 4 bowlers, you can't have bowling ARs in the top 7 (like Jadeja). Either people like Jadeja start performing with the bat or he gets out (unless Jadeja is good enough to stay as a specialist bowler - who can bat - alone as one of the 4 bowlers). A few matches should be given to the under-performing batsman to see if they improve. If they do not, then the line up should be changed to something along the lines of: Rohit Sharma Dhawan Kohli Shreyas Iyer/Jadhav Raina Samson/N Ojha/Saha Hardik Pandya/Some other batting AR Ashwin B Kumar Shami Yadav