India's performance in South Africa - Is this the team for the next world cup ?

Indian batsmen clearly struggled to acclimatize with the South African conditions and hence struggled in the one-day series, which finished with a 2-0 drubbing of the visitors. The pace, bounce and lateral movement which are the trademark of South African pitches, proved too much for the young Indian batsmen, especially against quality bowlers like Steyn, Morkel and Tsotsobe. But is this Indian one day side that inept? We should understand that two one day internationals are too less to judge someone, let along criticize. It should not be forgotten that this is the same team which has won six consecutive one day tournaments in 2013, and is currently placed at the pinnacle of the ICC ODI Rankings. More importantly, those victories include the series triumph in the West Indies and the famous Champions trophy win in England, where the ball does quite a bit and now all of a sudden, two defeats and we hear alarm bells ringing, typical Indian mentality, isn’t it.
Getting into the bottom of the situation, it can be said that the BCCI has again committed a mistake here by not scheduling practice matches ahead of the series. There is a practice match scheduled ahead of the test series but when we consider conditions like those in South Africa, which are really alien for the Indians, the more the number of practice matches the better it is for them to get accustomed and it is clearly very difficult for an Indian side to go there and perform well right away even in one-dayers and so there should have been some practice games ahead of the one-days. The ECB has used this ploy of practice matches very well in recent years which has helped England gain greater success on foreign tours and so it is imperative that the BCCI now takes a leaf out of ECB’s book. Considering the next world cup in Australia and New Zealand, where there’s always a lot of pace and bounce on offer, I think tours like these are very important for India in order to prepare this young side for the 2015 extravaganza. If we analyze the current Indian side’s ability to play pace and bounce, I think we are pretty well placed at the moment. In the 80s and 90s, Indian batsmen always had problems playing fast bowling in conditions like those of South Africa or Australia. Only a few, like Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman mastered those conditions but the rest struggled enormously. But, in this side I think we are lucky to have many players who do not possess an evident weakness against fast bowling or short bowls directed at the chin but yes, like every other sub-continent side even this side would take time to get a hang of the conditions. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli are two of the best young players around in playing pace as well as in cross-batted shots. MS Dhoni has never had a problem against pace or bounce and also Dhawan and Rahane seem to have the technique to succeed against faster bowlers in the long run. However, Raina continues to have clear problem with the short ball and Yuvraj has never been the same after his health problems, at least as far as playing pace bowling is concerned and so there are slight concerns with the batting order, which need to be sorted out. May be slotting in Pujara in the middle-order might not be a bad idea.
As far as the bowling is concerned, there is definitely room for improvement, especially in the death overs which has been the problem for a while now. Apart from that, India has been developing a decent young pool of pace bowlers with the likes of Bhuvaneswar, Shami, Yadav, Aaron (if he is fit) doing well recently and they would need to add a couple of more good bowlers to the side for the next world cup, especially with Ishant struggling for form and Zaheer not getting any younger. In the spin department it can be said that Ashwin and Jadeja have done a decent job.
However, this Indian one-day side is a dynamic unit and has performed well in varied conditions in the last couple of years, unlike the test side. It’s a brilliant fielding unit which does some of the basics of the game right unlike previous Indian sides and have an aura of positive team spirit around them. So I guess captain Dhoni would be having enough confidence on his boys, in the run-up to the next world cup and hence it seems as if there isn’t a lot to worry as far as this one day team is concerned as they haven’t given us enough reasons in the recent past to do so. Probably, we need to back these youngsters to succeed in the time to come and hope they lift the cup in less than two years’ time.