Overwork the bowlers at your own peril

It's common for selectors to set the forthcoming World Cup as the target for building their teams. India too have a plan in place but it's important the focus shifts to building a pool of bowlers to pick from, since the batting reserves look fairly settled, writes Suresh Menon in espnstar.com.

It would be foolish to depend on a very small group of players and then discover when the need arises that the replacements are not ready. Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni for example, is now forced to miss two matches because of India's poor over-rate in the Nagpur one-dayer. This means a wicketkeeper, who hasn't kept for a while, will have to do the job. Yet an intelligent policy of rotation would have ensured that such a person is ready to deliver. This is not to say that Dhoni should be dropped from the team at regular intervals, only that there should be a plan to introduce one or two players into the team just so they keep in touch.

In the same website, Sanjay Manjrekar touches on the faulty techniques fielders employ these days while sliding and diving. One great contemporary example to watch is Ricky Ponting.

Today, every player in the Indian team can slide. But in the last decade or so, the slide, the dive and the lunge have clearly become excessive and very often unnecessary. Frequently now, you will see a fielder chasing the ball come almost next to the ball and then employ the slide. This takes him a good two meters past the ball before he gets up on his feet and throws the ball back. By doing this he is actually taking a second or two more than he would, if he had just picked up the ball and threw.