Did Indian Cricket team played the best team for the ICC WTC Final?

The ICC World Test Championship(WTC) is going on at Southampton. But the most-awaited and glorified final is badly affected by the weather. Anyways, whenever the weather has given it a chance, the match has been absolutely terrific with its quality of cricket.

Very good bowling performances and a very determined, patient and careful batting display by some very good quality batsmen of both teams in an absolutely bowling friendly overcast conditions have been spectacular for the cricket fans to watch. This quality and some very competitive cricket were expected and both the teams never missed to deliver it.

Around the World, ICC is being severely criticized by the fans and former players for scheduling the match at England, where it's rainy during June. Keeping this apart let’s look at the Indian team.

Indian Team Played

The Indian team outplayed everybody mentally by announcing the final playing team a day before. There was a doubt in everybody’s mind about which team India will be playing. In fact, everyone thought that it will be easy for New Zealand to pick a team than India. But India did well, announcing the team a day before whereas, New Zealand only announced it at the very last moment.

Mentally India did well to show the opponents that they are ready but the question is whether the team was the best due to the weather which created trouble for the match. Two complete days were washed out by the rain and overs were lost in the days the play happened.

Even though the Indian team announced the team a day before the start of the match, they had a chance to change the team until the toss happens. This statement has its importance because of the washing out off of the first day’s play. So, the toss happened on the 2^nd day only and India could change the team until that day seeing the weather taking a role in the match.

India’s final team was not bad. The team that played was the same as my predicted eleven in my previous article (read here). But when the weather finally took its chance in the match and the available forecasts for the next days for the match were also bad Indian team could have made a small change in order to capitalize on the bowler-friendly overcast conditions.

The Fault

On seeing the overcast conditions and rain falling intermittently I strongly think India lacked a pacer. The Indian team actually went with their best players. But when we ask was the best for the conditions, then I think there will be some different answers. The overcast rainy conditions definitely demanded 4 pacers in the Indian team with a spinner.

Ravindra Jadeja is a really good player and he is the best all-rounder for India. But the rain-affected match demanded Jadeja be replaced by a pace bowler. Because of the batting skill, I preferred Shardul Thakur to be played rather than Siraj. But seeing the terrific bowling by the New Zealand bowlers utilizing the bowler-friendly conditions the batting skill doesn’t really matter for tail-enders. So, Siraj or Thakur should have been in instead of Jadeja.

The bowling figures also state the same. The 3 pacers bowling 25 overs or more and Ashwin just bowling 15 overs and Jadeja a mere 7 overs in the 1st innings exactly say so. Another pace bowler in the team may have loosened the workload of the 3 main pace bowlers of India. Even the extra bowler could have been more dangerous also if he could exploit the conditions.

Considering the swing bowling Siraj and Thakur have, it would have definitely been a good move. Even with only bowling 3 pacers Indian team managed to bowl out New Zealand just giving a 32 runs lead. But I strongly believe that India could have gained a lead with a 4^th pacer in the team.