In nearly four months, India have been knocked out of two ICC events in the very first round. First, the T-20 World cup and now the Champions Trophy. There were a few big names missing from the Indian side in both the events and it is being termed as one of the big reasons for the ouster of the Indian side. If we take this reason then the next question that arises is about our bench strength. Where is the so called bench strength?

In the last couple of years since Dhoni took over the leadership of Indian team, team has looked for the replacements of the three big guns of Indian cricket i.e. Sachin, Saurav and Dravid. Sachin is still playing, fighting with injuries but Ganguly is retired and Dravid was sidelined from the one day unit until he got an unexpected come back call.

What prompted the selectors to look back to someone like Dravid who has not been selected in the side for nearly two years? The answer is quite simple. The young guys like Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa, Suresh Raina and others just did not look that comfortable filling in those big shoes of the three big guns. So the selectors had no other option but to call Dravid back.

If we look at the bowling line up that we had a couple of years back, then we had R.P.Singh, Munaf, Irfaan, Ishant, Shreesanth and suddenly we thought that we had a bunch of world class fast bowlers with Zaheer being the strike bowler. The bench strength looked really good. Two years down the line we have none. We got a fast bowler back after nearly four years in Ashish Nehra and suddenly he becomes the strike bowler, leaving behind every one else. I wonder where are Munaf and Shreesanth today and where will be Ishant and R.P. if things keep going like this. We certainly need to address this issue quite tactfully.

Moreover, we need FAST bowlers, not only gentle medium pacers if we really want to win matches consistently. Ishant, R.P., Irfan, Munaf, they all started their careers bowling in the range of 140 km/h but now they are finding it difficult to operate in the range of around 130km/h consistently. Wasim Akram rightly said that this is a big problem with Indian bowlers as he cited his own example as how he was told by his captain Imran Khan to just bowl fast, forgetting about line and length because bowling fast can win you matches on any kind of surface. Something will have to be done regarding this because if despite of having such a world class coaching and support staff such problems occur then the role of the coaching and support staff also comes under scrutiny.

A packed schedule is waiting for the Indian team and they really need to fix their problems if they really want to sustain in the number one race.