Team India’s number four conundrum

Rohit Sharma seemed a trifle irritated hours after the selection meeting on Monday at the press conference when asked why India doesnt have a settled No 4 The number four conundrum has haunted the Indian camp for a while now There appears to be more than one reason why the Men in Blue have struggled to fix their No 4 batting spot heading into the Asia Cup and subsequently the ODI World CupPerhaps it is the trickiest spot to bat in the 50over game more so if your toporder is productive It sure is one riddle that is yet to be solved The toporder openers and No 3 enjoy the liberty of hitting easy boundaries with only two fielders allowed outside the 30yard circle in the first ten overs The batsmen here boost their confidence and puncture the spirit of the bowlersBatsmen who walk out at five and six can always hide under the tag of bitsandpieces cricketers or even play victims of circumstances But No 4 is neither a productive spot like the top three in terms of runs assembled and boundaries struck nor is it deemed valuable as the fancy finishers usually get the special applauseSharma made every attempt to calm our nerves insisting he wants his middleorder batters to show lsquoflexibilityrsquo as no one in the national team owns any particular batting position That the contentious number four has been a game of musical chairs for decades so much so that nobody has had a fair chance to make the position his own did not seem like an unusual opinion considering we play Australia in the World Cup 48 days laterWe have got guys who can bat at No4 Its not about No4 Its about the top three and there onwards 4 5 6 7 and there onwards and who can win us the game There have been challenges and guys have been put under pressure and thats a good thing Unfortunately we had injuries along the line and we had to try out different players and keep in mind workload management and see what combination suits usrdquo Rohit explainedHe further added ldquoWe have 9 ODIs and 2 practice games and we have a lot of games where these guys will get a chance to make the position their ownrdquoAlso Read Team Indias Big Three and the inevitability of successionWhen a scribe tried to grill him on his flexibility logic asking if random batting position changes create instability his answer was akin to a pull shot that he plays against fast bowlersWhen I said flexibility is necessary I never said Hardik Pandya will open the innings Not that Its not top three but ones batting at No 4 or 5 who need to be flexible to bat up or down No 5 is Rahul and No 6 is Hardik but if theres some change that flexibility is required as we also as youngsters did it There is a method We dont do that kind of madness This is not a school rule that numbers 1 to 8 are fixed Its not about creating mayhem the sarcasm wasnt lost on anyoneStill number four remains the most dynamic spot for batsmen given the types of challenges it involves A number four is more likely to come out to bat in varied situations with run rate and number of overs remaining constantly changing when compared to other slots The batters are required to possess a flexible mindset and dynamic skill sets to excel in these situationsAt 202 survival could be his priority and hence defence is the foremost requirement At 1102 he searches for the balance between attack and defence And at 1802 he is expected to play big shots right away And in these examples we are not including current run rate overs remaining or the required run rateHonestly such virtuous batters are almost impossible to spot More so at the World Cup where the opposition attack is different in each gameThis is precisely the reason why very few ODI star batsmen have come in at No 4 for a large part of their careersNine of Indiarsquos ODI stalwarts at number four throw up some interesting figures when it came to output per innings Sourav Ganguly output of 2359 runs per innings number of innings in brackets 20 Sachin Tendulkar 3375 61 Virender Sehwag 2537 8 Mohd Azharuddin 3361 137 MS Dhoni 4527 30 Yuvraj Singh 3162 108 Rahul Dravid 3236 102 Rohit Sharma 275 26 and Virat Kohli 4607 38By now it seems clear that potentially great players tend to impress upon the team management the need to change their batting slot from No 4 to elsewhere early in their careers Of course there are exceptions to this rule Take the examples of AB De Villiers Mahela Jayawardene Inzamamul Haq and Ross Taylor They all featured at number 4 more than any other position Interestingly barring Inzamam none has been a World Cup winner in the list Of course that he didnrsquot bat at number four when he won the Cup in 1992 makes it further interestingIf a teamrsquos top ODI batter comes in at number 4 like Mahela Jayawardene and Javed Miandad it also means their toporder is ruthlessly inconsistent But weak and inconsistent contribution at the top of the order does not apply much to the Indian batting lineupAn unsettled number four means that the team doesnt have a strong backbone In the recent T20I series against the West Indies Indian openers uncharacteristically failed to lay the foundation in some of the matches thus exposing the middle order although a T20I series is of little significance in an ODI World Cup year But any pragmatic side will take such situations as live examples and the Indian camp sure knows about it