It's rather bizarre when the captain of the our national team walks into a press conference after a game and blames the conditions on the back of one of the most clueless bowling (except 3 Overs .. 2 from Zaheer n 1 from Harbhajan) and fielding displays in recent memory.
In a way, that statement sums up the situation: Our problems lie with the bowling and fielding but there is little or nothing that the captain can do about it, so the only thing left really is to blame the conditions.
One of the most interesting things about our bowling attack is that it don’t have potential to dismiss the opposition, but merely to restrict the runs opponents will score(that too was not visible in last match). This attack's job description is damage control, whether we bowl first or last.
One thing is for sure that we have four bowlers, and barring Zaheer the others are essentially defensive in nature, then when we go up against the bigger teams, it won't matter how many runs our batsmen get; the opposition will hunt the targets down with ease. . So that is the situation - a bowling unit with a defensive mindset, and a fielding unit that is not geared to back up that game plan.
The batting, mercifully, seems to be in top form with two near-perfect performances, but against that, a bowling unit that could not defend 338 runs under lights against an England team coming off a 6-1 defeat and with a dismal track record in Indian conditions
There is a quirk in the Dhoni style of captaincy that few talk about. When he has relatively smaller totals to defend (as for instance in the warm up against Australia) he attacks and looks for wickets. But whenever his batsmen gives him runs to work with, he reflexively tends to defend. And the question is, if you don't attack when you have three hundred and more on the board, then when?
In many ways, this campaign is a unique one for us, in the sense that we are not just the on-paper favorites (as we usually are in every World Cup, thanks to the hype machine) but one that has the conditions, the home support, and at least as far as the batting is concerned, the players to go all the way.
For that to happen, though, two things are mandatory: The team mindset needs to shift into one of relentless aggression, and the bowling unit as one has to put its hand up and shift its focus to striking hard and often, irrespective of the totals the batsmen put up.
The good bit is, the weaknesses are not out in the open - and we have two games against the associate nations to get our ducks back in a row.
