India's embarrassing collapse could have been avoided: experts

Dilip Vengsarkar and Vinod Kambli on what the middle order should haveu00a0 done to save India from an embarrassing loss against New Zealand yesterday

It's not often that the Indian batting fails as miserably as it did in the ODI against New Zealand yesterday. They were dismissed for a paltry 88.

In conditions where the ball was swinging around, the openers were always going to have a tough job of negotiating the new ball.

But it's the abysmal surrender of the next nine batsmen, only one of whom reached double figures, that should be worrying the Indian team. Especially since most of them were caught behind the wicket flashing or playing away from the body.

"When you lose wickets early on, there is immense pressure on the middle order. And it is the batsman's ability to handle pressure that will tell you how good the batsman is. If you go into bat at 30 for four, you have to ensure you don't get out," said former India middle order batsman Vinod Kambli.

"The mindset has to be to hang in there for as much time as possible and look to bat till the end. We have a lot of aggressive batsmen in the line up but if the situation demands, then they should be able to cut down on their stroke-making and play according to the situation. As long as someone is holding one end up, things can get better. Hopefully, our batsmen will learn and not make the mistakes they made," added the aggressive left-hander, who once scored 106 against Zimbabwe in Kanpur after the team was 32 for 3 during the 1996 World Cup.

Former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar stressed on the need for both batsmen in the middle to work in unison.
"In one-day cricket, it's not easy to dismiss a batsman as you don't have a lot of close in fielders. Hence, unlike Tests, it is easy for batsmen to try and build small partnerships. So if the team has lost wickets early, the other batsmen need to just think about staying in the middle and supporting each other," Vengsarkar said,
"Singles are very necessary and once there is a small partnership, the batsmen can take it from there. Even if they have taken up a lot of deliveries, they can always make up for it. You never know how things can change once a partnership starts developing. The same thing happened in the New Zealand innings when Ross Taylor and Scott Styris had a partnership," Vengsarkar added.