Ever since India decided to play with 5 regular bowlers (which most other teams don't do), they have started seeing success. Ashwin/Jadeja have played a crucial role in bringing this composition first, because of their absolute alround ability (both in bowling & batting) at home. India felt that there is no need of 6th batsman in the side and they can do away with these 2 players & wicketkeeper! And since Pant arrived, it took to a all new level and they never thought of extra batsman even on tough pitches! Part of the reason for this is also due to absence of enough middle order batsmen in the country, so they felt these two could do better than even specialist batsmen! (Many times they are outscoring most of the top order batsmen!) This meant that we always had the luxury to pick extra spinner at home, and extra pacer away!
Probably this (average batting unit) is the reason why we lost many overseas matches (at home it is not such a factor). If we had strong batting unit, we could have won many matches . We could have won the last two series against South Africa (especially the 2018 one which was a mere batting shootout!) We could have also tried to win the 2018 England series (which we lost 4-1), we came so close in many matches! Again batting was the issue... We won the match when Pandya played an important role.
We have complaints about not having enough pace bowling alrounders (Pandya couldn't continue to succeed in tests) and Jadeja/Ashwin ineffective overseas! But the main problem is our batting! If our batting was strong, then even Jadeja/Ashwin would have been effective overseas! Our batsmen never took the game to 5th (and even 4th) day! 5th day pitch and scoreboard pressure could have brought Ashwin/Jadeja into equation, there were not many such instances. (This in the only way Spinners can succeed outside Asia! Including Shane Warne! Without a strong batting unit & pace bowling unit, Warne couldn't have achieved all that! In fact he failed in India which is so-called Spinner's Paradise simply because their batting used to fail in India so he couldn't penetrate much!)
Instead of attacking option (with attacking field) we always tried Ashwin/Jadeja to defend & give rest to pacers! And accused them expecting bigger things considering how good they are at home & failing to replicate that in overseas! We even lost that last test match against England (when Bazball attacked us) because of batting failure in 2nd innings, and trying to put responsibility on bowlers always (and accuse them for not defending on that day!) Probably another small reason for losing that match was over-aggression & over-confidence (Shastri/Kohli brought lots of aggression to our test team - they are instrumental of bring 5 pure bowlers in every format of game including tests, but sometimes rarely it can backfire also), that match we should have played safely, and "draw" should have been the first priority (because series victory was on the line!)
We lost even that WTC Finals against NZ not because of picking both Jadeja & Ashwin, it was again because of batting failures, we picked both Jadeja & Ashwin more because of their batting cushion than their bowling. 3 pacers were enough, all we needed were proper 6 batsmen (we should have played a 6th batman), if we were to combine with late 90s & early 00s team we would have played all those 6 batsmen in this match (Sehwag, Gambhir, Dravid, Sachin, Ganguly, Laxman + Pant + Ashwin/Jadeja + 3 pacers. We would have then dropped one of Ashwin/Jadeja.)
The problem with our current batting line up is except Rohit, nobody else is reliable. Rahul was slightly doing his job but even he is shaky now, Pujara fights it out at times, Iyer is showing some hope, and we should start grooming Gill and others. But as [MENTION=97523]Buffet[/MENTION] is guessing, we may start to find that strong batting unit back, but then we may lose this strong bowling by then! But we will hope to find both! (strong batting & strong bowling in future. Axar is looking to be a good deputy to Jadeja. Can Sundar become another Ashwin? Fingers crossed!)
I think we belong to the category of Strong South African team of 90s who was similar to us! (Not complete dominance, but threatening enough, doing very well even outside home, and also more than 4 bowlers in the team - alrounders like Ashwin/Jadeja/Axar/Thakur) South African team is never considered as strong as those past WI & Aus teams (which had pure & perfect Specialist Bowlers & Batsmen)
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