Missing ingredients: The one thing that can turn international teams into world-class limited overs outfits

Cricket is a team game. True, there are many individuals brilliances that have resulted in wins, but those one or two match-winners cannot be expected to deliver every time. All 11 players should contribute towards the team’s cause. There will always be scope for improvement and no team can afford to leave any weak links for the opposition to pin them down. The top 5 ODI teams are taken into consideration as per the latest ICC Rankings (updated on 6th September) and their concerned areas are highlighted.

#1 India - Death bowling

The countryis undoubtedly gifted with a wide range of fascinating batsmen who can take the game away from the opposition in a matter of few overs. Indiaalso have a great tradition of spinners bamboozling the opposition with their craft. But, still, even after all these years of top level cricket and despite being the winners of the ICC World Cup twice, India lack pacers to keep the run flow under check in the death overs.

With no threatening pace and relying on swing with the new ball, the gentle medium pace bowlers of Indiapose no real threat in the slog overs. With the everlasting trend of Indian bowlers fading away after a good 3-4 international seasons is not helpful toenrich the knowledge of the seamers in those situations.

And considering the fact that MS Dhoni ishappy bowling Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja these days in the death overs when theopposition have no specialist batsmen at the crease is covering up the problem too easily.

Mohit Sharma has a good slower ball and Umesh Yadav has a decent yorker. Bhuvneshwar Kumar can be trusted if he manages to deliverthe ball in places he intends to do so every time.Mohammad Shami is growing withconfidence after every match and has some genuine pace to add to his yorker which is still a work on progress.

The fact that all these bowlers are relatively young offers some hope for the future and India have to manage them well .They should also be trusted at the death and India should refrain from bowling spinners in closing stagesto help their confidence and add to their experience.