Not enough Indian cricketers today with second capacity, says Harsha Bhogle

Ace cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle has expressed concern that the new-generation cricketers that are coming through the ranks mostly lack more than one dimension which is their main skill. The 58-year-old said in a tweet that while it was not such case even in the non-distant past, but currently that trend is no more visible. He said the future will back those players who have more than one skill.

India announced their three squads for the different formats in the tour to West Indies starting August 3. A number of changes were made to the squads – especially in the limited-overs – but not too many all-round cricketers were seen. While bowlers like Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed, Deepak Chahar and Rahul Chahar are known for their bowling capacities, the likes of Manish Pandey and Shreyas Iyer are purely batsmen.

Sehwags, Gangulys and Tendulkars were handy bowlers as well, says Bhogle

According to Bhogle, in the past, batsmen like Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar had contributed with the ball as well despite being premier batsmen. While Sehwag has 136 international wickets, Ganguly has 132 and Tendulkar 201 scalps, respectively. They were known to chip in with their bowling arm whenever the team required and gave vital breakthroughs. Ganguly has even opened bowling attack in Tests, thereby giving his side that much flexibility.

It is worrisome that there isn’t any young batsman coming through the ranks who can offer a bowling option like Sehwag, Ganguly and Tendulkar did. And it is fair to say that there are no bowlers with a second string either. The future is with people who offer more than one skill

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) July 24, 2019

According to the commentator, such utility players are not seen much and even the bowlers that are coming up today have no “second string either”. In the past, bowlers like Anil Kumble and Ajit Agarkar had scored Test centuries while the likes of Javagal Srinath and Zaheer Khan had half-centuries.

The scenario could still be considered better if compared to the 1990s when there were hardly all-rounders in the Indian team after the exit of Kapil Dev and Manoj Prabhakar. Irfan Khan had come with a lot of promise in the early 2000s but mismanagement of his talent harmed none but Indian cricket.

Today, the likes of Hardik Pandya, Vijay Shankar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Ravindra Jadeja still give that much depth to the Indian batting line-up besides boosting the bowling. However, the tail needs to wag as well for the country to win games that go down to the wire.