“I think on better wickets, you won’t see it [batters struggling against spin],” ten Doeschate said. “You can hit through the line with more confidence. But the point is that we need to have plans where the wickets do hold and the [longer] boundaries are there. We need to be able to have a game plan to deal with that threat.”
“I wouldn’t say [there are struggles against] offspin, I’d say fingerspin [on the whole],” ten Doeschate said of India’s worry heading into the Super Eight. “If you take the combined figures, I think Pakistan bowled 14 [17] overs of fingerspin in the last game, and off the top of my head, I want to say [they got] something like 4 for 78 or something like that [5 for 125]. So it’s not great numbers [for India].”
On match eve, batting coach Sitanshu Kotak had brushed aside any concerns around Tilak’s batting approach, stating he was merely playing the role assigned to him. Ten Doeschate, however, was clear India had to plan batter through the middle phase.
“It’s been a trend in this World Cup,” ten Doeschate said about the middle phase, where India haven’t been able to break free. “In IPL or bilateral series, the pace of the innings carries through from powerplay. Across all games, particularly across Sri Lanka [at this World Cup], you get off the books quickly, and batting becomes difficult through the middle phase, and teams are getting a lot more clever now.
“The Dutch guys took pace off a lot of the time. Teams are bowling a lot of fingerspin to us because we have so many left-handers, so it’s a challenge, and [it’s] going to be a differentiator in the second phase of this competition.
Has India’s approach against spin made it easier for the opposition to plan against them?
“It has,” ten Doeschate said. “We don’t have many options [in the top three]. We’ve got Sanju [Samson] sitting on the side, and we feel on balance, particularly with the games coming up, if we look at what fingerspinners we are going to come up against, New Zealand have got a few guys who bowl fingerspin, so do West Indies, and so does South Africa if you include Markram… But on balance, we still feel that these are our best batters, and we’re going to make do with the abundance of left-handers.”
On the subject of left-hand batters, ten Doeschate wasn’t fretting over Abhishek’s three ducks.
“He looked a little bit down,” ten Doeschate said. “He wants to do well, he understands the magnitude of the competition. He’s well aware of how good a player he is, he understands a small run of form like this can happen, but he’s batting well.
“Yesterday [on match eve] was the love he needed. He batted for close to 90 minutes, really looked like he had his rhythm back. So he’ll be fine. Just got to keep filling him with confidence. His record is the confidence he needs.”
Shashank Kishore is a senior correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
