Chinks in India's armour?

Chinks in the armour. That must be the catchphrase in the Bangladesh camp right now as they build up for a quarterfinal clash against defending champions India, who don't seem to have a chink in their armour at the moment.

Prior to the start of the World Cup, the spin department was expected to struggle down under, where seamers play a much bigger role. The Carlton tri-series just before the start of the World Cup, where India lost all their matches against England and the hosts, only reinforced that belief. The batters too, after a demoralising Test series defeat against Australia, didn't really live up to their name. But once the World Cup started, the champions suddenly clicked into gear, with bowlers complementing their enviable batting line-up and even fielders taking their effort quite a few notches. India sailed into the quarterfinals with five-near perfect wins – making Pakistan look like ridiculously easy opponents, taming the high-flying South Africans in a whimper, and taking due care of United Arab Emirates, West Indies and Ireland with utmost ease. In these five matches India had posted 300 or more every time they batted first, and wrapped up the game before the 40th over every time chasing. But finally yesterday, when the qualification was already in the bags, they ran onto a Zimbabwe team that was desperate to salvage some pride. And India did stutter, and hopefully exposed some chinks, in a six-wicket win that seems flattering reading from the final scoreline.

The Indian spinners, who had their cracks covered mostly by some serious effort of the seamers so far, were exposed to some daredevil batting by Zimbabwe's stand-in skipper Brendan Taylor. The wicketkeeper-batsman, who is turning his back on the national team for a lucrative three-year stint with English county side Nottinghamshire, was severe on both Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, as he found the spin-adverse wicket and the shortish boundaries of the Eden Park much to his liking. The two spinners went for an aggregate of 146 runs in twenty overs. Ashwin conceded 75, his highest in an ODI while Jadeja went for 71, his fifth-highest. Overall India's spinners have claimed 20 wickets so far in this tournament against 36 by the seamers, which should be a fair indication that the twenty overs likely to be offered to the spinners is the best opportunity for Bangladesh batsmen to target. We know how drastically fielding standard drops on the face of constant battering, and hopefully a positive intent from the Bangladesh batters would exert that pressure on the Indian fielders.

The batting, too, came under tremendous scrutiny yesterday as India were down to four for 92 at one stage in their chase. And if it was not for some sloppy catching from Zimbabweans, India might have been in a lot more trouble. It was not the first time in this tournament that India's vaunted batting line-up showed discernable weaknesses. It was the second time, after the match against West Indies that none of their top four batsmen managed to score either a century or a half-century. In both cases, they were let off the hook, or to give credit where it is due, Mahendra Singh Dhoni bailed them out.  Bangladesh would surely have better plans than the West Indies and Zimbabwe, if they do get India into such a situation come March 19.