India bowling coach B. Arun is in search of a potent left-arm speedster who will enable the team to have all bases covered.
Since Zaheer Khan’s departure, India has not found another capable left-arm pacer. The skilful Ashish Nehra, despite his injuries, has done commendably in the shortest format for some time while Jaydev Unadkat lacked pace.
Barinder Sran was a skiddy bowler, who faded away rather quickly, and Aniket Chaudhary is still not a finished product.
In his second stint, Arun expects better communication with A-team chief coach Rahul Dravid and bowling coach Paras Mhambrey.
“I have just come into this role so definitely we will be speaking to the coaches of the A-team. I guess there needs to be information that needs to be shared for us to make best use of the bowlers coming in. We have wrist spinners like Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal. So, if we can get even one good left-arm fast bowler, it will go well for the side,” said Arun on Tuesday.
He insisted that R. Ashwin, despite playing only 15 ODI matches since the 2015 World Cup, is very much in the scheme of things.
Extremely talented
Asked if the off-spinner figured in the 2019 World Cup plans, Arun said: “This question should be asked to the selectors, but as the bowling coach I think he is an extremely talented bowler. Even if you look at his last ODI which he played in West Indies, he got three for 28.
“He (Ashwin) is very skilful. I don’t want to look at what has happened so far but he is definitely part of the ODI team. We would also like to give a lot of opportunities to other bowlers as well (hence the rotation),” said Arun.
Arun believes that the bowling has improved tremendously in the last two years. “If you look at the bowling unit as a whole, there has been tremendous improvement since the last couple of years. But looking ahead to the 2019 World Cup, we will need to have back up options for every bowler that we have.”
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