Looking at averages can make a team look average

For an individual, defeat translates into being left out of the side. Players that are scared of being left out will hardly ever win a cricket match.

Interestingly, like electrons in energy levels, players can migrate into either category depending on their self-belief, their confidence and the team climate. When a team is doing well and has a settled look, and players are secure, they can sally forth and produce heroic and gallant performances. Mohd Kaif, for example, has done that on more than one occasion.

However, if there is a feeling that the axe has been raised in search of a neck, the same players can retreat, can seek shelter in safe, purposeless innings. Kaif’s 65 against Zimbabwe was one such. It did him no credit at all, it gave the impression, like some others in this short season, that it was an innings that sought minor gains-like a batting average to be used in case a debate surfaced.

This batting average is a strange animal — at best an indicator and at worst a selection tool. By itself, over a long period, it can be a decent indicator of a player’s ability but over shorter periods it must necessarily be looked at along with the deviation from the average in Test cricket, and with the strike rate in limited overs cricket. One is a measure of consistency, the other of effectiveness. A one-day batting average of 40 with a strike rate of 65 isn’t great just as an average of 42 with two centuries and ten other innings isn’t brilliant either.

Sometimes this Indian team gives the feeling that it is being made up of players who are feeling the need to protect their numbers. When a town is under siege, its inhabitants hold on to whatever they can lay their hands on. When a team, and its members are insecure, they move into bunkers rather than into battle. Hence the need to bolster an average, to move into comfort cocoons.

A team cannot have players holding on to their own comfort zones but it cannot have players perpetually insecure about their place either. When India were playing excellent limited overs cricket from 2002-2004, the captain played the lead role in identifying and reassuring talent. Armed with his confidence, the players played bold, attacking cricket. Now, with the captain uncertain of his batting form, the selectors making aggressive noises and the coach speaking of his dislike of comfort zones, India have fallen into a defensive, protectionist mind-set.

You could see that in the elevation of young Venugopal Rao as opener. First of all, the selectors were wrong to have picked only two openers but having done so, and having lost Sehwag to a flu, you would have thought one of the senior players would have put his hand up and said, ‘‘I’ll open the batting today.’’ There isn’t much of a sanctity to batting numbers in limited overs cricket anyway.

When faced with a challenge it is an experienced player who is more likely to succeed than a rookie, it is he that must volunteer the difficult job.

Now India need to play brave, aggressive cricket in the next two games. Luckily for them, there is little fear of missing the final and, therefore, there is little to lose. Aggressive cricket is not rash cricket, it is merely seeking, and exploiting, every possible opportunity, even if that is a mere single.

Rahul Dravid once told me that every team has a big pot into which some people contribute and from which some withdraw. In the next two games, India need people to put their hands up and commit to be contributors. A person’s character is best revealed when he seeks the seemingly difficult.

If that happens, if the number of players who ‘play to stay in the team’ is vanquished by the number of those that ‘play to win a match’, India can make a serious move away from that unbecoming number seven ranking.