Despite winning the Asia Cup, VVS Laxman feels Indian team doesn't look settled

India were crowned the Asian Champions for the seventh time after they just went past Bangladesh in the thrilling final in Dubai. While everyone is busy praising the team for their performance in the tournament, the former Indian cricketer VVS Laxman has some strict words for them. He opines that the team’s middle-order shouldn’t have let the match go down the wire.

At the halfway stage, it felt that the Men in Blue will roll over Bangladesh to win the Asia Cup. But that wasn’t the case. The Tigers fought till the very end by putting the untested middle-order under extreme pressure. The likes of Ambati Rayudu, MS Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik couldn’t take India home and their wickets left Ravindra Jadeja and Bhuvneshwar Kumar with scoring over 50 runs in the end.

Cracks continue to exist

VVS Laxman, while speaking to the Times of India, felt that the Team India’s recent triumph doesn’t cover the failure of the other batsmen. They were put under the pump twice in two matches and on both the occasions, India almost lost the match. “India’s triumph, however, will not paper over the cracks that continue to exist. Over the last 18 months, the settled top-three of Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan has been doing the bulk of the scoring, which is what you would want in ODI cricket,” he said.

He was disappointed with the fact that the middle-order hasn’t come to the party when needed and that could cost India in the World Cup next year. “Invariably, one of them has batted deep into the innings and got the job done. But on the odd occasion when the middle-order has been required to apply the finishing touches, it hasn’t exactly fired on all cylinders. Friday night was another instance of taking a regulation chase all the way down to the wire,” Laxman added.

Team India has close to 24 ODIs to test most of their players in the lead up to the mega event and it will be interesting to see if they will finally go in with a settled line-up for the World Cup.

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