After the high of the Lord's win, their first at the hallowed ground in 28 years, MS Dhoni and the team management left out Stuart Binny, whose 78 in the second innings of the first Test at Trent Bridge blew away the clouds of defeat hovering over the team. Ishant Sharma, the hero at Lord's for his career-best 7 for 74 in the second innings, also had to miss out the Southampton Test on account of an ankle injury. While leaving Binny out was the team's decision, Ishant's unavailability couldn't be helped.
In hindsight, those two changes changed India's series. The men who replaced Binny and Ishant were batsman Rohit Sharma and medium pacer Pankaj Singh and both had an outing to forget. Rohit made 28 and 6, while Pankaj returned 0 for 146 and 0 for 33 as India lost the match by 266 runs.
At Old Trafford, India this time made three changes, bringing in
Having that in mind, now the question arises whether India should make changes once again for the fifth and final encounter at The Oval starting Friday. Gambhir had a horrible outing at Old Trafford; offspinner Ashwin, even though he did well with the bat, failed to take any wicket. However, Aaron impressed a lot, showing plenty of pace and his wicket of Moeen Ali with a vicious inswinger will stay as one of the moments of the series.
The suspects this time are Gambhir, Ashwin and Pankaj, who despite breaking his wickets drought at Old Tafford, failed to inspire any confidence. Medium-pacer Ishwar Pandey and wicketkeeper-batsman Naman Ojha, who piled on the runs for India A against Australia A recently with scores of 219, 101 and 110 in two matches and was drafted into the squad as a replacement for the injured Wriddhiman Saha, are the only players in the squad not to have got a game yet. Should India hand them Test debuts at The Oval or, having learnt from their experiences in the series, they stick to the team that played at Old Trafford are questions that must be bothering Dhoni a great deal.
By the look of things at present, sadly, India aren't likely to be going into the match unchanged. The cases of Pankaj and Gambhir need to be looked at with a magnifying glass. They looked very poor in the Old Trafford defeat. But then some would argue what's the guarantee that their replacements would revive the team. That the damage has already been done with the tourists trailing 2-1 in the series and bringing back Dhawan, Rohit, Shami or Binny is unlikely to do any good to the team.
But in view of the proverbial fact that losing squads are kept getting tinkered with, a couple of changes look to be on the cards. There is no update on Ishant's fitness but he gets fit in time, Pankaj will have to go. Even if Ishant is not fit, Pandey should be considered on the basis of his accuracy and better swinging skills. Dhawan should be brought back in place of Gambhir for one simple reason that Gambhir looks to be way past his prime, and if the team management has to pick between two uncertainties, it should go for the younger and futuristic option that is Dhawan, who not long ago looked in good touch in New Zealand. The third suspect, Ashwin, should be retained considering he can contribute with the bat and looking at the team's current batting crisis playing him won't be a bad idea.
The Oval Test seems to Dhoni's last chance at redemption and he can't afford to fail this time. Another loss or probably even a draw will certainly be the end of his captaincy. The selectors can't keep turning a blind eye to the fact that he has lost 12 Tests against one win outside the subcontinent in the last three years. Hopefully, Dhoni manages to assemble an eleven that brings an end to India's predicament.