Dhoni has already been twice guilty of breaching ICC Code of Conduct, rule 2.5, which states that a captain who is pulled up for three offences of slow over-rates in a 12-month period would suffer an automatic ban in the next match of the same format.
The Indian captain and his men were deemed to have bowled three overs short during the recently-concluded Barbados Test, which was the second such offence in 2011, following a similar breach of rules in the Cape Town Test against South Africa earlier this year. The onus is now on India’s three premier bowlers to avert such a fate befalling their skipper.
Ishant Sharma may be in fantastic form with a 10-wicket haul in the drawn Barbados Test, but he is the main culprit in this series, taking extremely long to finish off his overs in time.
“Ishant takes a long time to return to his bowling crease and it sometimes stretches his over to seven minutes,” said a source during the second Test.
The case with Praveen Kumar is slightly different. Praveen does return to his bowling mark briskly but he has the habit of staring down the batsman after almost every ball, something that doesn’t help in time-keeping. Even Harbhajan Singh, though a spinner, is not much of a help in making up for slow overs. “If he bowls 20 overs in a day, you would still find the slow over-rate hasn’t improved by much.”
It isn’t just the bowlers who are to blame, but Dhoni too with his constant shuffling of the field.
He did try getting Suresh Raina to bowl his off-spinners on the last afternoon in a bid to speed up the rate but it only marginally helped the matter.
Thus, Indian bowlers are required to win the Dominica Test and win the three-Test series but if it comes at the cost of a ban on their skipper, they would have paid a heavy cost for their efforts.
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