THE INDIAN cricket team has not been able to field their best eleven in their recent past matches after the Cricket World Cup got over, as their bowlers have been getting injured on a regular basis. Even, during the World Cup 2011, Praveen Kumar was unfortunate to miss out in spite of having a good track record in the ODIs before the tournament. Series of unfortunate injuries to Indian pacers must have prompted the Indian opener, Virender Sehwag, to say that Indian fast bowlers need to be rotated to avoid injuries.

One may definitely agree with it and his suggestions are quite logical. But, one has to remember that India do not have great bench strength in their fast bowling department, unlike Indian batsmen, who have a tough task to cement their place in the squad due to the presence of quality batsmen waiting in the wings. Their lack of depth in the bowling department was exposed during India’s last tour of England, where their bowlers suffered heavily on the hands of the English batsmen.

Let's scrutinize the present strength of Indian fast bowlers, which includes Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan, Praveen Kumar, Sreesanth, Vinay Kumar, Varun Aaron, A Mithun, Munaf Patel and Umesh Yadav. Out of these bowlers the first three bowlers are always amongst the Indian pace spearheads. If any 2 of them are injured, India faces a big setback, as rest of the bowlers lack experience and are not capable of delivering at the international level.

With the Indian team playing the most number of matches under the ICC calendar, they are sure to burn out quicker than other fast bowlers around the world. Surely Sehwag is right, when he says that they should follow a rotational policy. For that to happen, one has to have good bench strength, which they do not possess, so the Indian think tank would not have to think twice before they put the bowlers' name on paper. Young fast bowlers need to be groomed from early on, so they are ready when they are called for national duty.

Sehwag’s advice may be taken into consideration, when India play teams such as Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and other weaker teams. But here another problem arises, India do not have many scheduled matches against these teams. They are involved in a tour with these countries every four to five years only.

Rather than giving the Indian bowlers a break, the Indian team needs a good physio who would be able to help the Indian bowlers in building their body by giving them proper training. The Indian team also has a bowling consultant in the form of Eric Simmons, who needs to make sure that the bowlers have a proper bowling action, which would help them in correcting their action if it is an injury prone bowling action.

While a rotations policy has its merits, its execution needs a lot thinking. For instance, if India is playing a tour on a bouncing track, and if it so happens that by rotation both Ishant and Zaheer need to be rotated, what are the best alternative? What about form? What if alterntives are not performing to their potential? Thus, timing of rotation is one of keys to this policy - otherwise rotation will be at the expense of a player not being available for which he is most appropriate. Another basic issue is that rotation assumes that the bench strength is of equal quality and special attributes - while this is far from reality.