Pakistan’s Usman Tariq (AP Photo)

CHENNAI: If the online troll army is getting worried about Pakistan’s mystery slinger spinner Usman Tariq ahead of India’s blockbuster clash against the neighbours, they have MS Dhoni to blame.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Apparently, Tariq, once a sales-man working in the UAE, changed the course of his life when he decided to escape the humdrum and chase his dream when he watched ‘MS Dhoni, The Untold Story’.Inspired by the Indian legend’s moment of truth in the film, when he left his job in Kharagpur as ticket-collector to become a full-time cricketer, Tariq quit his Dubai job and returned to Paki-stan. He worked on his game, got his opportunities in franchise leagues across the world, and in captain Salman Ali Agha’s words, is now “Pakistan’s X-factor”.

It’s Tariq’s stop-start run-up and the slinging delivery action that have caused irritation among teams, IPL’s new millionaire Cameron Green adding fuel to the fire after being unable to deal with Tariq in the recently-con-cluded ODI series.Suddenly, Tariq’s action has become the talking point and after the USA struggled against him on Tuesday, the decibels seem to have risen a bit. Tariq took 3-27, taking the steam out of the USA chase, and was the fulcrum of the spin quintet, which includes part-timer Saim Ayub too.It’s the traditionally slow Pre-madasa track, where Pakistan play India next, that’s leading to the cause for worry. Tariq, who stops before delivering, is very slow through the air and it sometimes seems that the ball wouldn’t reach the bat. The batter has to create all the momentum to hit him.While his slowness is par for the course because of the quirkiness of the action, the difficulty for the batter arises when one ball suddenly comes a little faster and turns. There are voices in the cricket world which insist that Tariq chucks that delivery and that he shouldn’t be allowed to play.But the mystery spinner has found an ally from an unusual quarter in the form of the master of the craft of off-spin, R Ashwin, who posted his support on X.Eminent batting coach and former India player WV Raman, too, believes Tariq isn’t chucking, but India shouldn’t find it difficult to play him. “With a round-arm ac-tion it is very difficult to chuck … It is the quirkiness of Tariq’s ac-tion that is creating the problem. Batters are used to a rhythm where everything keeps happening in one go. When suddenly there is a pause, you start thinking about what’s go-ing on,” Raman told TOI.“But Indian batters are good enough to deal with this. Kedar Jadhav and Riyan Parag bowl like that from time to time, so it’s not that they are not used to it,” he said. Over the next few days, the chat-ter will continue. The Indian play-ers are superb players of spin bowl-ing, somebody like Shivam Dube being a designated spin-hitter. Pakistan will have a few more spin-ners in their XI in the form of Mo-hammed Nawaz, Abrar Ahmed and Shadab Khan and India will need all their skill to deal with the threat, led by Tariq.

India’s captain Suryakumar Yadav during a training session at Arun Jaitley Stadium, in New Delhi. (PTI Photo)

To cope with the comparatively sluggish pitches in the tournament, especially in Colombo, India want bowlers to up their game & batters to adapt faster…NEW DELHI: India’s pacers and spinners split into two separate nets on either of the centre square here at the Ferozeshah Kotla on Tuesday evening. For the next two hours, the bowlers bowled with full intensity, a rare scenario in the middle of a long and important tournament, in which players look to preserve energy for the big moments. The batters’ persistent assault has hogged headlines for over a month. Under the Kotla lights, the spotlight fell firmly on the bowlers going flat out two days out ahead of the game against Namibia here.Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!Only Abhishek Sharma, still recovering from a stomach illness, didn’t turn up for the rigorous session.The prep, expectedly, was for beyond just the match against Namibia. From the looks of it, the Indian team is carrying out a distinct change in their approach. With the match against Pakistan in Colombo on Feb 15 clearing all administrative and political hurdles late on Monday night, it’s time to put attention to detail. The scare against USA last Saturday notwithstanding, the tournament truly gets underway from Sunday for India. The conditions in Colombo, which have been distinctly different to what India have been playing in recently, are going to consume a lot of mind space.

“We understand the sentiments and the different politics between the two countries. But I think it’s really important for us just to focus on the cricket side of things. It’s going to be a challenge going to Colombo, where Pakistan have been (stationed) for the last two weeks. We are fully focused on bringing our best game to that fixture next week,” India’s straight-talking assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate said on Tuesday.The nature of pitches in the tournament in general has not encouraged big scores so far. The comparatively sluggish pitch at the Premadasa stadium in Colombo, in particular, definitely isn’t going to escape the attention of the Indian think-tank. Hence, there’s this urge to deviate from the all-out-aggressive brand of batting, with the pitches expected to get tired and slower as the tournament progresses.“Judging how the pitches have played in the first five or six days of the tournament, there might be a slight revision in strategy and how we go about that,” Doeschate said.“The pitches haven’t played quite the way we thought yet and again we want to be adaptive. We should have been a lot better than we were in Mumbai (against USA). We have been going all out but with the kind of pitches around, you want a bit of technique,” he added before shifting the focus on the bowling attack.“I don’t think our bowlers have fired yet,” Doeschate said. “It’s maybe a little bit easy to look at the USA game and say that was a really good bowling performance, but you have to analyse it objectively in terms of where we put the ball and how we used the ball. We expect a lot more from the bowlers as well.“Having the world-class bowlers that we have, it does give the batters that freedom to make mistakes in this format. If you’re shooting for 250 all the time, you’re going to make mistakes. But we need to react to situations as well,” Doeshcate said.Washington provides optionsWith Washington Sundar going through his first practice session after recovering from a rib injury he sustained a month ago, the team has started reviewing combinations based on pitch conditions. “You know the luxury of having four allrounders is that you can change the combination. This is where Washington fits in,” Doeschate said.