Last game was an aberration, have faith in middle-order: Bangar

Assistant coach Sanjay Bangar believes India's batting collapse in the fourth ODI was an "aberration" and reposed faith on the middle-order, saying it has mostly delivered whenever put in a tough situation.

India's batting came a cropper in the Hamilton game as they were dismissed for their seventh lowest total of 92.

However, Bangar said it was an one-odd failure.

"The middle order has rose to the occasion many times and delivered. Yes some situation has been trying but it is not that the middle order hasn't performed," Bangar told reporters ahead of the fifth ODI against New Zealand here Sunday.

"When required, more often than not whenever it has been put in a situation, it has delivered, may be the last game was an aberration," he added.

Bangar explained his point by giving example of games -- Cuttack (India vs England, Jan 2017), Indore (India vs SA, Oct 2015) and MCG final (India vs Australia, Jan 2019) -- where the middle order contributed to win matches.

"...if they (top order batsmen) are batting well then the middle order doesn't get the opportunity required to maintain the groove," the former India allrounder said.

"It is also one of those series where our top order hasn't got a hundred, so it has given a lot of time to the middle order to go out there and play situations ... and they have finished games when they have got an opportunity."
"But they are quality players, even in the third game, Dinesh Karthik and Ambati Rayudu had stitched a partnership of 82 to finish the game, so we can't really draw too many conclusion after one-odd failure."
"There are going to be time where a player doesn't get 5-6 games on a row, so we are trying to make that balance. In the number of games that we had we have made sure that everybody is getting some sort of hit by rotating the players around."
Talking about the World Cup squad, Bangar said: "Probably the selectors have got that list down to 20, most of them are going to be part of the world cup squad and we have assessed potential of lot of players ... selectors are also watching intently and going forward we will settle into a nice team which covers all bases."