Swallowing bullets

Let's say you are a member of an army that is under attack. Lets also assume that both armies have identical reserves of ammunition at their disposal. When the battle commences, your army decides to not utilize the small-bore ammunition, in fact using it so little that almost 50 - 60% of your ammunition is not utilized at all. In essence, your army is banking on the fact that the big weapons will carry the day, even as your enemy relishes in bombarding you with a flurry of small bullets that are at their disposal, injuring you repeatedly as they do so.

What would you say to a strategy like that? It is easy enough to see where it would take you. When your big weapons hit sensitive areas (and you need most of them to be accurate) you will win in a spectacular manner, but if the big guns do not work, you do not have any more ammunition to fall back upon.

Does such a strategy make any sense?

Then why, oh why, does the Indian cricket team treat their ODI batting in such a foolhardy manner? One simple stat will suffice. Lets's lok at the number of dot balls and the number of runs that they have scored by actually running between the wickets (i.e. excluding boundary hits - only 1's, 2's, and 3's). In the ongoing England-India ODI series:

Game 1: 209 dot balls and 106 runs
Game 2: 160 dot balls and 123 runs
Game 3: 193 dot balls and 100 runs
Game 4: 170 dot balls and 110 runs

The team gets a total of 300 legal balls in a match. Out of which the Indian team blithely avoids scoring on an average about 183 balls per match (which translates to a little over 30 overs!). So basically they are trying to outscore England in the remaining 20 overs. They indulge in an all-or-nothing approach while batting that is totally bemusing. And it starts at the top - in the series, Sourav Ganguly has played out 123 dot balls and taken just 43 runs. Sachin Tendulkar has played out 170 dot balls, and taken just 72 runs. So between the two of them they have played about 50 overs and and not scored a single run!! Two batsmen, themselves, have not scored a single run in 1/4th of the overs that the entire team has had at its disposal.

It is, therefore, not surprising that when they fail to get the boundaries the team loses. The one time this series that they managed to hit the fence they actually tried to manufacture shots by stepping around the crease. One success and then they went back into their shell. How long can India continue to be blinded by a combined 26,000 ODI runs every time they come out to bat? You'd think, by now, they would have learnt the art of placing the ball and milking singles.

I am a lousy batsman and I know how to do it. Why can't they?