Time to end the 'KumBha' mela

Given the recent strike rate of the ageing Kumble-Harbhajan combine - over 40 runs per wicket - India has nothing to lose and everything to gain by replacing them with young spinners

Anil Kumble apparently requires a cracked, powdery, hard, bouncy, rough and under-prepared pitch to make any impression these days. In all other conditions, he struggles to take wickets. This has always been the case, but it seems to have got accentuated with advancing age and creaking joints. In the last two series, one at home and the other abroad, plus the first innings of the current Test against Sri Lanka, he has given away 1,051 runs for a measly 24 wickets - that's 44 runs per wicket.

Harbhajan Singh has hardly fared any better, giving nearly 40 runs per wicket in the same period. If you take away the Kanpur Test, where the pitch was so under-prepared that even Sehwag was unplayable, Harbhajan's record is in fact poorer than Kumble's. And yet Kumble and Bhajji, or the 'KumBha duopoly' as a reader of this column helpfully dubbed the pair, continue to be India's main strike bowlers.

If bowlers go at over 40 a wicket, it means the opposition is scoring over 400 on average per innings, and India can at best hope for a draw. In the current Test, it isn't just that Kumble bowled 37 overs without taking a wicket, or that Harbhajan gave away nearly 150 runs for his two wickets, it is the disdain with which all the Sri Lankan batsmen treated them, scoring at nearly 4 an over, and accelerating at will without seeming to be in any danger which signals a change of guard is overdue.

How different the so-called dead Colombo pitch looked when it was the Indians' turn to bat. Every ball had to be ground out as pressure mounted on the batsmen from both ends. Even if the newcomer Ajantha Mendis got only one wicket - and I believe he missed a second wicket by not appealing for an LBW against Ganguly who got a pad-bat - none of the batsmen could relax or score freely against him, which probably contributed to Muralitharan's bagful of wickets.

The meek capitulation of India's experienced middle-order batsmen, each one of whom has more than a hundred Tests under his belt, is of course equally unacceptable given the abundance of talent available in the country, which became evident during the IPL. But however abject the batting collapse may have been, I think the more fundamental problem the Indian team faces is the obvious lack of penetration in its bowling, except on wickets tailor-made for them, and at the root of that problem is the 'KumBha duopoly'.

Thanks to the Twenty20 World Cup, the subsequent revamp in the one-day squad with MS Dhoni at its helm, and now the IPL, a whole line of young middle-order batsmen led by Rohit Sharma, Robin Uthappa and Suresh Raina are waiting in the wings to take over from Dravid & Co. if they continue to fail. The pace bowling department too is now spoilt for choice with RP Singh, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel and Manpreet Gony ready and capable, apart from the two playing in this Test - Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma - who I thought bowled creditably to pick up two wickets apiece on a slow and low wicket. So what's really lacking is the spotting and nurturing of new spinning talent.

There is usually not more than one slot open for a spinner in a limited overs game, which limits the opportunities for exposure to new spinners even in events such as the IPL. And so when it comes to a Test series, the selectors seem unable to think outside the KumBha box. Can you recollect the last time this duo won India a Test match? Perhaps the Delhi Test against Pakistan, on one of the last remaining pitches which favour Kumble's style of bowling.

How much worse can India do than conceding 600 for 6 to a Lankan side that has only two batsmen of real class? So then why not abandon the KumBha fixation, and either play more pace bowlers, as they should have done in Melbourne at the start of the Australian series, or give the Test cap to young spinners like Pragyan Ojha, Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra, as they should have done for the current series? In fact, Amit Mishra was the most impressive of the lot in the IPL, and more dangerous than Kumble at any rate, but he can't even get on to the reserve bench of the Test side.

Will Amit Mishra do worse than 40 runs a wicket? Hardly likely. On the other hand, there's a chance he might surprise a few batsmen with his sharp googlies and quick flippers. Or Ojha might get through a few defences with his well-disguised armers. Piyush Chawla I'm less impressed with because he seems to lack guile and penetration, but there must be others who have just not surfaced as the KumBha duo monopolises series after series. India desperately needs something new and unfamiliar, like a Mendis, to spice up its spin.
c_sumit@dnaindia.net