India in Australia 2011-12: Fourplay sans penetration

As non sequiturs go, the strategy of strengthening the batting line-up as a therapy for a weak bowling attack must surely take some beating! But that’s the cricketing logic that has haunted the Indian team for a while now.

Of course it is strange: The bowling attack is castigated for being both weak and non-menacing, but when the time comes to do something about it, it is the batting department which is shored up. Consequently, the under-manned bowling department is further emaciated by poor support from a bunch of sloppy, lumbering fielders and under-performing batsmen.

So where have we gone wrong?

For some time now, the Indian team has stuck to a formula that has outlived its usefulness primarily because of ageing, unfit personnel.

The concept of six batsmen, wicket-keeper and four bowlers worked wonderfully well as long as the bowlers were young, fit and energetic. Athletic fielding and sharp catching substantially boosted the potency of the bowling attack. Further, the bowlers’ task became all the easier if they had the luxury of defending huge scores or if their batsmen relished the pressure of chasing a target.

During the early days of this concept the Indian team opted for two fast-medium bowlers and two spinners on home soil and three pacemen and one spinner on pace- conducive pitches in England, Australia and elsewhere. The force multipliers of the attack were the handy medium pace bowling of Sourav Ganguly (32 Test & 100 ODI wickets) and the spin of Sachin Tendulkar (45 Test & 154 ODI wickets) and Virender Sehwag (39 Test & 92 ODI wickets).

Tendulkar and Sehwag, before their respective shoulder operation, were often called upon to turn their arm over and relished it. Tendulkar’s leg spin deliveries spun a mile even as it bounced and tested batsmen. Sehwag too had a lovely loop with his off-spin bowling and the extra nip that he got off the pitch made him a decent part-time bowler. Of course, in ideal conditions, Ganguly swung the ball both ways and provided respite to the main fast bowlers.  

The few overs sent down by these three players added to the depth and variety in the attack. It also enabled the team to pack the side with an extra batsman. These apart, all these players, including Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Harbhajan Singh, Anil Kumble, Venkatesh Prasad, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Mohammed Kaif, et al were young, fit and more athletic as fielders. This lifted the quality of the game tremendously.
A point to be stressed is that if there are more bowlers, the main strike bowler does not get over bowled and hence jaded.

Additionally, more bowlers mean the bowling load can be spread around a lot easier and the main bowlers can be relatively fresh through the day. This also helps them relax and be in the right frame of mind for that short, sharp burst.

In the present Indian team, Zaheer Khan, the strike bowler, is 33 years of age. But he has to bowl as much or more than the others in the pack. Unfortunately he is not as fit as he used to be and over-bowling him actually reduces his effectiveness. 

The first Test in Melbourne is a case in point. Australia were on the ropes at 214 for six. But as Zaheer & Co ran out of steam and ideas, tailenders Haddin, Siddle, Pattinson, Hilfenhaus and Lyon took the total to a winning 333.

In England too, Praveen Kumar, in particular, and Sreeshanth and Ishanth Sharma had the home team tottering at 124 for 8 in the Nottingham Test before Stuart Broad and Swann took them to relative safety at 221.

In both Tests, a fifth bowler would have been ideal to drive home the advantage. But that was not to be and India lost the momentum. Worse, Praveen Kumar was bowled to the ground in England and soon became unfit for the Australia tour.

Theoretically, and practically too, with only four bowlers a team’s options are reduced and its strategies become obvious. The West Indies’ champion team of the 1980s which pioneered the four-bowler strategy could do so because it had a great pool of match-fit, fearsome pacemen (Roberts, Holding, Croft, Garner, Marshall, Wayne Daniel, Winston Davis, Patrick Patterson and much later Ambrose) to choose from. Each was a world-class paceman and had his own distinctive style in knocking batsmen over. Significantly, teams of that era were not regulated by the minimum 90 overs per day clause and went about their task quite leisurely.  Importantly, the West Indies team of that era drove home the lesson that four outstanding pace bowlers could be just as effective in hunting down batsmen as a motley group of five.

But the fact remains that although teams have fielded brilliant bowling, combinations like McGrath and Warne (1001 wickets),  Ambrose and Walsh (762 wickets) or Wasim and Waqar (559 wickets),  no team has managed to put together a quartet as imposing or devastating as the West Indies team of the late 70s and 80s.

India, for obvious reasons, cannot bank on an all-pace or all-spin combination. But it urgently needs to field an all rounder or two to take the load off its main four bowlers.

It needs to look back to its most successful outing of the 1980s when it had Kapil Dev, Binny, Madan Lal/ Chetan Sharma, Mohinder Amarnath, Maninder Singh and Ravi Shastri to man the bowling attack. Or the 90s, when Javagal Srinath, Prabhakar, Kumble, Venkatpathy Raju and Rajesh Chauhan did the trick. In India’s successful 2003 tour of Pakistan , Irfan Pathan, Balaji, Nehra, Zaheer, Kumble and of course Ganguly, Tendulkar and Sehwag did the bowling honours.

In short, fielding five bowlers reflects a positive outlook and sends the right message to the opposition. The fact that wicket-keeper Dhoni is a leading batsman in his own right affords India the liberty of strengthening its bowling attack, even if that fifth bowler is a batting all rounder.

Otherwise, this four-bowler strategy backed by an indifferent fielding unit is bound to cause a lot more sorrow than joy.