How did we lose our home advantage?

If you tuned in to the Nagpur Test any time during Hashim Amla’s marathon unbeaten 253, you probably found him camped on the back foot. This is not the first time such a tactic has been used successfully to thwart our spinners and negate our home advantage in recent years. Damien Martyn along with tailender Jason Gillespie did exactly the same thing to bat through most of the fourth day on a Chennai track in 2004 to save the Test for the Australians and go on to win the series.

Time was when playing back to a good length ball would get a batsman into strife, and you had to be nimble on your feet to get to the pitch of the delivery and smother the spin. That’s why you had that cordon of close-in fielders to snap up bat-pad catches as the batsman lunged forward - a regular mode of dismissal for Ricky Ponting in the 2000 series, for example.
But if the pitch is too slow and low, as it was in Nagpur, batsmen have enough time to hang back and adjust to whatever deviation there is from a spinner. And if the ball is too full, they can just lean forward and tap it or whack it on the half-volley.

It’s not just Nagpur either. Even the traditionally spin-friendly venues such as Kolkata and Chennai have changed their character after the pitches there were re-laid.  Earlier, they would decidedly get tricky by days 4 and 5, but now the soil composition is such, and they are so well rolled out, that in fact batting can become easier as the match progresses, as Martyn and Gillespie demonstrated.

It’s rumoured that the Kolkata pitch curator is under pressure to produce a dry, rank turner, just like we did in Kanpur after the South Africans had gone one up when they were here the last time, in which case Bhajji & Co. may get lucky. But in general the pitches in Mohali or Ahmedabad, Chennai or Kolkata, have been getting flatter and deader with each passing day, which is why Kamran Akmal managed to bat out almost the entire fifth day at Mohali and save a Test for Pakistan.

The art of flight
MAK Pataudi, who was the first to conceptualise a spin-based attack in home conditions to prey on the opposition’s weakness, agrees that these days “it’s often better to bring in the spinners quickly”, while there’s still some juice in the wicket.

But, more than in the pitches, he sees changes in our bowling and the visitors’ approach to spin. Take the bowling action, to begin with, which is fundamental to bringing the full repertoire of spin into play. When is the last time you saw a batsman being drawn forward and consumed in flight, for instance? “Harbhajan Singh has been a good bowler for India, but with an open-chested action it’s a little more difficult to beat the batsman in the air,” points out Pataudi. What that means is Bhajji has to mostly rely on the ball that turns and bounces to create a gloved or bat-pad chance, or the doosra, which he seems to have become a little more circumspect with after his action came under ICC scrutiny.

The limitations of this approach are perhaps becoming more apparent now, because playing spin in Indian conditions is no longer an alien experience for touring batsmen. “These guys used to come here once in a few years in our time. But now they visit frequently [for Tests, one-dayers, as well as the IPL],” observes Pataudi.

It may be one reason why, although centurion Jacques Kallis eventually perished lunging forward to offer a bat-pad chance off Harbhajan in Nagpur, that’s not a mode of dismissal you see too often these days. In fact, players from Australia and South Africa, especially, have taken a leaf out of the Indian batsmen’s book by improving their back foot play, and minimising the half-cock prod forward.

Spun like a top
Erapalli Prasanna, arguably the greatest off-spinner of all time, puts the onus squarely on the bowler, however, to make things happen against different batsmen in varying conditions. “If there is no life in the wicket, the bowler has to put life into it. Just up and down stuff will not threaten any batsman.”

Bishen Singh Bedi, a past master of guile in spin bowling, amplifies Prasanna’s observation by citing the example of Prasanna himself. “When I would stand near him at the stumps during practice, I could hear the whizz as the ball came off his palm, spinning like a top. It’s simple cricket logic: the more revolutions you impart on the ball, the more purchase you get off the wicket.”

One can only speculate about why Harbhajan Singh, Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha appear to lack the sort of zing that Bedi is talking about. In 2003, Harbhajan was to go to Australia for surgery on a ligament in the wrist, but decided against it. Who knows if he’s able to grip the ball as strongly as he used to? Or did the ICC scrutiny of his elbow action cramp his style? The fact is he mostly bowls a negative run-saving leg-stump line these days, which Bedi vehemently rejects.

“The dot ball has become the holy grail,” says Bedi, adding that he had overheard captain MS Dhoni on the stump mike instructing a spinner on a turning track: ‘kharid mat’ (don’t buy the batsman’s wicket). “Why should you not buy the batsman’s wicket?” asks Bedi. “Isn’t it better to have figures of 6 for 160 than 2 for 120?”

Whether you agree or not that the Indian spinners on view look jaded and bereft of ideas, what’s disheartening is that the likes of Bedi and Prasanna are not being tapped to identify and groom new spin talent in the country. For whatever reason.