Why India needs to stop playing safe in cricket
In the 1970s and 1980s the Indian cricket team had a simple motto: Don’t Lose. This led to the country being ultra-defensive in its approach to a cricket game and the goal was always to ensure a draw and then, possibly, go for a win. In some ways the team continues with this approach as it continues to attempt to bat up to number 8 or 9 in the test team. This is done by playing all-rounders who are neither brilliant with the bat or the ball but, instead, are journeymen who can do both but never consistently and rarely as matchwinners. The fact is that bowlers win matches and having a long-tail rarely compensates for the lack of a penetrating bowling attack.
IIn the last test in the India-England series at Lord’s India fielded eight batsmen — only Bumrah, Akash Deep, and Siraj were not recognized batsmen — but still lost the test when a difficult wicket exposed the fragility of the Indian batting line-up. The fact is that long batting line-ups do not automatically translate into a genuine batting capability that goes all the way up the batting order. Playing a batsman at number seven or eight rarely leads to a consistent performance of high scores by these players. There is a reason players who come in at five down and lower have low batting averages and are not mainstays of the batting. Sir Donald Bradman understood this and it was reflected in his selection of an all-time world eleven.
Bradman’s eleven consisted of the South African opener Barry Richards, the Australian opener Arthur Morris, Bradman himself, Sachin Tendulkar, and Sir Garry Sobers. He had one specialist wicket-keeper in Don Tallon who was not a wicket-keeper batsman in the mold of Adam Gilchrist, Allan Knott, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, or Kumara Sangakkara.
To this mix Bradman added five bowlers. The fast bowlers Dennis Lillie, Ray Lindwall, and Alec Bedser along with two spinners in Bill O’Reilly and Clarie Grimmet. Thus, when one factored in Sobers, Bradman’s dream team had six world class bowlers. Sir Donald was asked why he only had five batsmen (even though Lindwall had two centuries and five fifties in his Test career and would, therefore, be a useful lower order bat in any team like a Harbhajan Singh) and his response was telling. As he put it, one of the five batsmen would get a big score and then the bowlers would do the rest.
Of course if you have batsmen of the caliber of Richards, Bradman, Tendulkar, and Sobers in your line-up then the Don’s assertion would be true. To put this in perspective, the only teams in recent times that had seven good batsmen, including the wicket-keeper batsman, were Clive Lloyd’s West Indians of the 1980s who had Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Larry Gomes, Gus Logie, and Jeff Dujon.
The other team was Steve Waugh’s Australian team from the early 2000s: it had Hayden, Langer, Slater, Mark and Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting and the incomparable Adam Gilchrist. The bowlers were Lee, Warne, McGrath, and Gillespie, all of whom were match winners. The Australians had the added luxury of two part-time bowlers who had taken a lot of wickets. Mark Waugh’s gentle off-spin nabbed him 59 test wickets while Steve Waugh’s military medium pace was good enough to get the Australian captain 92 test wickets.
But, the Waugh brothers were both brilliant batsmen and the Australian team did not play the twins in the hope that they would pick up some wickets — that is what McGrath, Warne, Gillespie, and Lee were there for. And this team’s international track record is phenomenal. So what India needs are six good batsmen, a wicket-keeper bat, and four out and out bowlers.
As things stand, one of India’s six batsmen is Ravi Jadeja who adds a fifth bowler of decent credentials into the mix. But that still leaves the problem of finding four good bowlers.
The old joke when Richard Hadlee was in his prime was that you were playing the great Hadlee and the Leicestershire County Second XI bowling attack. One could make the same argument for the current Indian bowling attack in that it has a world class Jasprit Bumrah and the Bihar Ranji Trophy bowling attack. Yes, Akaash Deep got ten wickets in helpful conditions but that is a factor of good luck rather than consistently effective bowling. Notice also how Indian spinners become far less effective when they leave the spin-friendly tracks of India to bowl on truer pitches abroad.
So what are the lessons from this discussion? First, you have to depend on your top batting order to get you runs and not on the last four batsmen. Once in a while tail-enders can get you runs as the time when Bumrah and Shami scored heavily enough to give India an advantage and bowl out England. But that cannot be your game plan going into a test match. Anything that you get from the tailenders should be considered an unexpected gift to the team.
Secondly, in the last test Jadeja and Siraj batted valiantly but what were the top batsmen in the line-up doing? A batting line up of seven proven players should be enough for any team. And better batting discipline should govern how they play.
Thirdly, the 1980s were marked by four great all-rounders — Botham, Hadlee, Imran, and Kapil — and all of them were equally proficient with both the bat and the ball. Nowadays a mediocre bowler with an occasional high score qualifies as an all-rounder. In the Indian context, Ravi Ashwin was the best example of a top-notch bowler who could bat a bit because he did get six centuries and 14 fifties in 106 tests — four of the centuries and eight of the fifties were on the slow tracks in India. Not good enough to warrant a spot as an all-rounder but his 537 wickets at an average of twenty-four made him a world class bowler in the team (and for the record in his later years Ashwin was treated shabbily by both the coach and successive captains of the Indian team).
To sum up, India needs to stop playing safe and look for bowlers who can complement the outstanding Jasprit Bumrah. That is how you win test matches and series.
(Amit Gupta is currently working on a book on why the BCCI rules global cricket)
