Cautious batting does pay off in NZ
Currently Indian cricket on tour is a tale of two teams—one, female, gliding smoothly into the T20 World Cup semi-finals in Australia while the other, male, unexpectedly battles headwinds in New Zealand.
The women have ridden on the back of diminutive leg-spinner Poonam Yadav, who has helped India defeat two tough opponents in Australia and New Zealand. They now have the comfort of knowing they’ll be in a semi-final in Sydney next week but facing an opponent as yet unknown.
For the men, the problems started in the ODIs and they’ve continued in the Test series. It may just be coincidence but the Indian men haven’t won since aggressive opener Rohit Sharma limped off the Bay Oval in their fifth successive T20 victory.
Perhaps it was Sharma’s absence through injury that prompted an unusual comment from captain Virat Kohli following India’s comprehensive defeat in the first Test. The articulate Kohli said in part; “I don’t think being cautious or wary will help because you might stop playing your shots.”
Kohli’s comments on batting are generally admirable, especially his reason for not adopting innovative shots in short form matches so they don’t infiltrate his Test match style. However, there’s a time for aggression, and there’s also occasionally a requirement to bat cautiously in Test cricket.
New Zealand, much like England’s seaming surfaces, is a place where caution is required more often than in Australia where most pitches are extremely true. Whatever the cause, at the Basin Reserve it was an abysmal batting effort from the No. 1 ranked Test team since they failed to reach 200 in either innings.
The batsman with the lowest strike rate in each innings was the obdurate Cheteshwar Pujara. It’s hard to be critical of a number three who was heavily involved in India beating Australia in 2018-19, with some lengthy stays at the crease anchoring the innings.
Placing a batting order is not an alternative to playing a game of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’. It’s important to get the balance right and to place players in a position where they are comfortable and hence more likely to succeed.
Pujara normally bats behind Rohit and Mayank Agarwal and ahead of Kohli. That’s an adequate amount of stroke-play surrounding Pujara and as a judicious shot-maker he’s ideal at three for balance. Mind you, Pujara needs to be careful he doesn’t slip into “net practice” mode and forget that the object in a match is to score runs regularly.
The other thing that Pujara has to be aware of—batting in the midst of stroke-makers—is not keeping them becalmed at the non-striker’s end for long periods. In Christchurch, he found the ideal balance of caution mixed with aggression.
With Rohit absent through injury it fell to the talented and audacious Prithvi Shaw to open the batting. There’s no doubting Shaw’s precocious talent but he needs to learn that there are times for caution against good bowling.
All his innings in both ODIs and Tests in New Zealand have been sprinkled with sparkling boundaries and he’s got away to a start each time but hasn’t managed a big score. He needs to understand that a quickfire 20 at the right time might win a T20 encounter but dismissal at that stage of a Test innings can be extremely costly. Things looked more promising after a flurry of boundaries in Christchurch but again he was dismissed at an inopportune time.
Needing to unearth the formula for success and rebound quickly, India were again made to struggle in Christchurch. Apart from needing a victory to level the series and restore confidence, there’s an important psychological reason for righting the ship.
India have a tough tour of Australia next summer and New Zealand were just obliterated by them under their home conditions. If the Indian men want to replicate the success their female counterparts are currently enjoying in Australia, they’ll need to re-discover the art of amassing match-winning scores.