‘Wicketkeeper Pant is work in progress but will surely improve’
India’s fielding coach R Sridhar says errors made by fielders in Australia will not be swept under carpet
MUMBAI: The leg-side trap by India’s bowling unit to choke the Australian batsmen—hatched in July last year as revealed by bowling coach Bharat Arun— worked wonders during India’s 2-1 series win. But for it to be executed as well as the visitors did, another dimension had to be fine-tuned: the catching in some of the most challenging areas on the field. Leg slip, leg gully, backward short leg, backward square leg—all of them needed to be at their sharpest best, and without the clear vision of the ball that the slip cordon usually gets from outside edges. These positions are often a blind side for fielders with the sight of the ball covered by the batsman
It’s where India’s fielding coach R Sridhar swung into action, getting under the helmet himself in training sessions to prepare the designated fielders for the final stage of the out of the box tactic. “We asked someone to throw the ball hard, I was wearing a helmet and we were flicking the ball on to the leg side to prepare for that plan,” Sridhar said in an interview. “We identified the fielders who were likely to stand there, and we had someone throwing and flicking or pulling the ball to the leg gully or leg slip area. We practiced catches for that like we would practice for the backward short leg position.”
Think of Cheteshwar Pujara’s low catch at leg slip to dismiss Steve Smith in the first innings in Melbourne off R Ashwin, or of Shubman Gill’s smart grab at a slightly closer and finer backward square leg to stop Marnus Labuschagne’s flick and hand Mohammed Siraj his maiden Test wicket in the same innings. It set into motion a successful strategy that engineered India’s remarkable turnaround after the Adelaide debacle and left the hosts gasping for run-scoring opportunities.
India dropped a few catches in the series—so did Australia and arguably at more crucial junctures like the last day of the drawn Sydney Test—and Sridhar acknowledges that they have already spoken about it as a group. But we’ll get to that later.
Before that let’s talk about the aspects on the field that contributed to an Indian overseas series triumph like few others.
“Sticky fingers Rohit Sharma, creating a record,” Sridhar said of Sharma’s five catches in Brisbane, four of them at slips, which equalled the record for most catches by an Indian in a Test against Australia and set one by an Indian at the Gabba.
“We saw how Ravindra Jadeja ran Steve Smith out (a direct hit from outside the circle in Sydney), or how well Ajinkya Rahane caught against the spinners at slips. Mayank Agarwal did reasonably well except for that one error in Adelaide. Shubman is an extremely good student of the game. We saw Wriddhiman Saha jumping and doing some magic behind the stumps. Even Rishabh Pant took a couple of brilliant catches in Brisbane. I thought Rishabh did very well in Brisbane as a wicketkeeper. He is definitely improving a lot.”
The spotlight often seems to be that much more on Pant the Test wicketkeeper, notwithstanding his exploits as a specialist batsman that turned two matches on its head in the series. Every fumble, every drop with the glove from Pant creates an uproar among the keepers of social media. Sridhar believes it will be a different challenge for
Pant to keep wicket in turning Indian conditions, but one that the 23-year-old has enough time and hunger to work towards.
“The key aspect for him is working hard on his technique and glove work. He is someone who has understood now what needs to be done and is putting in a lot of hours. He is sacrificing his batting time and allotting it for his wicketkeeping. It is a great shift in mindset for him. So he is working his backs off. Pant is a work in progress, he will definitely improve and he has got age on his side. He is putting in the hard yards on his glove work, and fingers crossed he will do well against England, if he gets an opportunity,” Sridhar said.
India travelled to Australia after six months of inaction during the lockdown followed by two months of IPL action in the UAE. Adjusting to the intensity of 50-overs cricket on the field straight out of a 14-day quarantine to start the series took a couple of games, according to Sridhar. “Initially it was a bit of a challenge for the boys to keep it going for 50 overs. But later they got their act together once we moved to Canberra (for the third ODI). The intensity was up there again,” he said.
All the talk over the course of the Test series was about India being without their best batsman and frontline bowlers. Mind you, the team was also without two of its gun fielders— Virat Kohli who missed three Tests and Jadeja who got injured in the Sydney Test—for a large part of the series. “You can’t replace a Kohli or a Jadeja on the field; those two are of a different league altogether. But the young boys are very coachable, always ready to listen. So we managed. I thought it was quite fruitful, and the boys are learning what requires to be done at the highest level and over a period of five days. It was a good insight for the boys and they’ll only get better from here,” Sridhar said.
Since Sridhar took up the role in 2014, Team India has evolved to become one of the most formidable fielding units in world cricket. In that regard, the series was a bit of an aberration, and Sridhar put a few chances that went abegging down to the difficulty in sighting the pink ball under lights in Adelaide, the high-pressure situation in Brisbane and shifting the mindset of fielders from white-ball to redball cricket.
“We did make a few errors. I don’t want it to be swept under the carpet. We had spoken about it, and we corrected it in Sydney and Melbourne where we caught really well. A couple of catches went down in Brisbane, where the intensity of the game was different. But that happens, we addressed it within the group and everybody understands what needs to be done, what mindset is required at different junctures of the game. The mindset differs from the whiteball game to the red-ball game, and the shift has to be made by the player. But we’ve got to cut them some slack,” he said.
An example of that change shift in mindset between formats was Jasprit Bumrah’s spilt catch in Adelaide off a Labuschagne pull shot. Stationed at the fine leg boundary, a leaping Bumrah instinctively tried to push the ball back inside the field of play instead of catching it. While in Test cricket that is dubbed a missed chance, in limited-overs cricket that could be five crucial runs saved.
“It’s a very split-second subconscious call. And these are mistakes which are worth making, because only if the player makes such mistakes will you be able to educate them and talk to them about the right approach in different formats. There are certain mistakes which are only learnt on the field of play under pressure. You can’t recreate that in practice,” Sridhar said.
Yet, what this series has done is bring to the fore the work done by India’s support staff behind the scenes and in those very practice sessions. “Big hug to Vikram and Arun sir on how they rallied around the batting and bowling units. A lot of credit must go to Ravi Shastri for the way the boys played and the way things turned around after the Adelaide Test. It shouldn’t need a series victory of this magnitude to give him credit for what he has been doing for the last five years,” Sridhar said.
Now, more than a week into the history and hysteria, Sridhar believes it’s time to move on to the upcoming series against England. “Because like we forgot Adelaide in 36 hours, we should also forget this,” he said.