Tourists face extra threat from Ishant and Bumrah
➤ It is not just India’s spinners who England should fear in third Test but pink-ball swing from the hosts’ top-class attack
Everyone expects England’s bowling attack to be more incisive with a pink ball. Yet it is eminently possible that India’s pace bowlers will out-bowl England’s in the third Test in Ahmedabad, just as the home spinners outbowled theirs in the second in Chennai.
For all of James Anderson’s expertise and Olly Stone’s pace, India’s fast bowlers have been more enthusiastic – spell for spell – than England’s have been collectively.
Even though India suffered two major casualties when they were hit in Australia – their pace bowler Mohammad Shami and left-arm spinner Ravi Jadeja – they can still field a top-class pace attack which, equipped with a pink ball and particularly at twilight, could run through England’s top order.
Ishant Sharma, 32, will be playing his 100th Test if selected, so Anderson is not unrivalled in his knowledge. Jasprit Bumrah has a sensational Test record for someone who has played only one home Test, Mohammed Siraj in his debut series was India’s leading wickettaker in Australia, and India’s call-up of a fourth pace bowler in Umesh Yadav (with a tidy Test record of 148 wickets at 30) suggests they could play three of these four under the lights.
It is a far cry from half a century ago when India would open their bowling with the Nawab of Pataudi, or Sunil Gavaskar would act as opening bowler as well as batsman, and their speeds would be about the same as Sir Geoffrey Boycott’s mum. Spin was everything. Not now, especially away from home. In Australia, India’s pace bowlers took 42 wickets, their spinners 23.
Ishant is an example of how India have come to maximise their pace resources. For years he would coast along like Stuart Broad on a bad day,
Bumrah’s record is up there alongside the greats, with 83 wickets at an average of just 21
hanging the ball outside off stump, fairly economical but averaging fewer than three wickets per Test, looking the part of a new-ball bowler but not always acting it.
Lately, Ishant has been transformed – like Broad last summer – into a far more attacking bowler, and by the same means: pitching a fuller length. In his past three years, after meandering through midcareer with an average that at times scaled 38, Ishant has taken 68 wickets at only 19 each. It is no coincidence that Ishant has been giving white-ball cricket a miss. He has not played a one-day international for five years, or a T20 international for 7½ years. There is no bigger deterrent to pitching the ball up than bowling with a white one.
It was a sign of Ishant’s new outlook that he played a few championship games for Sussex instead of the 2018 Indian Premier League. At Hove, Sussex coach Jason Gillespie preached the doctrine of pitching the ball up to hit the batsman’s pads just beneath the roll. Ishant took 15 wickets at 23 for Sussex, then 18 at 24 in the subsequent five-test series in England. By pitching fuller, Ishant has been able to swing the new and old ball both ways, not just jag it back like he used to.
Only 10 pace bowlers – 11 if you count Jacques Kallis – have played 100 Tests, and Kapil Dev is the only Indian hitherto. Some of their tracks are disheartening, like Chennai. Of Ishant’s 302 Test wickets, 103 have been taken in India, 199 abroad. And of those pace bowlers to have played 100 Tests, only Courtney Walsh and Makhaya Ntini would have been consistently faster than Ishant.
England’s top order are therefore going to be examined by the pink ball, especially if India play three seamers. Even though he has played only one home Test, the first of the pair at Chennai, Bumrah’s record is up with the all-time greats with 83 wickets at 21 each and 4½ wickets per Test. Never mind India’s spinners, Ishant and Bumrah can match England’s new-ball pair.