Testing India’s talent
Imust confess I have really been enjoying the cricket series in England. The first thing is that it is happening at the right time of the day. One can return from work and still see the most part of the day’ s play. And one can do it in the best way possible, over a drink or two.
This particular series tome has been riveting also because it has brought the bowl er back into what has been turned into a bats man’ s game. England losing its entire side in just one session is an example of that.
The rules over the years have been very unfair to the bowler. The one bouncer limit per over thing, for instance, has made cricket less menacing and more boring. Then the change in the front foot rule for noballs (in the old days a bowler needed to have the back foot behind the line and that was all that was required). In limited overs cricket, the field restrictions and the absurd leg side wide and the use of two balls— all of that has been to favour batsmen.
That is why it has been so satisfying to watch the Test cricket series in England brought alive by the bowlers. I heard a fascinating thing said by commentator and West Indies legend Michael Holding. The four Indian quick bowlers in that third Test—I sh ant Sharma, Mohammed Shafi, Jaspreet Bum ra hand H ar di k P andy a—were each of them faster than the four quick bowlers for England—James Anderson, Stuart Broad, Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes. Holding re marked that he had never ever heard of that before, an Indian touring side with faster bowlers than the homeside. How amazing.
And there has been some first-rate fielding to support the quick bowling. Again, there was an interesting statistic from the series. That 20 catches in all had been dropped and of those 15 had been dropped by England. Sunil G av ask ar had written in one of his early books, I think it was Sunny Days or Runs ’n Ruins, about something he had been told on his first tour to England. The belief then was that English men never dropped catches at slip and so if you snicked, you walked without looking behind. G av ask ar wrote this in dismissive fashion, and right ly so.
Indian fielding in the last 15 years has caught up to a large extent with the rest of the world’ s( meaning the world outside of South Asia, of course ). The athleticism and the sliding stop sand that sort of thing has been on display in Indian sides for sometime now.
But this is the first time that I saw consistently good slip catching. This has never been something that we have been known to be good at doing, possibly because we have never had to be good at it given the lack of quality fast bowlers. Few things areas satisfying as seeing your fellows keep bowling around 145 km ph for whole sessions, with the bats men uncertain and the slips cord on packed and energetic.
Of course there is some excellent batting, as Vi rat Kohl is how edin the third test. But it is not the kind of batting that we are used to in the modern era; meaning one that is flowing and full of boundary hits. This is what Test batting is meant to be— dour and defiant. Ilike that as well. I find T 20 cricket to be a sort of it em number, enjoyable as a distraction but you can not make a full movie out of it. For me, slow and boring and hard Test cricket is the real deal.
India, and I have written about this before, has ruined Test cricket by making the dullest pitch es in the world. Also the very noisy atmosphere, the dust, the lack of carry on the balls, the ugly stadium sand the ridiculous amounts of advertising, all make the experience unpleasant. I like watching Test cricket in England, Australia and South Africa. I find New Zealand’ s grounds far too small, a sort of miniature form of cricket, and the West Indies plays its matches at a time when it is not possible for us to watch.
The other thing about this series is the luna tic aggression of Vi rat K oh li. When we lose, as we did in the first two games, it seems quite embarrassing to have this individual strutting about all the time. But when we are winning, the same bellicosity takes on a more pleasing aspect( to us, that is—I’ m sure it’ s irritating to our opponents no matter whether they’ re winning or losing ).
The last thing is that I am also watching with a sense of nostalgia. One of the first “adult” books I read was Aj it Wadekar’ s My Cricketing Years. It was published in 1973 and, though it was narrated in the first person, it was actually written by KN Pr abhu, a very fine writer.
Wadekar was captain of the Indian team in the period when it had that strange but beautiful bowling attack that was comprised entirely of spinners: Bedi, Chandrasekhar, Prasanna and Venkataraghavan. Someone like Solk ar would bowl a couple of slow medium overs to scuff up the ball and the spinners would come on, usually with the openers still batting.
In that Wadek ar book, there is also a reference to the young genius who scored 774 runs in a series in England, Sunil Gavaskar. Wadekar’s side defeated the English in that series( I think the score was 2-1) and it also defeated the West Indies under Sobers.
Nothing that our team has done since then, including winning two World Cups, to me has been as satisfying as those early wins abroad. I am reliving something of that same sentiment these days with the series against England and for that I am very grateful.