India’s web of spinners a sticky problem for Proteas

ONLY in three of the 2 187 Tests played before India and SA began the second match of their series in Bangalore on Saturday had four consecutive days been sacrificed to rain.

Come in number four. Your time is truly up.

Saturday’s play ended with India having reached 80 without loss after dismissing SA for 214.

And that was that: not another ball was bowled before, at 11.30am yesterday, the sensible decision was taken to call the whole thing off.

Then, before noon, the sun shone brightly over Bangalore for the first time since the South Africans arrived last Tuesday. For a few minutes, at least.

At least the match didn’t join the list of seven Tests that have been abandoned entirely, two each in Manchester and Dunedin.

SA have now had a dozen days to reflect on what went wrong in the first Test in Mohali, where India bowled them out for 184 and 109 and won by 108 runs inside three days, and in their first innings here.

Seven days from today, the third Test will start in Nagpur.

But it’s not as if they need that long to identify the problem.

Twenty-seven of the 30 wickets they have lost have gone down to off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja and leg-spinner Amit Mishra.

Ashwin is the best spinner in Test cricket and, on current form, perhaps the best bowler in the game.

His supporting cast are not in the same league, but he makes them look good. Whatever. The issue is spin. “We’ve had three innings that haven’t gone to our plan,” Hashim Amla said yesterday. “I am sure in the Nagpur Test, hopefully we come good.”

However, there is another side to this discussion.

Leg-spinner Imran Tahir, offspinners Simon Harmer and Dane Piedt, and part-timers JP Duminy and Dean Elgar are all in SA’s squad, and Indian conditions are bespoke for bamboozlement by bowlers like them.

SA’s spin attack have taken 15 of the 20 Indian wickets that have fallen, but why haven’t they been as effective as India’s?

The short answer is that India’s slow poisoners are better. But questions remain about how the visitors are using their spinners.

Chief among them is why Tahir, the most accomplished and most experienced of them, seems to be at the back of the queue.