Third test of the India-Australia series Down Under will begin tomorrow and India has got its task cut out on the bouncier tracks of WACA, Perth. Already reeling under humiliating defeats in earlier tests at Melbourne and at Sydney Indian team is under extreme criticism from former players, cricket pundits as well as ordinary cricket lovers. There could be some omissions and additions in the team for the third test. There are already talks that Virat Kohli, who failed miserably in the last four innings, would be replaced by Rohit Sharma, who would be playing his debut test match if that happens. There are also talks about axing the senior players, particularly VVS Laxman and this piece explains why this writer thinks it is a bad idea.
Fact of the matter remains that things haven’t changed much all these days in Indian cricket – the team is a group of lions only at home, in away matches they are often blown away by the opposition; Indian batting collapses the moment Sachin Tendulkar gets out (Indian cricket enthusiasts still keep our habit of switching off our television sets when Sachin goes back to the pavilion, for we believe nothing else remains to be seen other than a batting collapse); even on swinging conditions Indian fast bowlers won’t be able to swing the ball, when the opposition bowlers frequently swing the ball and beat Indian bats and take outside edges; Indian batsmen find life difficult at swinging and bouncy tracks and get out cheaply (an SMS joke about this goes something like “Indian batsmen are like faithful husbands, they perform only at home”); Indian captains get into the defensive mindset quite easily and will keep defensive field. When this remains the state of affairs, axing the seniors doesn’t seem to be the magic bullet that would solve all the problems that have inflicted the Indian team.
The argument that is being put forward by those who call for axing of the seniors is that most of them have well passed their expiry date in the game and therefore it is important to get the youngsters in the team in their place. And they also come up with statistics to show that the senior batsmen in the team – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman – have been in very poor form in the last 8-10 test matches that India played. When some of those arguments are not untrue we need to also look at the performance of the youngsters in the team. If we take the last 6 overseas matches that India lost – four in England and two in Australia – we can see that all Indian batsmen, irrespective of whether they are seniors or juniors, have failed miserably. In England if the senior Rahul Dravid was the only batsman who batted well, in Australia, in the last two tests it is the senior Sachin Tendulkar who has batted well, with an average of 56.50. In both these places the so called junior batsmen in the team fared rather miserably, mainly because of their lack of proper batting technique in the swinging and bouncing foreign tracks. We have already seen the southpaws Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina finding it difficult against the short ball. And Virat Kohli was not able to make any mark in the six tests he has played up to now - when the situation demands the batsman to come really forward to the front foot to the well pitched-up swinging ball, he is not able to do that well enough. His forward movement to the front foot is limited and in the process he ends up putting his left leg right in front of the stumps, which resulted in him getting out LBW two times in last 4 innings in Australia. When there is such a big gap in the batting techniques of the youngsters in the team is it wise to put them in the line of fire directly in a foreign pitch? Let them play some tests at home, get more experience, tighten up their batting technique and then play at foreign pitches. Even Sachin Tendulkar, a young batting prodigy he was, played his debut match in Pakistan, a track that is more or less similar to Indian tracks.
If about dropping VVS Laxman from the team, was it long back that we were lavishing praises on him in the way he batted with the tail enders and brought victory to his team once against Australia and once against Sri Lanka? Though it is true that we can’t think about past performances and can’t carry a non-performing batsman for long, we must give some more chances to VVS on account of his batting prowess that he has been showing for all these years, particularly against the Aussies. As a supporting argument for keeping VVS for some more time in the team this writer would like to bring in the example of Ricky Ponting. His century at Sydney was his first in the last 17 innings. What would have happened had the Australian management dropped Ponting because he was not performing up to his standards in the last 17 innings?
When it is true that the main reason for India’s poor performance in Australia is that the batsmen are not playing well, all blame can’t be put on them alone. The bowling of Indian fast bowlers at Sydney was nothing but awful. When the Aussie bowlers were able to derive bounce and seam from the pitch as well as swing in the air, Indian bowlers found it difficult even to put the ball in the right line and length, not to mention bounce, seam or swing. Making good use of such un-inspiring and bland bowling attack against them, the Aussie batsmen made merry and piled on runs. Michael Clarke hit an unbeaten triple hundred where as Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey made big hundreds. It remains to be seen how they are going to bowl in a seamer friendly track at Perth. There is every possibility that they would get carried away by the bite in the pitch and would overdo the bouncers thereby giving many chances for the Aussie batsmen, who have played all their lives in such bouncier tracks, to rock back to the back foot and hit pulls and hooks as and when they wish. Indian bowlers should use their head more and should bowl many full pitched deliveries and make the Aussie batsmen play around their off stump in what they call the ‘corridor of uncertainty’. They can always use the bouncer as the surprise delivery, but overdoing it (which is what we have seen all these years whenever Indian bowlers ball in bouncier tracks) won’t help them in any way.
Now it would be good for the Indian team that is playing Down Under if there are no further talks of dropping players midway. Now that they are there playing a cricket series in a foreign country let us support them and hope that they would click in the coming tests. Good time for such discussions would be after the tour is over and the team come back home. It won’t be a bad idea to include Rohit Sharma in the final eleven in the place of relatively new Virat Kohli. However it defies logic if there is talk about inserting the debutant Rohit Sharma in the place of the veteran VVS Laxman midway of such a high profile away series. Axing the seniors is not what we need for an improved performance but better application of the cricketing skills by the team – bowlers and batsmen alike.
Fact of the matter remains that things haven’t changed much all these days in Indian cricket – the team is a group of lions only at home, in away matches they are often blown away by the opposition; Indian batting collapses the moment Sachin Tendulkar gets out (Indian cricket enthusiasts still keep our habit of switching off our television sets when Sachin goes back to the pavilion, for we believe nothing else remains to be seen other than a batting collapse); even on swinging conditions Indian fast bowlers won’t be able to swing the ball, when the opposition bowlers frequently swing the ball and beat Indian bats and take outside edges; Indian batsmen find life difficult at swinging and bouncy tracks and get out cheaply (an SMS joke about this goes something like “Indian batsmen are like faithful husbands, they perform only at home”); Indian captains get into the defensive mindset quite easily and will keep defensive field. When this remains the state of affairs, axing the seniors doesn’t seem to be the magic bullet that would solve all the problems that have inflicted the Indian team.
The argument that is being put forward by those who call for axing of the seniors is that most of them have well passed their expiry date in the game and therefore it is important to get the youngsters in the team in their place. And they also come up with statistics to show that the senior batsmen in the team – Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman – have been in very poor form in the last 8-10 test matches that India played. When some of those arguments are not untrue we need to also look at the performance of the youngsters in the team. If we take the last 6 overseas matches that India lost – four in England and two in Australia – we can see that all Indian batsmen, irrespective of whether they are seniors or juniors, have failed miserably. In England if the senior Rahul Dravid was the only batsman who batted well, in Australia, in the last two tests it is the senior Sachin Tendulkar who has batted well, with an average of 56.50. In both these places the so called junior batsmen in the team fared rather miserably, mainly because of their lack of proper batting technique in the swinging and bouncing foreign tracks. We have already seen the southpaws Yuvraj Singh and Suresh Raina finding it difficult against the short ball. And Virat Kohli was not able to make any mark in the six tests he has played up to now - when the situation demands the batsman to come really forward to the front foot to the well pitched-up swinging ball, he is not able to do that well enough. His forward movement to the front foot is limited and in the process he ends up putting his left leg right in front of the stumps, which resulted in him getting out LBW two times in last 4 innings in Australia. When there is such a big gap in the batting techniques of the youngsters in the team is it wise to put them in the line of fire directly in a foreign pitch? Let them play some tests at home, get more experience, tighten up their batting technique and then play at foreign pitches. Even Sachin Tendulkar, a young batting prodigy he was, played his debut match in Pakistan, a track that is more or less similar to Indian tracks.
If about dropping VVS Laxman from the team, was it long back that we were lavishing praises on him in the way he batted with the tail enders and brought victory to his team once against Australia and once against Sri Lanka? Though it is true that we can’t think about past performances and can’t carry a non-performing batsman for long, we must give some more chances to VVS on account of his batting prowess that he has been showing for all these years, particularly against the Aussies. As a supporting argument for keeping VVS for some more time in the team this writer would like to bring in the example of Ricky Ponting. His century at Sydney was his first in the last 17 innings. What would have happened had the Australian management dropped Ponting because he was not performing up to his standards in the last 17 innings?
When it is true that the main reason for India’s poor performance in Australia is that the batsmen are not playing well, all blame can’t be put on them alone. The bowling of Indian fast bowlers at Sydney was nothing but awful. When the Aussie bowlers were able to derive bounce and seam from the pitch as well as swing in the air, Indian bowlers found it difficult even to put the ball in the right line and length, not to mention bounce, seam or swing. Making good use of such un-inspiring and bland bowling attack against them, the Aussie batsmen made merry and piled on runs. Michael Clarke hit an unbeaten triple hundred where as Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey made big hundreds. It remains to be seen how they are going to bowl in a seamer friendly track at Perth. There is every possibility that they would get carried away by the bite in the pitch and would overdo the bouncers thereby giving many chances for the Aussie batsmen, who have played all their lives in such bouncier tracks, to rock back to the back foot and hit pulls and hooks as and when they wish. Indian bowlers should use their head more and should bowl many full pitched deliveries and make the Aussie batsmen play around their off stump in what they call the ‘corridor of uncertainty’. They can always use the bouncer as the surprise delivery, but overdoing it (which is what we have seen all these years whenever Indian bowlers ball in bouncier tracks) won’t help them in any way.
Now it would be good for the Indian team that is playing Down Under if there are no further talks of dropping players midway. Now that they are there playing a cricket series in a foreign country let us support them and hope that they would click in the coming tests. Good time for such discussions would be after the tour is over and the team come back home. It won’t be a bad idea to include Rohit Sharma in the final eleven in the place of relatively new Virat Kohli. However it defies logic if there is talk about inserting the debutant Rohit Sharma in the place of the veteran VVS Laxman midway of such a high profile away series. Axing the seniors is not what we need for an improved performance but better application of the cricketing skills by the team – bowlers and batsmen alike.
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