Dismissive Attitude, Half-Baked Thinking Hurt Team India

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It was just the fifth ball of the first over of the fourth innings of the Test — the last one of the three-Test series versus New Zealand. India was down 2-0 — a scoreline that meant that India had, for the first time in 18 series across 12 years, lost a Test series at home. The final Test was an opportunity to earn points towards the World Test Championship, and also to save face.  

Indian captain and opening batter Rohit Sharma charged down the pitch at New Zealand seam bowler Matt Henry and, despite not getting to the pitch of the ball, went ahead with a flailing pull that saw the ball balloon over the head of the mid-on fielder and roll away to the boundary for four.

“With Rohit V2, that is what you get,” gushed the on-air commentator. This rant is on point — superlatives are the stock-in-trade of commentators under the current cricketing dispensation.

Anyway. What we got was Sharma, off the last ball of the third over, again trying to pull to a ball. This one was not short enough for the stroke; the miscue was safely taken and Sharma was gone for 11 off 11 balls, in a chase of 147. 

What was he thinking? And what, exactly, is this “Rohit V2” that commentators seem enamoured about? 

Aggressive Cricket

No one has come right out and said it in so many words, but the informed consensus is that Sharma, now in the twilight of his career, and new coach Gautam Gambhir have decided that team India will play “aggressive cricket”, come what may.

This attitudinal reset – cricket’s equivalent of the Charge of the Light Brigade — appears to be an extension of the ethos Sharma has recently inculcated in India’s one-day squad. If yes, that is half-smart thinking. Unlike Tests, ODIs are rarely if ever played on bowler-friendly pitches. The boundaries are shorter than they are in Tests, with the result that a shot that easily clears the fence in an ODI is likely to get the batter caught in the deep in Test cricket. 

Most importantly, India’s ODI squad has the personnel to operationalise Sharma’s attacking intent. Sharma’s own penchant for the pull is a strength on batting-friendly tracks; Yashaswi Jaiswal is the ideal left-handed foil for his right-handed captain; the instinctively ebullient play of Rishabh Pant is reinforced by the likes of Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel, all capable of scoring at scorching pace. 

The Indian Test squad is not similarly geared. Imposing a one-day template on the Test squad as it stands today was a recipe for disaster. And that is compounded by the fact that the team’s two most experienced batsmen — Sharma himself, and Virat Kohli – are increasingly subjected to the law of diminishing returns, as Cricinfo’s Alagappan Muthu points out in this piece.

The best measure of “Rohit V2” lies in his own returns in the just-concluded series. Sharma had scores of 2 off 16 and 52 off 63 in the first Test in Bangalore; 0 off 9 and 8 off 16 in the second Test in Pune; and 18 off 18 and 11 off 11 in the third Test at the Wankhede. That is, in three of six innings he failed to get into double figures, and in five of six innings he didn’t last for even 20 balls.

Kohli’s batting returns have also been steadily diminishing in recent months. In this calendar year, he has played six Tests for scores of 46 and 12 against South Africa in Cape Town; 6 and 17 against Bangladesh in Chennai; 47 and 29 not out against Bangladesh in Kanpur; 0 and 70 against New Zealand in Bangalore; 1 and 17 against the Kiwis in Pune; and 4 and 1 in Mumbai.

Class may be permanent and form temporary, as the oft-quoted cliché goes — but the fact is that form is what puts runs on the board on the day, and these numbers tell the story of a batter woefully out of form. And when your two most influential batsmen struggle, it tells on the rest of the team.

In post-match remarks, Rohit said he was trying to evolve as a batter and see what else he can do. “It is just that I need to spend more time to defend balls, which I haven’t done in this series.”

He could have been speaking for the whole team, not a single member of which consistently showed the application necessary to build an innings, to bat in partnerships — both pre-requisites of Test cricket.

India’s undefeated streak in home Tests was built on the back of a template: bat big in the first innings, using up both time and overs to build a sizeable score, and put the opposition under pressure against India’s spinners. 

Dig Deep, Bat Big

At the start of this year, India played a five-Test series against England, which it won 4-1. The team’s first innings scores in that series read: 420 in 121 overs in Hyderabad; 396 in 112 overs in Vishakhapatnam; 445 in 130 overs in Rajkot; 307 in 104.5 overs in Ranchi and 376 in 91.2 overs in Chennai.

Against that, in the three Tests against New Zealand, India batted for 31.2 overs in Bangalore; 45.3 overs in Pune; and 59.4 overs in Mumbai for first innings totals of 46, 156, and 263 respectively.

This was against an opposition that, immediately prior, had played a two-Test series in Sri Lanka and got rolled 0-2. In that series, Sri Lanka’s first innings scores were 602 for 5 declared in 163.4 overs in the first Test and 305 off 91.5 overs in the second Test, both at Galle. 

With those platforms under them, Lankan off-spinner Nishan Peiris and left-arm orthodox bowler Prabath Jayasuriya bowled the home side to an innings win in the first Test and off-spinner Ramesh Mendis joined in, in the second Test, to bowl Lanka to a 63 run win.

In the subcontinent, turning tracks can be the underpinning of a winning strategy, but as they say about investing in the stock market, conditions apply. The most important is that the host team, playing in home conditions, has to dig deep, bat big, and give their bowlers the wherewithal to attack. Failing to do that across three Tests and six innings is the reason India was whitewashed in a home series – the first time in living memory.

Home Advantage No More? 

So what were they thinking?

That question kept recurring at various points during the recent series. In the first Test in Bangalore, India got rolled for a humiliating 46 all out after opting to bat first in overcast conditions suited for seam and swing bowling. 

The decision to bat first was an egregious error — Sharma admitted as much after the game. But it is fair to say that India got the worst of the conditions throughout the game, and his thinking could have been that the weather conditions would be the same for both sides. 

As it turned out, by the time the Kiwis batted, the weather had begun to ease off and batting conditions got relatively better. (When India batted in its second innings in far better conditions and with far more application, the team put up 462 all out in 99.3 overs – not enough to compensate for the first innings collapse, but indicative of what the team could do when it applied itself.)

That first Test defeat at the hands of a team the punditry had dismissed as being of no account apparently came as a shock. And in a knee-jerk reaction, team India did what it always does — asked for a pitch for the second Test that would turn from ball one. 

Fair enough, it’s called home advantage — but what the think tank did not take into account is that these days, the Indian batters are as vulnerable to the turning ball as overseas teams are. 

The think tank also did not account for another factor: the Indian Premier League. 

Back in the day, visiting teams from England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa — countries where the home conditions favour pace, bounce and swing — found themselves adrift when confronted by turning tracks. But with the advent of the IPL, players from these countries have acclimated to Indian conditions. As part of various franchises, they share dressing rooms with India’s spinners, they practice against them, they share tips and techniques. They have learned to bowl spin better and to play spin better; they are also more familiar with Indian batters and their weaknesses.

Of the Kiwi side that rolled India 3-0 in the just-concluded series Rachin Ravindra, Mitchell  Santner, Daryl Mitchell, Matt Henry and Glenn Phillips are part of various IPL franchises. Ravindra, Santner and Mitchell all play for Chennai Super Kings, where they share a dressing room with India’s frontline all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja and also benefit from training under the experienced eye of former India captain and CSK icon MS Dhoni.

Analysis Is Essential 

So — what was India thinking, when it opted for a dust bowl in Pune? And more to the point, what was the team thinking when, after losing the Pune Test by 113 runs, they asked for and got a viciously turning track at the Wankhede in Mumbai?

"Don't blame the batters,” former India coach Anil Kumble said in the aftermath of the Mumbai defeat. “You give a rank turner and expect them to chase 150 in the 4th innings — captain and coach should be asked why they gave rank turner when you know your batters are out of form."

The half-baked thinking ended up blunting some of team India’s key strengths. Take, for example, the second Test in Pune. That dustbowl took India’s talismanic new ball bowler Jasprit Bumrah out of the game. Across both innings, the team’s go-to wicket-taker bowled just 14 overs for 57 runs, without a single wicket to show for his efforts. Worse, in the second innings in Pune, Bumrah was only called on to bowl after Ravichandran Ashwin, Washington Sundar and Ravindra Jadeja all had a go.

Similarly in the third Test at the Wankhede, India went in with two seam bowlers in Mohammed Siraj and Akash Deep. Siraj bowled 6 ineffective overs in the first innings and did not bowl at all in the second; Deep bowled 10 overs across two innings, taking one wicket in each. If you asked for a track that you knew wouldn’t aid seamers, why pick two of them and thus waste at least one slot in the playing XI?

“But we have to back the team because we have a big tour ahead,” former India star turned commentator Sunil Gavaskar said after the Mumbai debacle. “We can’t start criticising the team. Yes, it’s very disappointing. We all know how good these players have been over so many years. So what I would say to them [fans] is ‘just forget it like it was a bad dream’.’

No. Don’t. In business school, there is an axiom repeated so often it has attained cliché status: To solve a problem, you first have to understand the problem. Saying ‘It happens, move on’ is okay if you are a fan. Not so much, if you are a former player of stature and an expert voice in matters of cricket.

External criticism is useful, and not just in cricket. Often, when our plans fail, when things go wrong in our lives, the instinctive reaction is to go into denial, to put it down to fate, to say “it happens”. That attitude is merely asking for an encore. Replace the word ‘criticism’ with ‘analysis’, and you are nearer the mark. Analysis is essential; it is how you understand what went wrong and why – and that understanding is key to course correction. To dismiss any and all analysis as stomping on a team when it is down is, ultimately, self-defeating.

Gavaskar is right enough on one point — the team has a big tour coming up. If India is to make the World Test Championship final on its own steam, it has to defeat Australia 4-0 Down Under.

The touring squad has been picked and it is, frankly, underwhelming, with a nucleus that is more or less unchanged. To make matters worse, word is that captain Rohit Sharma will not play in the first Test for personal reasons, and that he might miss the second Test as well — which begs the question, why then is he named captain of the squad for the series?

In his absence and with vice-captain Jasprit Bumrah leading the side, the batting lineup for the first Test is likely to read: Yashaswi Jaiswal, Shubhman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul (who was dropped for form during the recent home series), Rishabh Pant and Sarfaraz Khan. (Alternatively, the team could go with Jaiswal and Abhimanyu Easwaran opening and Gill at three to accommodate Kohli in his usual position slot at number four). 

Whichever way the side chooses to go, the lineup doesn’t inspire confidence — and then there is the fact that the team will get little or no match practice before the first Test at the WACA in Perth.

I’ll watch, because I love Test cricket and because India-Australia encounters, in recent years, have begun building a gripping narrative of its own. But to be honest, I’ll watch with a fair degree of trepidation, as opposed to the anticipation I felt in the run-up to the last two Indian tours Down Under.

More on that series once it gets underway; I’ll see you back here in a fortnight’s time with another update from the world of sport.

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