Shame Down Under

Yet another series loss, rather ‘complete white-wash’. It was a scene straight from the 80s, and even early 90s. Some may even remember the white-washes in the pre-70s era. In those days too, the then-Indian teams would put up some fight and to draw a match was considered quite good rather than losing the entire series by nil. But here the “modern” Indian team didn’t even put up a fight and we are talking of a relatively in-experienced and battered test-side of Aussies. I strongly believed the white-wash in England was a “one-off” case and was expecting the team to draw atleast 2 matches out of 4, especially in Sydney and Adelaide considering our previous performances there.


Wins and Losses are inevitable part of the game. Especially whenever an Australian team is involved. They never play for a draw as much as possible. Even if they are in very bad position, they would still put up a strong fight and someone does stand up to get counted. Prior to this series, Ricky Ponting, Michael Hussey and Michael Clarke were not performing upto their expectations. All of them, though quite inexperienced, were not coming good in the past year or so. So when Aussies were down by a few quick wickets, I quite naturally expected our bowlers to run through their middle order and restrict them to a smaller score. What happened still baffles me; probably my prayers got answered by an Aussie God. These three, especially Ponting & Clarke, played so well in three matches out of four, that it looked like Sachin-Dravid-Laxman played for Australia in their disguise.


My prayers for good performance by our celebrity-middle-order got shifted (someone in the heavens must have done that, or like our politicians says, foreign hand) to Aussie middle-order. Instead of our bowlers running through their middle-order, their bowlers did exactly that with our batsmen. The batting failed primarily, and ofcourse things were made worse by our bowlers not performing. I thought, when the batsmen failed, our bowlers could have tried to put some ointment on the wounds, but they failed miserably too. A lot of media-reviews and self-inspection has happened over the period and will continue till the next overseas series. But I am putting down my observations which I found very alarming. Alarming, because only a year back the Indian team was “Number-One” (for roughly 18 months) in ICC Test Rankings. Alarming because we lost 2 back-to-back overseas tour without even drawing a single test match. Alarming because we seem to have lost the killer instinct and fighting spirit which is the most important quality for test matches. Here I go…


• Failure of Openers: Since about 2003 (post WC-2003) our team has performed exceptionally well on all overseas tours. Earlier, we would be happy if we could even draw one of the matches in the series. But since Sourav Ganguly took over, we also developed the habit of winning atleast one match and put up a strong fight in other. However, the credit also goes to the openers, especially Sehwag. He would bludgeon the opposition bowlers and at a very fast pace which would give the celebrity-middle-order a great chance and platform to perform the remaining rites and put up a good defendable score for the bowlers. In the series against England, Sehwag didn’t play and the makeshift openers didn’t put up any performance. In Australia, the regular openers, Sehwag and Gambhir played, but consistently failed. More often we saw Dravid taking his stance in first 10 overs and Sachin coming soon. Ofcourse, ideally none of these players should complain because they have the experience to handle any situation. But consider the fact that, in none of the 8 matches, we saw a good opening partnership and the middle-order was instantly exposed to the new ball.


• Failure of the Middle-order: The Indian middle-order, collectively, has scored more runs than any entire team currently playing in the world. 38000 is a big number in whatever way you look at it. They have scored in different situations, different grounds, different playing conditions, against different bowlers, different captains with a huge variety of gameplans against them. However, seeing a Dravid getting bowled too-often or a Laxman struggling against bowlers and a Sachin under-performing only because of the 100th century playing on everybody’s mind was a real shock. It was expected that atleast they would build-up the falling innings and bring some pride back. But there were no partnerships. Dravid and Laxman are not young enough to replicate that 350+ partnership in Kolkata against the Aussies. Sachin is not young enough to show what he has done for the past 20+ years. But being unable to score a single century in 8 innings in Australia is nothing short of a shock. Their collective failure put up huge pressure on the lower order, especially Kohli (who now should come up at No. 3) and Dhoni who now needs to be more aggressive than defensive.


• Failure of the bowlers: Indian bowlers have been known to let loose the grip which they get by initial quick wickets and sadly, they lived upto this reputation, first in England and now in Australia. Interesting to see the dip in performance after Venkatesh Prasad was dethroned as bowling coach. Is there any connection? Also is there any connection between Duncan Fletcher’s bad luck with English bowlers when he was their coach? But we bowled too many wayward deliveries after getting first few wickets. We allowed the opposition batsmen to leave those deliveries, buy time to get “in” the game and then when we were tired they could easily prey on us. That’s what Ponting and Clarke did. That’s what the Englishmen did in England. Our bowlers looked fit and in shape. But that’s not the only thing. In England Praveen Kumar was the only bowler who threatened their batsmen. Here Umesh Yadav showed that in the first test match, but later faded away. There were very very very few wicket-taking deliveries as the match progressed. Aussie bowlers never gave any chance to our batsmen, bowled a consistent line and made our batsmen play and more importantly, their bowlers bowled to the captain’s field. Laxman’s wicket in the last inning of Adelaide was a perfect example of that. Even Sachin’s wicket in first innings of the same match was a good example. They made him play that shot and had their best fielder in the position for that shot. I didn’t see that happening with our bowlers.


• No fight put up: Again and again, I am coming to this point. There was simply no resistance. Not a single batsman showed the desire, intention to stay on the wicket. Every time when it seemed that a particular batsman is in good touch, he threw away his wicket by playing some extra-‘ordinary’ shot, even Sachin. Every time he looked in good touch, the batsman at the other end played some foolish shot, threw away his wicket and somehow Sachin would get under pressure and throw away his wicket too. There were quite a few instances where our batsmen could have shown some determination to atleast draw the test match and we failed at that. That is the biggest concern as far as the batting is related.


Now what can we do about this? There would be a minute and highly-critical analysis of the tour; there were a lot of cry about asking the seniors to retire. There would be a change in the captaincy demanded and media would be making the biggest noise, influencing the “aam janta” of India to think that losing the series is a serious crime and would affect the general life of the country. After a few months, or even days, we would forget all about this and the team would continue to play in the same manner as it did. The next overseas tour is more than a year far. Till then we would be playing in home conditions and we would again start winning matches and might even regain our lost “Number One” position. Meanwhile, some of the seniors might retire, or if not, would continue to add to their stellar performances till now. Ultimately, cricket is a sport, we watch it for our entertainment and not because our lives depend on it. Some would stop watching cricket and cry about the state of other sports in the country. But be sure, that one series win outside India in the future, will draw the public back to the game. After making a big noise about our bad performances, the same media would again start showing the matches and mint money from it. The main basic issues remain the same.


The issue of consecutive white-wash in overseas condition can probably be handled by the following:
• BCCI should look at a pool of 20+ players, at any given point of time and put them into Team-A. These people, a mixture of batsmen, bowlers, all-rounders and wicket-keepers should be specifically trained for the best possible results. Developing a good fast bowler from age 18-19 (or even less) is important so that his muscles develop in a way suitable. You can’t coach a 20+ guy for batting, it has to be in him or teach him when he is teenager or 18+.
• BCCI should include more and more overseas tours for the Team-A which is not the main international team. Send them to England, South Africa and Australia more and get them prepared whenever they are selected.
• Currently, the Ranji matches and few other domestic tournaments, focus the point-system based on first-innings lead. A disadvantage of that is, the players are more concerned about the first-innings lead and do not really think long-term of winning the match. A match can be won by second-innings performance as much as first-inning ones.
• Also a lot of domestic matches are played on flat wickets. It’s a given thing that any team would prepare the track as per the home team’s strength. So Aussies would prepare fast & bouncy tracks and we would prepare spinner-friendly tracks. But it is also important to notice that Aussies don’t lose the series by nil when they play in India. And no matter how flat or bouncy the track is the pacers surely come into the picture at the start of the innings atleast. So why not prepare “sporting” wickets like Wankhede or Mohali?
• BCCI should make it mandatory to any player in the international team to play atleast one full domestic season or tournament in a year. The players may choose which tournament to play, but they have to play in one, no matter what the international calendar says. This gives them the chance to sharpen their skills, and also impart their experience-knowledge to the juniors of their domestic teams. Imagine, Sachin playing in a full Ranji series. What a great experience that would be for Mumbai team and opponents too!
• We may also need to look at domestic talent as far as coach is concerned. Yes, the foreign coaches come up with great ideas, especially the attitude of winning. That’s what Gary Kirsten and John Wright did. But that’s past now. Duncan Fletcher surely has been a wrong choice. What good did he do the English team when he was their coach? A Ganguly or a Kumble would have been far better than him. If needed, we could have specialized domestic coaches in the money spent on one foreign coach. I am not against foreign coaches. But we don’t want to spend on someone who is not giving us results. Don’t we expect the players to play at their best as soon as they burst out on the scene? Why not the coach then? He had a readymade champion team for himself and what has he made out of it? He seems to be doing the same mistake Greg Chappell did, albeit in much toned-down way. Mere talking to the players and throwing balls to the batsmen will not do. He has to show them the way. He has to deal more into the psyche of the player, because they already know what they have to do.
• We also need to select only “fit” players. A mid-series injury is unavoidable. It is part-and-parcel of the game. But if the player is selected, he has to be “completely” fit and not “just-recovered” one. He has to play atleast 2-3 domestic matches to show that he has “fully” recovered from his injury or loss-of-form, by picking wickets or scoring runs, as the case maybe.
• And finally the team management should also pick players as per the conditions. A Rohit Sharma would have certainly been anyone’s first choice, especially in Perth or Sydney. We continued with Kohli instead. Yes, Kohli is another great prospect, but then atleast both should have played, by dropping Laxman or Gambhir or Sehwag.


Well, these are only few things that I could think of. There is no complete makeover needed for the current team. It is only that we would have to improve our bowling and batting. They don’t need anyone to help them improve their skills. They just need to check that they are not giving away too many runs when bowling and stop worrying about the opposition bowling while batting. We didn’t show the desire to learn from the mistakes or even stand-and-deliver attitude. This is the same team that has won so many times in varied conditions. One bad series doesn’t call for ouster of anyone. But if they are not going to show that hunger to fight back, they need to make way for others. This is not a domestic series; this is an international series where you are competing at the highest possible level.


It is imperative for me to come to the point of Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th century. Never have I seen him so under-performing for any reason other than his injuries. But the saving grace is that only he showed some resistance. Whenever, he got into his own, the batsman at the other end fell and he suddenly got under pressure. It wasn’t the pressure of the Aussies, or their bowling, it was a pressure of his own team. A team who failed miserably and unfortunately, this time he couldn’t save them, neither in England, nor in Australia. It is still unclear whether this will be his last tour down under. I am sure, if he goes beyond this 100-century mark and plays again as champion, he may well travel to Australia in 2015. But, that is just a probability. This time it seems, he has finally played his last test in Australia, or even England for that matter.


It is surprising to see how often and for how long we have expecting him to save the team, since he started that job in 1990 in Manchester. Every time, he put his feet on the ground, he has carried that responsibility and even when we have other stalwarts in the team, we still want him to perform. And stupidly continue to criticize the link of his century and team’s loss. Yes, he was a failure, for not even notching a century in the series, not even on his favorite ground, SCG. But then, I really doubt he could do anything with the weight of the magical number on his mind. It is for that reason; I wished he played the ODI series against the West Indies. He could have scored his magical hundred and then with a free mind could have taken on the Aussies. And then if had he failed, I too would have joined the cry of asking his retirement. But seems, we need to wait for some more time. That century is surely going to come, hopefully in the ODI series now, but if not now, then at some point of time in the year. But, then I feel he should now hang up his boots, atleast from ODI. Not because he is not performing or finding it difficult to cope up with the demands. But, it is hurting to see him getting under the pressure for no fault of his.


It is in these troubled times, the team needs the most support and backing. And it is good to see the BCCI standing behind the team, especially seniors and not asking for their retirements. A little sense is to be shown by the public. We should not bother about what the media, the print and visual, has to cry about the team. Yes the seniors are the culprits, but they are not the only ones responsible. Whoever played in the series have failed miserably and that doesn’t call for the removing of only the seniors. Maybe its time to re-think our strategies and change the entire system, once and for all. The good days are not too far. But are we ready to open the doors-windows to see them?

Weak Tourists

Indian Cricket Team has traditionally been weaker tourists, especially in test matches, no denying that fact. It is much more glaring fact when the team is touring places like England and Australia, with the new addition of South Africa (since 1990s). Most of us attribute this failure to different type of pitches than what we find in Indian sub-continent, especially in India. Let's check out, if its true. Firstly, let's take on the biggest reason given for the failures; pitches. It would be completely wrong and foolish to deny the role that the pitches play a part in failure of our cricket team abroad. In England, there is lot of seam movement and strong winds blowing. The Indian batsmen who are fed on lesser swing in Indian conditions (where there is hardly any grass on the wicket right from day 1) find it difficult to cope up with the moving ball. Also the bounce in the English wickets is higher than in Indian wickets. So the combination becomes quite lethal, as exposed by the recent England tour. However, we ignore one aspect of the game, that is our bowling. Our pace bowlers (that is if we are expected to call them pacers) have more pronounced swing than English bowlers in English conditions. This means, that they should be able to exploit it even more than the opposition. One thing is for sure, if you have to win a test match, you have to take 20 wickets. No matter how strong the batting line up is. Else we can anytime settle for a draw or a loss, if the batting doesn't click. Moreover, very rarely has Indian cricket had the liberty of playing more than 2 pacers. Either, we rely too much on our batsmen and spinners, or we just don't trust the pacers (maybe also due to the fact that not many bowlers, pacer or spinner, can bat). So more often we find only 4 specialist bowlers, and a couple of part-timers, of which more often only 2 are pacers and they have too much of workload and then we fail to take 20 wickets or let go the tight grip by offering too many runs to the lower order, later in the innings. So yes, swing in English conditions is our weaker point from batting perspective, but then if we are anyways going to lose the match due to weak batting, why not play 5 specialist bowlers out of which atleast 3 are pacers? A 4-pacer attack is my dream. Maybe we can also take advantage of the swing. Another reason given, usually, is the bounce in foreign conditions, like Australia & South Africa. Yes these wickets have a lot of bounce as compared to our wickets. But it's a true bounce, not an uneven one like in here. Indian batsmen are rarely good at hook or pull shots. They are also not good enough to negate the short pitch deliveries, barring a few celebrities. So more often we see the opposition bowlers bowling short pitch deliveries (at a good pace) and we start to lose wickets almost instantly. The players who have come from domestic tournaments (and overall all youngsters) have been fed upon the slow wickets which rarely produce any bounce. In my opinion, more and more overseas tours for the A-Team should be conducted to make them aware of the challenges in foreign conditions. The youngsters, (age group of 18-25) should be given more chance to travel overseas, especially to England/Australia/South Africa. This way they would get more opportunities to understand the wickets, the conditions, the ground. Players like Sachin/Dravid/Laxman always make a point to adjust their batting style to the wicket and ground, wherever they play. The way Sachin plays in South Africa is different from the way he plays in Australia. His way of scoring/accumulating runs differs. Not only because the bowlers are different, but it is also because of the pitches especially. Same goes for other celebrities like Dravid and Laxman. If the other specialist batsmen try to develop the same ability, hopefully they would be better off. India has always been known for it's batting prowess and if the batsmen start giving away their wickets for these reasons, I am sure we would never be able to write off the tag of "weak tourists". Thirdly, more often we hear the commentators, ex-crickets themselves, saying, the batsman threw away his wicket. Again, we are largely focusing on the batting aspect of Indian Cricket. Very often, especially after our World Cup win way back in 1983, we find batsmen adapting more and more ODI-format of the game into their test innings. So the shots that fetches them runs in ODIs are carried over to the longer version. Part of it is because we play more ODIs than Test matches. So when the bread-butter shot of ODI is played in Test match, it usually results in wicket falling. Imagine this, the ball in red color moves more, than in white color. Nothing related to the color, but the material from which the ball is made is different than the white one. Also, its important to see the attitude of the batsman. In ODI you would want to score as much as possible and as fast as possible. You can not afford to let dot-balls. But when you start bringing that attitude in the longer version, it would often spell disaster. Test cricket is all about patience, temperament, fighting attitude, and playing out sessions, either batting or bowling. This was too apparent in the recent England tour and now very much staring into the face, in Australia. We had to play out sessions and we failed. People who could stand there for days and bat, couldn't do that. They poked at deliveries, edged a few, and very depressing to see, not taking singles-doubles. When you can not score in boundaries, or can not afford to lose wicket while scoring boundaries, the best approach is to rotate the strike. Confuse the opposition, build the innings and a foundation for a launch later. That's what Ponting and Clarke did in the 2nd test at SCG. That's what England did in almost all Tests. In no time, they built a partnership which was worth 150-200+. My point is, when we start scoring in boundaries and can not defend deliveries when we are not able to score them, we just go and hit the ball. It is an open secret that we would just go out there in the middle and try to score off every single ball, slashing the wide deliveries, playing shots when we should be defending. This has come more from the ODI format and is little to do with the technique of that batsman. Not everyone can become Sehwag and score big runs at a brisk pace, regardless of the format. (Even Sehwag hasn't fired in Australia, yet in this series.) It has been the same problem with Gambhir. He looks confident in some innings, but has not been able to score runs the way he has done so often. So all he is managing to do is to edge the ball into the slips. When he got out on 83 in 2nd innings of SCG test recently, he was trying to work the ball into the leg-side gap when he could have defended the ball. He and Sachin were going at a fair rate. Other batsmen too tried too much to score runs and got out, when it was very much needed to stay on wicket and try for a draw. It was very clear, we would have not won the 2nd Test at Sydney. But we could have atleast tried to hang in there and take the match to the last day. May be we could have saved the match. But it wasn't to be. Lastly, we think too much about a few individuals. Yes, we have some celebrities who have shouldered the team for more than a decade, and have been quite good at it, though not very successful in terms of series results. But it is foolish to keep going back on the past deeds and judge the people on that. It was disappointing to see that everyone has been focusing on Sachin's 100th century and expecting him to get rid of that monkey from his back. But maybe that has been affecting the other players more than him. They aren't really comfortable focusing on their game and play like they have done in past. With all the talks and discussions focused on whether Sachin will score his century, we are missing out on the fact that everyone (unfortunately including his teammates) seem to expect him to score runs and shoulder the responsibility of taking them through in this tour. The intent to play big and better has been missing on their faces. They don't seem to be concentrating harder. Ideally, they should play much better as all the focus is on him. This provides them an ideal situation where they can get opportunities to come and make some score while he is at the other end. This hasn't been happening. Agreed, he is without a century for long time now. But he hasn't score small. He still averages above 45-50 after that last Test hundred in South Africa, just that he is not been able to convert that into a hundred, which he so effortlessly did all last year, scoring 7 Test centuries. Bigger part of the problem is that he isn't getting much support from the other end. Whenever he has looked good and on his way to a century, wickets have been falling around him. Being a top-middle-order player for more than 2 decades, he doesn't seem too be comfortable playing with tail-enders. They too haven't learnt the art of batting sensibly when a top-order batsman (especially the best batsman) is at the other end. We have seen too often the other batsman trying to go over the top or play flashy strokes and then the pressure starts building up on Sachin. Yes he is supposed to play in any condition. But that "any" condition should be opposition-made, not self-made. I am not at all defending Sachin's inability to score that magical hundred and then relax and start playing his natural game. What I am saying is that, we have been considering 6 specialist batsmen in almost every game and we are not playing sensible cricket. Even he has faltered an alarming number of times. But his failures haven't been as hurting as they are now, as now no one's playing good. At that time the team was winning, albeit in home conditions. But now that almost everyone is exposed to failure, he, inspite of being the most comfortable batsman in Australia, seems to be under minute observation; fault-finding is being done. I hope, the team makes a positive turn-around in the remaining test series in Australia. We have lost the opportunity to win the series. And I seriously doubt if we can win the next two matches. But it wont hurt badly if we play sensibly and restrict the Aussies. A 2-0 result is much much more better than a 4-0, which happened in England. If we are in a position like we were in Sydney, I seriously hope we play out the remaining days and draw the match. It would still be a fighting performance. No doubt, in modern times it might be termed as boring, but the skills that we have acquired in the net-practices should be worth enough to save the skin.