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.