Home advantage...?

You must have heard the line "apni gali me to kutta bhi sher hota hai" in numerous Bollywood movies. There is a lot of truth in it. You know the conditions, the area, the people, the skills better. Relate that to Test cricket. When any team travels/visits another country the conditions are alien. How the pitch works, how the wind flows, how the sun behaves, all things are alien to the visiting team. Although you might have visited the country many times before, still every year, every visit is different.

When we travel to England, South Africa or Australia, the pitches are different. England has lot of swing. Australia has lot of bounce. South Africa has a mixture of both pace & bounce. Our team's history isn't all that great in all 3 countries. We have almost never won in South Africa, barring a couple of tests, if I am not wrong. We have rarely won in Australia & England. The record has been better in past decade, however, our last visit in 2011-12 was something we would want to wipe out from our memories ASAP. Our visit to England before the 'Tour Down Under' was forgettable too, but I would still want to discount the Indian team for lack of quality pacers & bowling overall. We just weren't capable of taking 20 wickets.

The point is that the 'home-teams' took full advantage of their home conditions, used proper pace attack & more importantly their bowlers bowled to the field set for them. If they are free to use the conditions to their liking, if they are free to prepare pitches to their strengths, what's the harm if Indian team decides to go for square turner pitches which turns from day-1?

A simple question, however, creates lots of issues in the long run. And it sometimes does more harm than good. Indian team reached the Number-One ranking in sub-continent conditions (in Sri Lanka) and played most of their cricket for the next 18+ months in home conditions. And the fact that we retained the ranking for such a long period makes it amply clear that we were winning most of the matches & rarely losing. So why the need of a square turner now? And how good that policy is going to be in the near or longer future? Post world cup 2011, we have had only a couple of real testing matches in England and Australia, rest all Tests (they were only handful) were in the sub-continent. There are 9 test playing nations in the world including us & 5 of them are reliant on pace than spin.

Well, there are few things to consider before going for turner tracks. If you want the pitch to turn from day-1, it has to have lot of dust, or one that has lots of cracks from the outset. Either one of them or mixture of both means bliss for the spinners, and we often have atleast 3-4 specialist spinners in our squad. But, such a pitch, which is typically a day-3 or day-4 pitch can also backfire because the pace bowlers too can wisely use the cracks, the foot-marks (on subsequent days) & the ball can have variable bounce which could create doubt or problem in best of the batsmen's mind. The wicket of Sachin Tendulkar on day-3 of the first test in Chennai was enough to show how the ball misbehaved if used intelligently. Ofcourse, Dhoni's innings was that much more special because he didn't allow any bowler to settle. But the phase and time in which Sachin was batting was also crucial. He was in defensive mood to let the first hour or so go in the favor of bowling team & that's where the wicket came from.

Michael Clarke persisted with his pace battery and it was actually a good move, because he knew he didn't have quality spinners to take advantage of such conditions & James Pattinson bowled his heart out on that pitch. However, our openers failed & if Sachin-Virat-Dhoni not played their respective innings, we would have been staring at another loss at home. Not too long ago Australia had won the series in India under Gilchrist's captaincy (2004).

Its an old line used by most of the commentators, Indian team is the best player of spin bowling. Well, lets put that line to dust & let it rust there. It was true half a decade back. The truth is that there are few players in the current team who know how to best tackle spin bowling. Virat is still new & learning. Viru gets out too early to face spin. Dhoni comes in bit too late to get time to attack the spinners. And Sachin is not getting any younger. The biggest disappointment is lack of footwork at all from most the team-members. We allow the ball to spin & then decide the shot and gift our wickets. Sir Gary Sobers was once asked what's the best way to play spin bowling. He had said, I don't go to the ball, I let it come to me and then decide what I should do. Hey, that was Sobers, one of the all-time greats. Not everyone is capable of doing that. For us mortals, it's best to reach to the ball & not allow it to spin & show it's magic.

The point here is that, although spin is your strength, your batsmen too need to play their shots, put up a defendable total on the board & then let your spinners wreak havoc. And when teams like Australia travel to India with 4-5 specialist pacers, who are as potent or lethal as Starc/Johnson/Pattinson/Siddle, it's best to be able to handle the pace on a deteriorating pitch from day-1. Imagine, we are batting second and, god forbid, we are batting on day-2 or day-3. The pitch would play it's wonders, but against us.

I personally feel, the need to demand spin-friendly pitches might have risen because of two things. First, the failure of our openers. If the pitch is going to turn from day-1, it would most probably be acting like a day-3 pitch on the first day & usually the day-3 pitch is good for batting. The ball doesn't bounce much & Dhoni might be expecting Viru & whoever the other opener is to play some good innings & give a platform for the middle order to build a respectable score & then get the visitors out twice and finish the match in 4 days max. The second reason might be lack of quality pacers. Whatever the current picture shows (a Bhuvaneshwar Kumar or Shafi Ahmed, Umesh Yadav), we still put our best wishes & hopes on spinners in Indian conditions. Its a open secret that spinners take more than 70-75 % of the wickets for India. So, why not bank on spinners? The problem is that it is doing more harm to the pitches & we are just trying to create a happy-happy scenario, hiding our inability to play pace & bounce, our inability to put up good score and give the bowlers something to fight for. We were not losing matches earlier with sporting pitches that would turn from day-3. So it's simply childish & ridiculous that we want spinner tracks. Yes, we should have home conditions that supports our home team, but that doesn't mean you change something that was working fine & then do something that might have the potential to make you fall flat on your face. Not every time a Dhoni is going to save you from biting the dust, not for long Sachin is going to be there to stable the ship. Not every time a Virat is going to be playing a mature & sensible innings curbing his natural flamboyance.

Jago Indian Team, Jago. Things were going fine the way they were. Don't hurt the pitches & don't create a fracas. Just have normal pitches that will support the spirit of the game. Don't disappoint the loyal & faithful Test cricket fans and don't finish the match on day-3. No wonder, Test cricket is losing its spectators, losing its glam, losing its importance. Let it be a 5-day affair. You still have some exciting, interesting games that last for 5 days.