One More Loss

It happened again. The batsmen were put in against an in form pace attack, got shot out on a bowler friendly pitch. The bowlers had no answer even though I heard comments to the effect that 10 wickets in 2 sessions was a good effort. Then, the batsmen, saddled with a hopeless 200 run deficit (which is nearly insurmountable on a wicket where every single batsman on both sides was beaten once an over if the over was bowled reasonably well), were bowled out again.



It happened again after the match too. A disproportionate interest in the performance of the batsmen, while the bowlers escaped under the radar as usual. The luckless Zaheer Khan, who has so often kept India in games while the bowlers at the other end were merely making up the numbers, couldn't do it at Perth. He alone induced errors from the rampaging David Warner, but the catches didn't carry.

If a serious, fair comparison was to be made between the performance of the bowler and that of the batsmen at Perth, then the bowlers' performance, in batting terms, was something like this. Imagine that the wicket is flat - a featherbed. Then imagine that against a reasonable, but by no means hostile bowling attack, a batting side collapses to 100/6 twice in the span of three days, and is bowled out cheaply twice in three days. Think about how bad you would think such a batting performance was.

That's how bad India's bowlers have been in the last 12 months.

And yes, the batting has been in decline. Whenever I bring up the bowling, I keep getting told that I'm biased against the bowlers, and too easy on the batsmen. While I dislike the terms in which this accusation is made (just as I dislike the notion of assigning "blame" for defeats), I wrote a whole post a few days ago where I talked about nearly every single Indian batsman.

The reason why I think this blame is disproportionate ought to be obvious. Even with 6 batsmen with Tendulkar or Dravid like techniques, in the best form of their lives, India would have done only slightly better than they have in their 7 recent Away Tests. We may have seen 4-5 defeats, not 7. However, India's batsmen were not responsible for the fact opposing batsmen ran up huge totals at high scoring rates with alarming consistency. The batsmen did not concede (run rates in parentheses) 369 (4.83), 659/4 (4.04), 591/6 (3.86)  710/7 (3.77), 544 (4.52) and 474/8 (3.6) and 269/6 (3.78) in 6 of the 7 Tests. Opposing teams have been able to declare in 4 out of 7 Tests, twice in the Lord's Test. The only Test in which India were not let down by their bowlers was at Melbourne, where the bowlers delivered two reasonable performances, bowling Australia out for 333 and 240. The result at Melbourne would, I wager, have been in favor of India had India bowled 4th.

For many years, a mediocre pace attack has been shielded by an exceptional batting line up - one of the greatest middle orders in Test history. Age and deep fast bowling has set this middle order back a bit, and all but destroyed Virender Sehwag.

But if people think that the batting is India's problem, they have serious misunderstandings about how cricket works. It is far easier, and far more fun, I suspect, to keep thinking that its the failure of the so called big names, that is the cause of India's troubles. But it is also quite wrong. On result wickets, inaccurate bowling can be disastrous, and India have proven this Test Match after Test Match. They have even proved it by performing well with the bat on flat wickets against big totals - the recent Test at Wankhede Stadium against West Indies which ended with the scores level is a case in point. Faced with a huge first innings score of 590, India did well to get with a 100 or so runs of the West Indies, and then were able to use their superior spin bowling resources on a slightly worn wicket to put pressure on the opposition. The stories of India's two victories against Australia in India in 2010 are identical - in both cases, India won Tests after conceding over 400 in the first innings.

What this suggests is that when India's bowlers perform up to the standards of the wicket, India's batsmen never fail to keep them in the game. If you are dumb enough or blind enough to think that 369 was a par score on that Perth pitch, then I have nothing to say. This blindness also seems to extend to specific players. The general view of Ishant Sharma seems to be that he's quite accurate. But in South Africa, England and now Australia, Ishant has conceded between 3.6 and 3.8 runs per over. He routinely concedes runs on both sides of the wicket, in addition to conceding a remarkable number of free hits.

India can keep believing that the problem lies in the batting. Or they can actually confront the deeper, more troublesome problem - troublesome because there isn't a steady stream of talented fast bowlers emerging, and do whatever it takes to resolve it.

M S Dhoni's post-Perth press conference was revealing. Note the specificity of his remarks about the bowling and the the desperation that marks his comments about the batting. He's absolutely right that India have been losing because the batsmen have not been getting to 300. But does he really think that getting to 300 - a par first innings score on nearly every single one of the 7 pitches India have played on would have changed any of the seven results? Do you?

There will be plenty of advice for BCCI, and plenty of reviews of India's cricket. But unless these reviews take into account the adverse effects of the 7 week IPL on India's up and coming players - bowlers and batsmen, they cannot be considered serious. It is disingenuous to blame the BCCI for India's defeats and then support the IPL, given what it is doing to India's best new talent. What India need is an expanded first class season, one without relics like the Irani Trophy and the Duleep Trophy, and one without an archaic points system that encourages flat pitches by granting huge incentives for first innings leads. They need a First Class game in which fast bowlers have a chance, and openers need tight batting techniques to survive - a First Class Game in which 4 days are enough to produce results.

But for this, there has to be pressure on the BCCI. This pressure will not be built by cheerleading the IPL.