Some Cricket related diagnoses of Australia's success

Geoff Lawson, former Australian fast bowler, has offered this diagnosis of India's troubles in Australia. It comes as a pleasant surprise that someone has actually written about the cricket that has been played.

The Indian capitulation, and I use the word advisedly, has come through the agency of seam bowlers who actually hit the seam - sometimes after it has swung, sometimes without. The greats of the Indian order have been undone by accuracy, movement, discipline and some decent pace. Eight dismissals in every ten have been off the front foot; the tail have mostly got out to short stuff because that is just about all that is bowled to them. Agreeable pitches promote fuller bowling, and Craig McDermott has kept his tribe on the hymn sheet, with hallelujahs dotted on every line.

Like the great West Indian batteries of the 1980s, the current Australian fast bowlers give you few opportunities to score. The methods are different, as only two bouncers an over are allowed now, and more than 11 overs an hour are required, but Siddle, Hilfenhaus, Ryan Harris, Pattinson, and now Mitchell Starc (ragged in his early Tests against New Zealand, but with his radar operational in Perth) are making square cuts and clips to square leg rare indeed. 

On this tour it was expected that a team with the two highest run-scorers in Test history and two others with over 8000 each would not find trouble making defendable totals. The problem was thought to be that India weren't going to bowl anyone out. 

The pitches have helped seam bowlers of all varieties, and to be fair the Australian batsmen have, apart from in Sydney - and they were 37 for 3 there at one point - also found fluent strokemaking a tad difficult. The Indians have bowled well themselves without quite getting to the level the home squad have managed. The pressure is never released with a scattered over or spell from this pack of Australian pacemen. The sum of the pressure from the whole is greater than the pressure from a sole practitioner. Bowlers who hunt in packs are better than those who hunt as pairs.

He could add to this, the fact that India's pacemen, barring Zaheer Khan, do not bowl the same fuller length, and that clips through square leg and square cuts are available aplenty. You could quibble with Lawson and point out that Sehwag's been out playing full blooded shots off the back foot twice in this series, but those shots - proper square cuts, should never pass gully at a catchable height. Lawson's broad point about Sehwag is undeniably true. The figures support this.

His observations on India's batsmen are careful (apart from one point about Sehwag and "low-bounce", which he corrects in the second part of the sentence by talking about movement)

Virender Sehwag's stationary base, which works on low-bouncing pitches, has been exposed by the movement, and he has been captured in the slips. Sachin Tendulkar may have his feet anchored by the artificial hundreds milestone, but if a senior citizen, he has at least looked like one with some time left on the frontline yet. Gautam Gambhir's angled bat nicks bouncing deliveries all too regularly. He and Phillip Hughes may soon be attending the same remedial classes.

Most disturbing for India has been how Rahul Dravid has been bowled in eight of his last ten Test innings. Mostly the offcutter has been responsible - going through the gate, no less, bat and pad separated by a door now more ajar than ever before. That gap has been opened up by the outswing that brings right-handers moving uncertainly toward and outside the line of off stump to cover edges to slip.

VVS Laxman was expected to bloom on Terra Australis, where he has made runs before, but he has looked tentative and unable, like so many, to counter away swing interspersed with off-cut.

It's a simple recipe, but what a difference when the ball moves! Green pitches help seam movement, but they also help the ball stay shine-able. No mention of the dreaded reverse-swing that barren and coarse surfaces promote. Well done to the groundsmen around the country, from Hobart to Perth.

His observations about Rahul Dravid are most interesting. The former Indian opener Aakash Chopra made some interesting observations about Dravid's batting. He puts Dravid's troubles (getting bowled repeatedly) down to the fact that the great man has eliminated a small back and across trigger movement recently. This is causing him to stay beside the ball, thereby leaving him vulnerable to movement off a fullish length even though it does mean that he's no longer playing at balls outside off stump which he doesn't need to play at. Chopra's observation is a typically astute one, as can be seen from these two videos. These, being snippets, provide limited evidence, but observe the following specific things:

This video shows Dravid's bowled dismissals. Notice the position of his back foot in most dismissals. It is still pointing square of the wicket, which suggests that it hasn't moved at all.

 

Compare these dismissals with this video from 8 years ago. See the third shot in the video - the straight drive. Around 0:32 in the video, you can clearly see Dravid take that first step with his back foot, in which he departs from his stance and his back foot is on tip toe.

 

Dravid has eliminated that movement. I have felt for most of this series, that Dravid has been late on the ball. Given that he's 39, the obvious conclusion is that he's ageing. But there could be another one. How much time a player has to play the ball does not merely depend on the pace of the delivery in kilometers per hour. Time is a far more complicated and human phenomenon. It depends on how quickly the batsman is able to "read" the line and length of the delivery, and get his body to move into position to play it. Most of Dravid's dismissals are because he has barely had time to complete his footwork by the time the ball arrives. The change in technique, which, if you think about it, must be extremely hard to master (it is like becoming a totally new batsman), may have something to do with Dravid's apparent slowness.

Dravid's troubles just go to show how hard it is for a player to change his technique. Sachin Tendulkar plays both ways - against certain bowlers he used a significant back and across movement, against swing bowlers his first movement is forward. The amazing thing is, that Tendulkar is able to switch between methods at will, often within the same innings (I remember his batting against Harmison and Flintoff on the one hand, and Hoggard on the other, at Headingley in 2002 very well).

Notwithstanding Aakash Chopra's careful observation of the change in Dravid's footwork, I remain unconvinced that Dravid's declining eye - which is a batsman's trained ability to "read" the length and line of the ball and move his body into position to play it (a declining eye would be a decline in a batsman's ability to do so in terms of time, and since the time available is finite, ultimately judgment), has nothing to do with his troubles. Dravid changed his old method because he was being drawn into playing at balls outside off stump by Mitchell Johnson's peculiar trajectory. That itself may have been a manifestation of a slowing eye (he was never similarly troubled in years past, despite having played a number of left arm pacemen).

Remember, that when I say that Dravid's eye is declining, I am talking of a miniscule decline - his eye is still probably significantly superior to that of the average Ranji batsman. He probably still has a phenomenal eye by any average standard. But it is not, I argue, at the supreme level that it used to be. It has taken very high quality bowling to expose this. Had Dravid faced India's bowling, this might have gone unmasked.

How wonderful it would be, if all of India were to agonize over whether or not Rahul Dravid should revert back to his old method or play, or persist with his newly chosen method!

Unfortunately, cricket is furthest from India's mind.