More credit than debit, but India far from finished product

More credit than debit, but India far from finished product

India’s overwhelming dominance in the One-Day International series was fashioned primarily by two things – the top-order batting led by Virat Kohli, and the spin bowling of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal. While Kohli was spectacular, and Shikhar Dhawan easily the second best batsman on either side, Rohit Sharma also made a vital century when needed most. But while the top-order guns were blazing, the middle order has left India with problems to ponder as they fine-tune preparations for the 2019 World Cup. On the other hand, the wrist-spin duo has added immeasurably to the team’s arsenal.

In taking stock of the win, the credit ledger far outweighs the debit side, but while the team must enjoy its great show to the hilt, the quiet backroom planning will have already started for what needs course-correction as India aim to get as close to perfect as possible for the World Cup.

In the middle order, Hardik Pandya batted at No. 5, with MS Dhoni coming in at No. 6. Kedar Jadhav was slated to come in at No. 7 in the first ODI. In the second, India won by nine wickets, so no one from Ajinkya Rahane downwards had to bat.

The same batting order was followed in the third ODI, with Jadhav getting to the middle this time. With the Maharashtra batsman injured after that and Shreyas Iyer playing the next three games, the order changed again. In the fourth ODI, it was Iyer, Dhoni, Pandya. In the fifth it was Iyer, Pandya, Dhoni. The sixth game was decided by Kohli’s brilliance in the chase once again, meaning no one below Rahane batted.

Before the start of the ODI series, the No. 4 spot was looked at as something of a problem child. However, once Kohli hinted strongly that Rahane would be given a run at that position, it seemed like there would be a settled batting order. The shuffling, instead, has shifted lower down.

R Sridhar, India’s fielding coach, explained that it was part of the team’s plan to build finishers, and that the state of the game too dictated who would come out at which spot.

“The whole endeavour is for two things,” said Sridhar. “One: look at the state of the game and see which player can be the best at that particular situation. And two: to give our other batsmen, apart from obviously MS, a chance to go there and take the responsibility and take the game till the end. We want more finishers, we want to train and groom more finishers. At the same time, we also want our Nos. 5, 6, 7 to be able to go in and learn the situation and adapt to it. That is why you see the rotation, but very soon I think we’ll be settling into fixed Nos. 5, 6, 7 as we get closer to the World Cup.”

Given the dynamics that T20 cricket has introduced, a flexible lower middle order can actually be eminently sound strategy. For example, if the third wicket falls in the 42nd over, you would want a Pandya to come out even if you have Iyer/Jadhav or Dhoni in the hut. With eight overs left, you want the man who can hit big the most consistently, and who will take the least time to get going. Despite his meagre returns in the ODI series, Pandya is that man for India.

What goes unsaid is the question of whether Dhoni is still the man for India. Behind the stumps, surely in the change-room, and in general, the aura and presence of Dhoni is inspiring. His constant stream of advice and tips, particularly to Chahal and Kuldeep, has become the stuff of internet virality. But with the bat, Dhoni has seemed a shadow of his former self.

He already has 9967 runs in the 50-over format, and when he’s done, he’ll probably be competing with Adam Gilchrist for a spot in the all-time XI for when Earth plays inter-Galactic series. But is he the man India can afford to take to the 2019 World Cup? That is a question for the team management to ponder with urgency because if a change has to be made, it must be soon so that the new ‘keeper has some matches under his belt before the big event.

Perhaps the niggling issues with the middle order is what Kohli was referring to when he said after the series win, “We certainly feel really good as a team. But there are always areas,” Kohli said. “Even when we win, we sit down, because no one has a perfect game throughout. Even as a batsman, you know that some balls you were not in good position so you want to correct that in the next game. As a team as well, you always make mistakes even when you win, but the thing is you capitalise on it and correct those mistakes very soon during the course of the games. We will definitely sit down as a team and figure out the areas that need improvement. I’m not denying that there are no areas that need strengthening.

“We don’t want to live in a dreamland where we just don’t accept our mistakes. We know as a team we need to improve on certain things. We’ve identified those things, it’s up to us to discuss and improve on those things going forward and solidifying those areas for ourselves. I don’t want to disclose it (the areas for improvement). I don’t want to speak about it publicly. It’s a very personal thing about the team and I don’t want to say it in a press conference.”

On the other hand, the emergence of a viable striking option in the middle overs has given India’s attack the teeth it lacked earlier. “I think even in my last stint, Virat and me have always discussed that we need wickets in the middle overs,” said Ravi Shastri, the head coach. “You know we’ve got to somehow be able to attack and find ways of breaking partnerships and not allowing the game to drift. So that was the idea. And then identifying the right kind of people to do the job. Luckily for us, Kuldeep and Chahal have complemented each other beautifully. They bring great variety – it’s great for the viewer, it’s great for the spectator to see that kind of variety when they come to watch a cricket match. Not just batting or fielding, but some classic spin bowling.”

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, despite middling returns in this series, and Jasprit Bumrah have proven to be among the most reliable pace-bowling pairs in white-ball cricket, and with the wrist-spin twins now in the mix, India have an attack that can be a threat at multiple stages of a match. It’s a luxury most teams don’t have. When combined with the way the top order of Dhawan, Rohit and Kohli have been on fire, you can understand why India are a formidable unit in the 50-overs game, notwithstanding the middle-order niggle.

And that they put it across South Africa so comprehensively despite the regular stutters after a couple of wickets had fallen shows just how deep the top three batted which minimised the effects of any wobble, and how well the bowlers combined to make even par totals seem herculean.

“We have learnt some good habits on this trip,” said Shastri. “This is a young side, they have got a lot of tough tours coming up and I think they have conducted themselves and handled themselves extremely well on this tour. One thing history tells me, I have been coming here since 1992, there is not one South African side in the world that anyone can say is a weak side. You just look at their bilateral record and they are one of the great sides in bilateral cricket. I have followed this game for a long time. I have been a broadcaster as well and covered a lot of South Africa games and I know how they play. So I would like my boys to enjoy every bit of this series win. Whatever the scoreline is, they must enjoy because it doesn’t happen every day.”

India are already a frighteningly good one-day side, particularly when Kohli and the top order get going, which is almost in every match. If Pandya’s development as a bowler continues, they will have most bases covered with bowling too. As Kohli said, it’s not possible to be perfect throughout, but if they get their middle order sorted, India will come closer to it than any other side in world cricket.

The mystique of the wristique

The mystique of the wristique

“What the wrist?”

They are probably whispering these words in hushed, shocked, thunder-struck tones in the South African dressing-room.

Three matches into a One-Day International series that has brought the top two sides in the world face to face, there is clear daylight between the protagonists. India have played like a champion outfit, full of purpose and courage. Inspired by a captain who is batting as if from a different planet and powered by a pair of wrist-spinners that have wreaked well-documented havoc, they have jumped all over South Africa, meek and timid, hesitant and indecisive. South Africa is the home side, but India haven’t so much bearded the lion in its own den as systematically dismantled it, using non-violent subtlety of the highest quality as their weapon of choice.

Yuzvendra Chahal and Kuldeep Yadav have been exhilarating to watch. Take the cricket ball out of their hands, and these two could so easily be mistaken for unremarkable young men. Chahal, thin and bespectacled, looks every inch the chess player he used to be, if you like stereotyping. Kuldeep could be the impish boy next door, naughtiness oozing out of every pore.

It is, however, the cricket ball that has shaped the destinies of this odd couple, the Gen Next of spin bowling in a country acclaimed for having produced several of the greatest spinners of all time.

There is a mystique associated with being wristique that not much else can parallel in cricket. The big fast bowlers can evoke dread; they will threaten body and limb and wicket, they can terrorise with the ferocity with which they hurl the little gob of leather. They will glare and snarl and spew expletives in the knowledge that if something comes back their way, they can always reply in kind with the next mean, well-directed bouncer. But the tiny spinners? So what if they have the heart of a paceman? They can’t rely on speed, so guile it is that is their inseparable companion.

And it is this guile, this craft and cunning, this ability to embarrass rather than intimidate, that adds to the aura. To watch batsmen hopping around on a quick, bouncy track against express fast bowling appeals to our basal instincts. But when top willow-wielders are reduced to blubbering, clueless entities by wrists of wonder, it triggers waves of awe and feel-good, of admiration and envy. There is, after all, something to say for killing ‘em softly.

When you talk cricket and wrists in the same breath, you instantly are transported to the world of Gundappa Viswanath. Of Mohammad Azharuddin. Of Zaheer Abbas. Of VVS Laxman. Men who didn’t dismiss the ball from their presence as apologetically caress it into gaps, cajoling rather than commanding it to keep its tryst with the boundary boards. Men who made it impossible for captains to set fields. Men who could hit two successive deliveries pitching on the same spot and doing the same thing to two diametrically opposite sides of the park. Men that even the bowlers didn’t terribly mind being scored of, you suspect.

All these gentlemen played their early cricket on matting tracks with a strong emphasis on back foot play. As the ball got bigger, they had to bring their wrists into play to keep it down. It wasn’t the only way to negotiate the climbing delivery, but it was the way that worked best for these maestros. Viswanath benefitted from Tiger Pataudi’s wisdom as he went about strengthening his wrists – lifting a bucketful of water in each hand 20 times in one go, three or four times a day. Laxman went from classically orthodox to stunningly wristy through a combination of a growth spurt and the Azhar influence during his formative cricketing years in Hyderabad. Where others bludgeoned the ball, these wizards twirled them to the fence. How many of us haven’t wanted to bat like them, sure in the knowledge that beyond in our dreams, that was impossible to the power of impossible?

And what about the sheikhs of tweak? Of the Shane Warnes and the Muttiah Muralitharans – an offspinner who used his wrist, so completely in keeping with the unique Murali persona – and the Abdul Qadirs and the Mushtaq Ahmeds? And our very own L Sivaramakrishnan and Anil Kumble?

LS was the one that opened my eyes to the wondrous world of legspin – purely from a viewing rather than a practicing perspective. I first saw him ‘live’ at Chepauk in early 1985, against David Gower’s Englishmen. He had begun the Test series in a blaze of glory – six wickets in each of the first three innings – but England had found ways to counter him subsequently. In his backyard at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, the wisp of a lad sent down 44 overs for just the scalp of Tim Robinson, though with a little more support from behind the stumps, he could easily have finished with better returns than 1 for 135.

Watching him at the ground didn’t offer the complete viewing experience that one is exposed to today. There were no giant screens that beamed replays, and from 100 yards away and seated square to the strip, it was impossible to see what he was trying to do. Two months later, television images from Australia seared the LS intrigue into the heart. Saucer-eyed and so reedy that you feared a gust of wind would blow him away into the distant horizon, he bamboozled the batsmen with his repertoire. Seasoned voices like Richie Benaud – still typically restrained – and Bill Lawry, rambunctious as always, took a shine to the teenager from Chennai.

One particular delivery to Rod McCurdy is indelibly etched in memory. McCurdy was a fast-medium bowler with modest batting skills, agreed, but still… As the ball looped out of Siva’s right hand, McCurdy plonked his right foot outside off, the bat moving in that direction. Once it started to drift in towards him, the foot was hastily withdrawn, the bat magnetically following suit. When the ball broke away on pitching. McCurdy was facing the bowler chest-on, his bat scurrying this way and that and missing the leg-break by a mile. The look on his face was pure genius – panic, embarrassment, admiration, envy, relief, self-deprecation. The earth could have opened up and swallowed him whole, and he would have gone happily, with a smile.

Warne, of course, was the consummate showman, equal parts bluster and bravado, equal parts mystery and magic. ‘Hollywood’ had a sense of occasion, a propensity for drama, a penchant for limelight, a skill bestowed only on the blessed. There was never a dull moment when he was at the bowling crease – the measured walk, the short acceleration, the ball fizzing off his stubby fingers and turning like the devil had made it its home. Every delivery was an event, even an innocuous full-toss that batsmen feared could explode mid-air. In such knots had he tied up Darryl Cullinan, the South African batsman, that when Chris Harris was bowling at him in New Zealand, Adam Parore screamed from behind the stumps, “Well bowled Shane!”

Chahal and Kuldeep have a long way to go before they graduate from breathtaking performers to effortless showmen. They may never graduate to that category, but so what? So long as the charm is intact, the mystery unsolved.

What the wrist, right?

Kohli’s wicket is key, says Morris

Kohli’s wicket is key, says Morris

On India’s tour of South Africa, Virat Kohli has pulled further away from the pack of contemporary batsmen and into increasingly rarefied heights. In three Tests, none of which were played on batting-friendly surfaces, he topped the charts with 286 runs. In the One-Day Internationals, he’s gone even further with 318 runs already in three matches, and only one dismissal.

While the South African batsmen have their own challenge from India’s wrist-spin duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal, the bowlers have the battering ram of Kohli to get past. And they need to do it on Saturday (February 10), in the fourth ODI of the series, because India are already 3-0 up.

“You always want to get the main dog out in a team. He’s the big dog and the guy scoring runs for them at the moment,” said Chris Morris on Friday at the Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg. “I mean look, 34 ODI hundreds speaks for itself. He’s got a hundred in every single country he’s played in. The guy’s in serious form at the moment, and he’s in form anywhere he plays in the world. He’s a good player but we know if we bowl well enough to him we could get him out. We know he’s the main guy in the team, and if we can get him out we can put India under pressure.”

As for plans against the Kuldeep-Chahal threat, Morris said that in between losing the third ODI in Cape Town by 124 runs and now, the team had done some even more intensive homework on the duo, and hoped to be able to read them better.

“I wouldn’t say there are any new plans to be very honest. I think there will be a lot more video work done, lots of guys watching the hand and watching the ball and I think just maybe change our options,” he explained. “That’s probably the biggest thing. I don’t think there’s major plans with different techniques and different tactics against the spinners. It’s just about doing a little bit more hard work and playing a positive game, focussing on hitting the cricket ball and stop focussing on what’s around you.

“We’re not panicking, hitting more balls – it’s not panic station. We know we played badly against spin, so we’ll take it on the chin and move on.”

South Africa’s batsmen haven’t been able to deal with the flight or turn and Morris conceded it was ‘possible’ they had not been reading the spin well. “We had a chat about it in Cape Town and we’ve just got to take it on the chin. We haven’t been playing them well, we’ve been a bit tentative towards them,” he said. “Maybe a different tactic or ploy against them. But we don’t need to change anything. We don’t need to hit more balls, we don’t need to change anything about the way we’re playing the game. We just need to focus on what’s going on at the moment. Maybe situations have caused a bit of tentativeness to play the game, but that’s part of cricket. Like I said, the only way we can combat that is doing a bit more homework and focussing on what’s going on ahead of us.”

To a question on whether he believed his side could score runs against them, Morris grinned, “Absolutely. They’re human, eh?”

While giving wholesome credit to their skills, Morris said that if South Africa was in a more dominant position when the spinners came on, it could well herald a much more positive approach against them. “It depends on the situation. Obviously, in Durban I had to consolidate and eat up a bit of pressure and bat some time,” he said, referring to the first ODI where he made 37 in a 74-run stand with Faf du Plessis that resurrected South Africa. “Centurion (bowled out for 118) we don’t really need to talk about, I had to play my game. If we are 100 for no loss after 11 overs when the spinners come on, I tell you what, we’re not going to sit back. It’s simple as that, you are going to play your game because we are on the front foot. Every time the spinners have come on, we’ve been on the back foot, unfortunately. Except for Cape Town I don’t think we were on the back foot, but they’ve bowled really, really well. So that’s all situation based. If we decide to go, we go. If we don’t, we soak up a bit of pressure and see them out, then that’s obviously what the game-plan is in that moment and on the day.”

In saying that, Morris also emphasised that none of the team was surprised at the quality of the bowling, saying that was expected from a top side like India. “You never get surprised by spinners, especially Indian spinners,” he said. “They do so well at home for a reason with spin bowling. They are a seriously good one-day unit, a seriously good Test unit and T20 as well. You never get surprised when an Indian team comes up because you know what you’re going to get, and that’s quality.”

What Morris was hoping to get from the pitch at the Wanderers Stadium was less help for the spinners, though he reiterated that pitches couldn’t be used as an excuse for South Africa’s dismal show in the ODIs so far.

“I think every single cricketer is hoping for an old Wanderers wicket because they were quite nice to bat on. They were not very nice to bowl on,” he smiled. “Look there’s been a lot of chat about the pitches but to be fair, we’ve just got to get on with it as cricketers. It doesn’t matter what you arrive to play on: if it’s turning, if it’s quick, if it’s seaming, it’s low and slow – we’ve just got to play, simple as that. There’s no complaining about it, there’s no hiding behind it, we’ve just got to play. Simple as that.”