The teasing issue of off-spin

HOURS AFTER the Indian team for the ICC Knock-out tournament in Kenya was picked, Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly was asked a specific question. Would he miss an off-spinner?

Ganguly was quick with his reply. ``Yes, we will miss an off- spinner, but we cannot be picking anyone for the sake of selecting him. He has to be good.''

Days later, the Indian think-tank in Nairobi made a request to the selectors. It wanted an off-spinner for the tournament in Sharjah. The plea was shot down.

Four years earlier, Sachin Tendulkar, leading the country in its Caribbean campaign, had made a similar request to counter a West Indian line-up packed with southpaws.

The wise men obliged him, but the man who won the nod was way short of international class, except in fielding. Noel David was totally inadequate for the job. Perhaps Ganguly had that shocking selection in mind while talking to the media in Chennai.

Welcome to the great Indian debate - the teasing issue of off- spin.

A quality offie does make a difference, and India doesn't need to look beyond its neighbours to find an answer. Both, the Lankan wizard Muttiah Muralitharan, and the Pakistani virtuoso Saqlain Mushtaq are match- winners, and bring to the fore, in their different ways, the very best in off-spin.

While it is true that bowlers of their class do not surface at the drop of the hat, India can at least do with someone like New Zealand's offie of yore, John Bracewell, a bowler who could hold his own in both forms of the game.

In the context of the present Indian team, an off-spinner would provide the attack variety - spin spearhead Anil Kumble essentially turns the ball from leg to off - giving his captain more options against the left-handed batsmen. But then, do we have the talent?

To find an answer, it would be worthwhile to go back, to the 80s, when India went through a transition period in spin.

Srinivas Venkatraghavan, a vital part of the famed Indian spin quartet, departed from the international scene in the 1983-84 season, and Shivlal Yadav, the last Indian off-spinner to claim more than 100 Test wickets, played the final Test of a rollercoaster career against Pakistan in the gripping Bangalore Test of 1986.

It has been a struggle from that period on, with none staying long enough to make a definite impact. Arshad, a different bowler from Yadav in the sense that he operated a lot flatter, scalped 41 batsmen in Tests, but the Hyderabadi was the kind who needed assistance from the pitch. Tamil Nadu's M. Venkataramana and Bengal's lanky Sardindu Mukherjee made an early impression but could not progress.

Then arrived Rajesh Chauhan. Like Arshad, the Madhya Pradesh offie was a limited bowler, but in home conditions, with trump card Kumble and the under-rated left-arm spinner Venkapathy Raju striking, he played the role of a support bowler to the hilt, as India won eight Tests on-a- trot starting from 1993.

In the mid-90s, when Chauhan's form suffered a slump, Aashish Kapoor, who switched from Tamil Nadu to Punjab in search of greener pastures, won the India cap, and did make a reasonable start to his Test career in the Mohali Test against the West Indians (1994-95).

During the period he was in the national side, Aashish bowled tidily for most part, but his inability to pick wickets on a consistent basis, coupled with his failure with the bat (he was picked as an all- rounder) resulted in his omission, and following a brief comeback by Chauhan, which was derailed by the `chucking controversy,' Punjab's young off-spinner Harbhajan Singh found himself in the Indian side.

Here, we would take a break from the past. Importantly, the flashback revealed an inconsistent selection policy where merit did not always count. Otherwise how could Noel David get picked ahead of his infinitely more deserving Hyderabad team-mate, Kanwaljeet Singh?

Looking into the future, Harbhajan Singh can still redeem his career, but has a mountain to climb really. The Sardar did make an impression on his Test debut against Australia in Bangalore, 1998, not afraid to give the ball air, and getting the ball to turn sharply from a nice off-stump line.

However, his bowling went off the boil with the furore over his action only complicating matters. And the last straw came this year when Harbhajan, a product of the system having made his way up from the age- group tournaments, was banished from the National Cricket Academy for bad behaviour.

Meanwhile, his Punjab team-mate Sarandeep Singh has stolen a march over him. To start with, he has a clean action, which is a big plus in the present scenario. He loves to flight the ball, and is not averse to taking the challenge to the batsmen in a very old fashioned way.

It was sad that Sarandeep, with 36 scalps in the 1999-2000 first class season, did not find a regular place in the National Cricket Academy XI for the Buchi Babu tournament in Chennai. Part-timers like Mohammed Kaif doubled up as off-spinners, and this is certainly not the right way to go when it comes to grooming youngsters.

Sarandeep certainly scores over an over-rated offie like Nikhil Chopra, whose successes against lacklustre opposition in the ODIs have been played up. The Delhi cricketer was exposed in the Bangalore Test against the South Africans earlier this year, when the Proteas picked runs off him on a helpful pitch at will. Remember, the South Africans are suspect themselves against quality spin.

Then we have Orissa's Sanjay Satpathy, an attacking off-spinner, willing to experiment. During the senior division league games in Chennai, one saw Sanjay getting the ball to drift away from the right-hander and that is a good sign. Mumbai all-rounder Ramesh Powar and Saurashtra's Nilesh Odera have also managed to attract attention.

Aashish Kapoor, with 50 first class wickets last season, too is making a spirited bid for a comeback, but one does get the feeling that he would have to be among the runs in a big away apart from striking with the ball to be back in the reckoning, what with the selection panel chief, Chandu Borde, stressing on youth.

Finally, to a gutsy Sardar who has managed to keep that fire burning despite being humiliated time and again by the selectors. Yes, Hyderabad's Kanwaljit Singh had 62 first class scalps in the season gone by, and the man's over 40. Yet he is fighting Father Time to the best of his ability. You have to admire the spirit of the man.

S. DINAKAR

Chennai

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