The Hindu : Sport : Has India’s bowling outperformed its batting?

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Wednesday, Jul 25, 2007
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Sport

Has India’s bowling outperformed its batting?

S. Ram Mahesh

Groundsman Mick Hunt gets the longest cheers for his work

— Photo: AFP

STANDING TALL: Dinesh Karthik’s knock in the first Test says much of the man’s character as he has fought his way back into the team as an opener.

London: A strange thing happened after the umpires abandoned the Lord’s Test after tea on Monday because of unrelenting rain. The groundsman, Mick Hunt, was cheered long and hard when he accepted a photograph, signed by the two admiring captains, of his groundstaff battling the deluge.

Michael Atherton, who was emceeing the post-match presentation, congratulated Hunt on a wonderful cricket wicket — and the cheers grew louder.

The English are a discerning cricket nation, very different from the yobs and the louts who infest England’s football stands; the spontaneous show of respect, mainly from the Pavilion, the Tavern and the Mound Stand, revealed an appreciation for cricket’s first principle.

Even contest

The game’s administrators will do well to take note: cricket is at its finest, its most vigorous, it most satisfying when the contest between bat and ball is even. Hunt’s strip, held firmly together by carefully tended grass, laid the base.

The weather, by drawing clouds to allow swing, providing rain to freshen the grass and aid cut, and leasing out the sun for Kevin Pietersen’s Sunday exhibition, added in great measure. As did the Lord’s slope.

Besides providing a scrupulously balanced contest, the combine of Hunt’s pitch and the elements posed a crucial question: Is the modern-day batsman inadequate when the bowlers are given teeth?

Michael Vaughan, the English captain, agreed in part — “You do have to fight for your runs, but it’s proper Test match cricket”.

Fight the good fight

Unsaid was how most modern-day batsmen, fattened on flat tracks and drunk on haggard bowling, have grown too complacent to fight the good fight. For some, the skills have turned vestiges; some haven’t had the opportunity to develop these skills.

Shifting context, ever so slightly, to India’s batsmen: Is there a concern that over the last two seasons the bowling has out-performed the fancied batting?

“Yes,” said Rahul Dravid, the Indian captain. “I think we’d like to score more runs. When we’ve put big runs on the board, it has made a big difference to the bowling. We are aware of that, it’s just a matter of carrying on after a start, we haven’t been able to do that.”

Barring Dravid, the other members of the Big Four did indeed get starts. But, the constant swing and cut didn’t allow them to ever feel ‘set’, so essential to the Indian batting psyche.

Unsettled minds

None dictated play like Pietersen did — and judging by Sachin Tendulkar’s request to increase the height of the sight-screen to accommodate Chris Tremlett’s release, the minds weren’t as settled as they’d have hoped.

Dravid’s twin failures — the one in the second innings wasn’t entirely his fault — showed again his importance to the batting unit.

“India’s top order with Dravid is better than India’s top order without Dravid by a factor greater than the individual,” wrote Gideon Haigh, the brilliant and original cricket writer, positing that Dravid’s weight of runs were loaded with more significant meaning. His success in playing his own game, wrote Haigh, “emancipates” the others to do the same.

Substantial gains

India’s most substantial batting gains from the first Test were the performances of Wasim Jaffer, Dinesh Karthik, and M.S. Dhoni. Ironic, that India’s only three half-centuries came from the men slated to play the supporting cast.

Dhoni’s unbeaten 76, after a first innings duck where he had looked out of his league, could prove an inflection point in his overseas record.

Indeed, he called it a “new episode”. Discernible on Monday was his working out solutions. He made subtle adjustments, yet trusted his instincts.

Attitude

It’s his attitude that’s most striking. “You have got to be a good learner,” Dhoni told The Hindu before the first Test. “I know that I have played 80 per cent of my cricket in Indian conditions, and wh en I play abroad I’m going to react based on my experience in Indian conditions. So, if I don’t do well, I don’t blame myself. I will learn and adapt.”

His success, much like Pietersen’s, showed the concept of technique, as some seem to narrowly define it, is over-rated. What’s needed is the skill to make runs in varying conditions.

Karthik appears more tightly-wound than Dhoni, cursing himself when he is squared up or when he plops his front foot too far across, and he did admit to The Hindu that “he was hard on himself”.

Quest for mastery

But, the quest for mastery is a beautiful thing, and few young Indian cricketers have responded so resolutely when facing so difficult a task. Karthik’s batting caused him to lose the gloves to Dhoni, and it says much of the man’s character that he has forced his way back as an opener.

If Jaffer can put behind him the disquieting tendency to follow an innings of substance with a string of low scores and the middle order can impose itself as its reputation suggests it should, India might just manipulate the reprieve the rain offered it at Lord’s.

Both India and England will practise, weather permitting, at Nottingham for two days before the second Test, which starts on Friday.

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