Why is Mumbai cricket treated with so much reverence, really?

Ranji trophy: Pride of the Indian domestic scene. Image source: 1.

If one had read the sport pages in the lead up to the next Ranji trophy fixtures over the last few days, the focus on the Mumbai’s 500^th game (earlier known as Bombay) would have been unmissable. For long, the self-congratulatory club of the Mumbai/Bombay Ranji trophy team (henceforth referred to by its more recent name) hasn’t let the rest of the country forget that it has been the domestic dada of Indian cricket, with a bevy of scarcely believable records.

This year’s season is the 84^th edition of the premier Indian long-format domestic competition. Mumbai has won 41 of those titles. To put this into perspective, other champion teams like New South Wales and Yorkshire (in a longer time period with lesser number of teams) have 46 and 33 titles respectively. The second team in the Ranji trophy title honours list is Mysore/Karnataka—which is far behind with 8 titles. Even in league football, Manchester United, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich don’t boast of such dominance.

At the height of Mumbai’s powers, they won 15 seasons on the trot before their streak was broken by Karnataka in the 1973-74 season (and after that, won three more making it a total of 18 titles in 19 years). Even in their so-called lean patch from 1984-85 onwards, Mumbai have won only 11 titles in 32 years. With such statistics, it isn’t surprising to see Mumbai players feeling that the Ranji trophy is their birthright.  No doubt, Mumbai is the biggest “brand” in Indian domestic cricketing history. But is the influence of this champion team on Indian cricket all positive, or is it basically bluster?

Take for instance their playing record. In 499 matches, they have won 242 matches, drawn 231 and lost only 26. In Win-Loss ratio terms, it is an insane 9.3. But in terms of Win%, it is only 48.5%. In comparision, the winning-est team in international test cricket, Australia, won ~47% of their matches. For a team that is known for their winning mentality and towering over every other team, this suddenly doesn’t look as impressive considering that it is in the domestic arena.

Mumbai cricket is also known for the famed “Bombay school of batsmanship” or “Bombay gharana”, which produced many batsmen of repute. Newspapers and sports websites have been singing paeans about their never-say-die, stubborn, khadoos attitude. But one needs to see how many of those dominated the world stage over their entire career. Two names—Gavaskar and Tendulkar—are no-brainers in terms of them commanding a spot in a hypothetical World XI; the test match arena didn’t get to see much of both the excellent Vijays—Manjrekar (the founder of the school) and Hazare; Vengsarkar was a great batsman for half a decade; the cupboard is now barren. Hopefully Rahane can fill in their gigantic shoes. Several other Mumbai players have extremely tall feats in the Ranji trophy and served India with distinction at many instances—Rusi Modi, Ashok Mankad, Ajit Wadekar and Polly Umrigar, but they were never consistently world-class. But did you notice a bigger problem? All of them were primarily batsmen.

The Bombay bowlers club: Five bowlers (Khan, Mankad, Gupte, Shastri and Ghavri) from the Bombay/ Mumbai Ranji teams have captured more than 100 test wickets for India. Only Gupte and Shastri were not imports. Image sources: 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 .

Where are the world-class bowler from Mumbai? Sorry, the bar is too high. Where are the Mumbai bowlers who had a long careers in the Indian test team? Mumbai bowlers are conspicuous by their absence either in the most career wickets or in the most wickets captured in a season Ranji trophy records. The Mumbai bowlers who have the most wickets for India are Zaheer Khan and Vinoo Mankad, both having claims in a dream India-XI, but were imports or “outsiders” from other Ranji sides. Raj Thackeray would have certainly been incensed. One would have to go back as far as Subhash Gupte to find a “Bombay-bred” bowler who played for India.

In 2010, ESPNcricinfo had a fantasy exercise to select an all-time Indian test team. Needless to say, the team was picked by a distinguished jury (with a knowledge of the game far greater than mine or any average Indian cricket fan). Obviously Tendulkar and Gavaskar made it to the team (duh!), and apart from them, in spite of a glorious history, it is slim pickings in the 39 member pool for the Mumbai players—Gupte, Vengsarkar, Tamhane, Umrigar and Merchant. Seven Mumbai names in a 39 member shortlist. One bowler.

Contrast this with other cricketing dynasties. New South Wales: Trumper, Bradman, Border, Steve Waugh, Gilchrist, McGrath, Bill O’Reilly, Davidson, Lindwall; Yorkshire: Boycott, Hutton, Sutcliffe, Root, Trueman, Illingworth; Barbados: Greenidge, Worrell, Weekes, Walcott, Hall, Sobers, Marshall, Garner (my due apologies to the illustrious players that I may have missed out). Even if a post-war cutoff is applied, the batsmen in each list certainly dwarf Mumbai’s, and they also produced world-class bowlers to boot. Lest I be accused of “jealousy”, I would like to state on record that my home state Karnataka perhaps has contributed as many world class players—if not more—as Mumbai (same goes for Saurashtra, by the way); besides, their bowling roster occupies the pride of place in Indian cricketing history, and they were some of the most self-effacing cricketers as well.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’d like to reiterate that bowlers are the match winners in the longest format of the game. At best, a batsman can set up a match, and occasionally win the team the match by chasing down a lofty 4^th innings score. A batsman may score 500 runs in an innings but if the bowling lineup cannot muster 20 wickets (lesser if a declaration is involved), a team cannot win. Based on historical trends, it can generally said that batsmen score runs in victories and draws, whereas the bowler has great wicket tallies only in wins—which shows their starring role in the longest format.

There was a time when the Indian team was dominated by players from Mumbai (and naturally, there were suspicions of a Mumbai-bias in selection). Seven Mumbai players represented India at Lords in 1952; in the immortal 1991 Ranji trophy final, the Mumbai team had 8 test capped players. Back then, players either had to be from Mumbai, or had to perform against them to be noticed; if not, you didn’t exist in terms of national reckoning. Many players shifted to Mumbai for this reason as well. Perhaps this tendency of piling on meaningless runs and glorifying individual batting statistics came from Mumbai as well? Which other cricketing culture laps up monstrous scores in school level cricket (case in point: Pranav Dhanawade)? Mumbai’s draw percentage is ~46%. This reeks of a dominance built on the basis of batting alone. Of the international sides, who has the highest draw%? It is India, with ~42%. No doubt, their inimical influence of worshipping batsmen (and many of their meaningless landmarks) has crept into Indian cricket. Prowess gained by racking up tournament victories built on the basis of first innings lead is hardly the ideal preparation for an international class competition. If Mumbai deserve their accolades for their batting history, a large part of the blame for giving bowling its due should be shouldered by Mumbai cricket.

On this basis, one could conclude that the influence of Bombay on the Indian test team is overstated and they brutalized teams by virtue of their endemic advantages–an organized cricket culture was non- existent outside Bombay till the 1960s; turf wickets, 3 day games and other basic infrastructural facilities were not the norm in other regions until recently, and their bowling revolved around the defensive tactics of testing the patience of a batsman with a 7-2 field. Additionally, the top 2 teams in the trophy hardly faced each other in the final as the tournament had a zonal format where only one team qualified from a zone till the 1970s, at the height of the Mumbai empire.

Its inward looking culture is symptomatic of a narrow worldview satisfied with domestic hegemony rather than global excellence. It is rather surprising that for a city that prides itself on a keen, calculating mind and the business of getting things done, has contributed very little in the business of winning test matches for India through its bowlers. Ramachandra Guha too has noted the absence of world class bowlers in the Bombay all time eleven, something which Makarand Waingankar has tried to apologetically explain in his “A Million Broken Windows” (many erstwhile competitors of Bombay cricket, clearly enamoured by its Ranji trophy winning mentality, of have tried to explain this recurring deficiency in the book).

But the most annoying, grating part of Mumbai cricket? The endless stream of “anecdotes”, “distilled wisdom” and narratives of a self- aggrandizing, narcissistic, pretentious team filled with circle jerks, so enamoured and infatuated with their incestuous selves. Tendulkar has a great straight drive? Obviously, in his formative years, he played in gullies with tall buildings and narrow roads where scoring straight was the only way to go. Why is a Mumbai batsman khadoos (never mind most of them didn’t display it in the international arena)? You tell me—why would a hard-working, middle-class boy, who travels for three hours along with a heavy kitbag in neutron-star-dense local trains just for a chance to bat, give up his wicket so easily? The resilient spirit of Mumbai, the will to make it is so overpowering, all-pervasive and part of the city’s cultural fabric that each kid is supplied with oodles of this secret sauce. Got out at 47 trying to force the pace in a lost cause? Why, he should have knocked the ball around for a fifty and then tried to force the pace. How strong was your Bombay team? Back in my day, getting into the Bombay team was tougher than getting into the Indian team. Of course, this was if you were a batsman or a keeper. Bowlers were always welcome. This list goes on and on..

Viewing the excessive backslapping bonhomie that is in full force with every new season from the outside seems revulsive, especially when more illustrious teams with greater achievements and contributions in the world arena go about their business in a quieter manner. That we were regaled with the same self-congratulatory tales time and time again, even in recent times, speaks volumes about a nation’s cricketing history riddled by chronic underachievement and insecurity.

No doubt, Indian cricket owes much of its early cognition of cricket to Mumbai—the first ever Indian team to tour England were the Parsis, most of whom were from Bombay; the precursors to the Ranji trophy—from The Bombay Pentangular to all the way back to the Presidency match were based in the city. But in today’s age, it is best to move on from the Mumbai-centric cultural imperialism and set higher standards and goals as a cricketing team.

In a pleasant coincidence, some of India’s best results and its best ever winning record in its test history have come in the decade when the Indian team has very few Mumbai players; one wonders if it is merely a correlation, or a causation.

Disclaimer: Some of the images used in this article are not property of this blog. They have been used for representational purposes only. The copyright, if any, rests with their respective owners.

 

 

 

 

 

Indian wrist spinners no longer second class ODI citizens

Ignored no more: Anil Kumble suffered a bias against wrist spinners throughout his ODI career. Image source: 1.

The shoe is finally on the other foot.

For years now, wrist spinners in India had to wonder what they had to do to get the selectors’ attention. After Anil Kumble’s last one day international (ODI) in 2007 till the end of 2015, a grand total of three wrist spinners had played for India in ODIs (not counting the batsmen-turned-part-timers, of course). In case you’re wondering about their names, they are Piyush Chawla, Amit Mishra and Karn Sharma—who played a cumulative 55 ODIs in these 8 odd years.  Spare a thought for poor ol’ Amit Mishra—the man with an ODI average of under 27, and the Indian with the most IPL wickets—but hardly got a chance to play against the big boys.

Player name	Matches played	Wickets	Bowling average
Amit Mishra	28	47	26.14
Piyush Chawla	25	32	34.90
Karn Sharma	2	0	–

Table 1: List of Indian wrist spinners who played for India in the ODI format between 20th March 2007 and 31st December 2015

Coincidentally, Indian badminton has experienced an upswing since 2007. Is this due to a case of young boys with powerful wrists taking up the game after being dissuaded by the fates of Indian wrist spinners unfolding on and off the field? Jokes aside, back then, it wasn’t a stretch to call Indian wrist spinners as second class ODI citizens. Why, even during the peerless Anil Kumble’s playing career, after Harbhajan Singh burst on to the scene, the legend didn’t feature many times in the Indian team—missing 153 games in the process.

If one had switched on the television or an online stream to watch the latest ODI series featuring India, he/she would have certainly wondered what the fuss is all about. With Kuldeep Yadav and Yuzvendra Chahal spinning a web against the Sri Lankans and the Aussies in the middle overs, the hard times faced by the practitioners of wrist spin seemed to be a distant memory; even forgotten, perhaps. However, old timers will note that the dark decades of the ‘70s and ‘80s were the worst for a wrist spinner when they were on the list of endangered species all over the cricketing world.

Spin bowling started losing favour in the early 1970s. John Snow headlined the 1970-71 and 1972 Ashes with Derek Underwood playing a parsimonious support act. A few years later, after losing test matches against the Australians and Indians in the 1975-76 season, Clive Lloyd’s West Indies turned to build a four-man demolition squad of fast bowlers which would terrorize batsmen world over for more than a generation. Naturally, other teams followed suit with fast bowlers of their own; even India, who often opened with a gentle medium pacer before tossing the ball to the members of the spin quartet, had found Kapil Dev in the golden age of fast bowling. The ones to suffer from this fast bowling tilt were the spin bowlers, and the situation only turned from bad to worse during the subsequent decade of the 1980s.

Particularly, one of the most difficult cricketing skills to master—wrist spin—had few takers during the dark decades of the ‘70s and ’80s when Pakistan’s Abdul Qadir was fighting a lone battle to keep the art alive. Since wrist spin involves spinning the ball using a full flick of the wrist and fingers, it is notoriously difficult to control and even more difficult to master. Invariably, a wrist spinner would bowl a bad delivery every other over which would duly be dispatched to the boundary. Hence, they were often labelled as high risk options, especially with teams coming to grips with ODI format where run containment was a premium. In the aforementioned time period of ‘70s and ’80s, fast bowling was seen as the key to test match success and spin was largely relegated to a defensive role; there were fears that wrist spin would totally disappear from the circuit. Batting skills against spin also took a backseat.

	Player name	Matches	Wickets	Bowling average
1	Abdul Qadir	57	216	32.31
2	RJ Shastri	69	141	39.51
3	Iqbal Qasim	32	131	24.99
4	JE Emburey	55	120	39.65
5	B Yardley	19	89	28.64
6	Tauseef Ahmed	28	87	29.57
7	JG Bracewell	35	82	37.28
8	Maninder Singh	34	81	38.8
9	PH Edmonds	33	76	39.76
10	DR Doshi	23	74	34.35
11	NS Yadav	26	70	38.71
12	SL Boock	21	57	35.22
13	NGB Cook	15	52	32.48
14	RJ Bright	20	46	41.13
15	RA Harper	24	45	27.82
16	ND Hirwani	7	42	20.71

Table 2: List of spinners who captured the most test wickets in between 1st January 1980 and 31st December 1989.

The list of spin bowling wicket takers in the trough of the 1980s tells the tale of wrist spinning gloom and doom. Ploughing a lonely furrow for the tribe of wrist spinners, the effervescent Abdul Qadir is perched firmly at the top with 216 wickets at a bowling average of 32.31; Ravi Shastri, with 141 victims off his left-arm-whatever at a bowling average of nearly 40, followed. Fourteen more finger spinners dot the list after Abdul Qadir, before the next wrist spinner appears in this list, namely Narendra Hirwani—who snared 42 wickets (16 of them in one game). Finger spinners were dotting the team sheets with such regularity that drinking games involving their inevitable selection could have been invented.

The face of wrist spin would change with the emergence of Shane Warne, Anil Kumble, Mushtaq Ahmed and co. in the 1990s. For nearly a decade and half, they bamboozled batsmen with their guile, control and variations. Shane Warne dragging Australia back from the dead in the 1999 World Cup semifinal and Anil Kumble bundling out six Windies for 12 runs are fond memories of that era. Unfortunately, after their retirement, wrist spin went underground for a few years yet again. In the era of ODI cricket that followed the retirement of the various wrist spinning doyens, the field turned barren with captains choosing safety and miserly spinners of the orthodox and mystery variety. However, in what has been a pleasant twist, the art-form has seen a renaissance in recent times. The lessons from the slam-bang nature of T20 and the fielding restrictions in the middle overs of the ODIs (hitherto the “boring” part of the ODI) have turned the situation on its head.

Player name	Matches	Wickets	Bowling average
Imran Tahir	40	62	27.67
AU Rashid	46	68	32.05
A Zampa	26	37	32.62
MJ Santner	37	38	37.07
M M Ali	41	28	59.50

Table 3: List of ODI spin bowlers with the best bowling averages since 1^st April 2015 against the top 9 ODI nations (minimum 25 wickets). All stats accurate till 4^th October 2017

Since the 2015 World cup, finger spinners have found the going tough in ODI cricket. The most successful spin bowlers since the last World cup have all been wrist spinners (minimum of 25 wickets against the top 9 ODI teams). In what has been a clear role reversal, New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner has been the only reasonably successful (if you can call it that) finger spinner at a bowling average of ~37. After getting drubbed in the recent Champions Trophy final against Pakistan, though a bit late to the game, it is no wonder that India turned to wrist spinners of their own.

This recent revival of wrist spin in ODIs has been due to a host of factors. One, pitches all over the world have been flat with the conditions being loaded in the favour of batsmen (the average score since 1^st April 2015 has been 272 runs); fielding restrictions have only added fuel to the fire with fewer boundary riders in the middle overs—meaning, today’s batsmen are going hell for leather more than ever; factors such as dew—which are almost a given during day-night matches held in the subcontinent—make it more difficult for the finger spinner to thrive.

Therefore, in today’s times, the best antidote for aggressive batsmen (the majority of whom are right handers) is to impart more spin on the ball and take it away from their preferred hitting zones on the leg side. Funnily, wrist spin needed batting to evolve to current T20-fuelled ballistic levels and to be countered with a high risk, high reward bowling deterrent.  With the spinning of the powerplay wheel and a combination of other factors, wrist spinners are surviving and thriving by remaining relevant even on the dreariest of surfaces in the shorter formats. It is early days still, but following worldwide trends, Indian wrist spinners are perhaps no longer second class ODI citizens.

Disclaimer: The image used in this article is not property of this blog. It has been used for representational purposes only. The copyright, if any, rests solely with its owners.

 

 

 

 

MS Dhoni hasn’t merited an India T20I spot in a long while

MS Dhoni not quenching the thirst of T20 fans anymore. Image source: 1.

After India were duly blanked in the second T20I of the ongoing India-New Zealand series, there were some murmurs about Dhoni’s performance. Chasing a steep target of 197, Dhoni came into bat in the tenth over at 67 for 4 with 130 runs to get in 65 balls, with Virat Kohli for company. If an Indian fan had tuned into the broadcast from then on, it must have felt like Kohli and Dhoni were batting into two different matches. Here was a team under pressure after a top-order failure and having to score 2 runs in every ball with no recognized batsmen after them, but their approaches to the chase on hand couldn’t have been more different.

Kohli was batting on 36 off 22, and got a boundary nearly ever over from then on; Dhoni, on the other hand, struggled to keep pace with the number of balls bowled at him—with only two sixes keeping him afloat of the run-ball parity count till the last 2 overs. Yes, he did muster three more big hits later and ended up with respectable figures, but they didn’t count in the context of the match. This was one instance when the scoreboard didn’t tell us about Dhoni’s batting contribution with respect to the requirements.

Speaking in the post-match show, V V S Laxman did not mince words “…Kohli’s strike rate was 160, MS Dhoni’s strike rate was 80. That’s not good enough when India were chasing a mammoth total…I still feel it’s time for MS Dhoni to give youngsters a chance in T20 format. It will be an opportunity for a youngster to blossom and get confidence playing international cricket”.

Ardent fans would also recall the botched chase in the West Indies, the only ODI match India lost on the West Indian tour. Though it was a low score, India rapidly found themselves in a spot of bother, losing 3 wickets cheaply. The asking run-rate never climbed to alarming levels until late in the innings, and it was assumed that India would coast to a comfortable victory considering the West Indies weren’t the strongest ODI outfit. Dhoni had limped to 26 off 56 balls with 89 still to get in 114 balls, and no boundary would come between overs 20-38. The writing on the wall was there for everyone to see when Dhoni was dismissed 14 runs adrift of the target, having scored a solitary boundary. What grated further was that an exciting prospect like Rishabh Pant was taken all the way to the Caribbean, but only got to play in the solitary T20I.

Dhoni is nowhere close to be done in the ODIs—his showings against Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand confirm that there is plenty of ODI cricket left in him. But with him not getting any younger, is it time to pass on the wicket keeping baton in T20Is? Is there any basis to Laxman’s statements?

Looking at M S Dhoni’s overall T20I record, it wouldn’t be an understatement to call it as underwhelming. Over the 11 years, Dhoni has batted 68 times—between positions 3 and 7. His run tally is 11^th amongst the players who have batted between similar positions; his batting average is quite healthy in 13^th place (minimum 10 innings). But in the matter of strike rate, he lies at a lowly 68^th place.

Over the last 5 years, a bowling team in a T20I has captured a wicket every ~17.8 balls (not very different from the overall figure of ~17.6 balls). This implies that the average team loses less than 7 wickets in a given match. Therefore, wickets are overvalued in T20Is (or 30% of the wickets are not utilized in an average match). On the other hand, each ball represents 0.83% of the available scoring opportunities for the batting side. Unlike an ODI, a batsman cannot take an over to “play himself in” in a T20I (like Dhoni did so). Hence, for a T20 player, strike rate is a far bigger asset compared to the batting average (runs per dismissal).

Of all the Indian men who have batted in at least 10 innings in positions between 3 and 7, Dhoni’s strike rate is second from last. But this alone can’t be held against him as it is also true that the Indian team has traditionally played a few T20I matches in a year. Why, another illustrious player—A B de Villiers—also has an ordinary T20I record compared to his stellar club showings. Can we therefore turn to a tournament like the IPL where more data is available and pick up some clues?

Over the ten seasons of the IPL, Dhoni has faced ~260 balls per season on an average. He’s had more good years than bad years (from a strike rate perspective). Overall, his numbers look really good—he’s well ahead of all of his Indian contemporaries in the strike rate stakes, barring Sehwag. On the basis of his overall IPL record, it is no surprise that his spot had never been under threat. And it is not like keepers such as Dinesh Karthik, Parthiv Patel, Naman Ojha or Sanju Samson have been knocking at the door with their exceptional performances in the IPL or other domestic T20s.

M S Dhoni’s batting record in the IPL ordered by season

However, the above table also shows that Dhoni’s ability to find the fence and his strike rate have taken a beating in the last 3 years, as seen in the lower than usual balls per boundary (4 or 6) and strike rate. The last two times he had ordinary campaigns (in 2009 and 2012), he was able to redeem himself in the next editions. But whether he will still be able to do that after the age of 36 is anyone’s guess. He probably isn’t the player anymore to take India home from a hypothetical scenario of 60 runs to get from 6 overs with 5 wickets in hand, leave alone yesterday’s match. Needless to say, the latest Dhoni T20I showing is a microcosm of his limitations in this format, and his inability to get going right from the start.

Yes, M S Dhoni is an all-time legend in the ODI format, probably in the league of Tendulkar, Richards, Akram and McGrath; he may very well have delivered the World T20 in 2007 and impressive showings in the recent editions of the World T20; but recent evidence points to his inability to keep pace with the batting demands of the T20 game. Make no mistake, his keeping ability, fitness, tactical nous are surefire hits in the T20 format, but on the basis of striking the ball (like the Dhoni of 2006 vintage) he’s holding the team back. This isn’t to suggest that the T20 door is closed to him; considering that wickets are overvalued, he could be considered as a pure wicketkeeper batting at number 7 or below—with a bevy of hard hitting batsmen and all-rounders above him in the batting order. But pragmatically speaking, the selectors should have bid goodbye to him in the T20Is long time back; Dhoni certainly wouldn’t need the T20Is to get himself an attractive IPL contract.

With India playing only the odd T20I per tour, the stakes are quite low in the overall scheme of things. Besides, there is no World T20 in 2018 due to a cramped schedule, which raises the question what purpose these bilateral T20I fixtures serve.  India have had a wretched T20I record during the last one year with victories against a greenhorn Sri Lankan team and a demoralized Australian team masking their overall deficiencies, and are in need of freshening things up. Hence, they should use the opportunity to audition the newer, younger models such as Rishabh Pant and co. with a view of finding clues to a solution of a much bigger, impending problem—the long-term successor to Dhoni in the ODI format.

Disclaimer: Some images used in this article are not property of this blog. They have been used for representation purposes only. The copyright, if any, rests with respective owners.