The importance of being Pujara

Tunnel vision: Pujara’s focus and judgement helped India to win the test at Adelaide. Image source: 1.

Let us imagine that as a child you were given a marshmallow or a cookie (or a treat that you loved). But there’s a catch; the giver told you that you would receive one more in case you didn’t succumb to your immediate desire of eating it for 15 minutes. Would you give in and take a quick nibble? Or would you control your urges for a bigger, later reward?

This is the premise of the famous Stanford Marshmallow experiment, a series of experiments that studied delayed gratification—when the subject resists the temptation of a short-term reward for a larger, long-term reward. At the time, a child with a tendency to wait for the later, better reward was found to have better life outcomes (such as exam scores, education, body mass and others) on average. The perceived correlation was simple—that the ability to resist immediate temptation in order to reach your larger goal was measured by this experiment. Subsequent research has cast doubt on this finding, but the researchers may very well have used this premise to study test cricket’s grammar and Pujara’s interpretation of it.

In a test match of fine margins, it was Cheteshwar Pujara’s knocks in both the innings that proved to be the difference. Though the Australians steadily chipped away towards the target in the 4^th innings, it was his crucial runs that provided the much-needed cushion that India needed to account for the overheads (tailender occupation, no balls and dropped catches) en route to the finish line.

Much of his run accumulation was done in the only way he knew, by taking his time to eat the marshmallow. He left alone 53 deliveries, 23 in excess of all his specialist colleagues when he was holding up one end and shepherding India to an acceptable first innings total from a disastrous position of 41/4. While his fellow batters were busy succumbing to temptation, Pujara waited for the storm to pass, put away the bad ball and then feasted on a tired attack. His first innings knock also followed his strike rate template to a T—eschewing risk at the start (~28 until he reached 30), motoring along in the middle (~50 for the next 30 runs) and then zooming at end (~85 for his last 63 runs). Over two innings, his flirty, twinkly-toed, courtship dance interspersed with a playing-hard-to-get routine, set to Nathan Lyon’s bowling defined the entire match. If not for Pujara’s heroics, Lyon, with his eight wickets and 62 unbeaten runs, would have been the man of the match. It is hard to believe that after more than 5000 test runs, Pujara may have finally cemented his place in the Indian team.

Why, his place wasn’t secure not too long ago. The debate of his strike rate raged on unnecessarily in a format where test matches don’t go the distance. He was rightfully dropped after a poor string of scores in the first SENA (South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia) abroad tour iteration in 2013 & 2014, when he couldn’t kick on after getting to double digits, but he unnecessarily got a raw deal the second time around. The team management, for all its wisdom, fluttered its eyelashes at the proverbial “Sharmaji ka beta”, preferring “intent” and “aggression” to test match competence.

Sure, it isn’t criminal to crave for a player who can come in at 500/4 and smash the bowling around for 15 overs to take the game away from the opposition, but it also helps reaching that desired score in the first place. Yes, there is more than one way to skin the cat (sorry PETA) that is test cricket, but it wasn’t fair that he was almost always the first in line to be dropped at the expense of more “talented” colleagues such as Rohit Sharma and KL (some would say KLPD) Rahul; at the same time, they have done little of note to grab their chances whenever they were shoehorned into the eleven at his expense. Pujara has responded to these reverses admirably, often scoring runs in adverse situations—at Colombo, Jo’burg, Nottingham and Southampton, to name a few.

In today’s day and age, a Pujara and his style of play is an anachronism: a heartfelt, memorable, handwritten letter—replete with structure and meaningful pauses—in the age of the snarky tweet, the trying-too-hard-to-be-funny gif and the several me-too listicles that demand your ephemeral attention before it flits around to the next one in line which doesn’t quite satiate. He’s also polite to a fault; instead of ripped muscles, his body contours sport rounded edges; he needs to be taught to sledge; and believe it or not, chocolate milkshake is his choice of celebratory beverage. It also doesn’t help that he only plays test matches, that too the old-fashioned way, thus having fewer moments to remind everyone of his utility (trivia: his List-A average is 54.20).

Pujara should probably take solace from the fact that his illustrious predecessor, the peerless Rahul Dravid, elevated himself to an all-weather batsman only by 2002. Yes, he had a great debut and some promising innings in South Africa and New Zealand, but he struggled in Australia and had a few ordinary series around the turn of the millennium. After a productive England tour, on the very same ground 15 years ago, Dravid had his finest hour as a batsman. From mid-2002, Dravid was India’s most prolific test run scorer.

Along with reaching various batting landmarks in the same number of innings as Dravid, Pujara has had his moment in the sun in Adelaide as well. This game has been the right one to show Pujara’s value to the team and his colleagues would do well to imbibe his methods of avoiding short-term temptation and then scoring big runs once the Kookaburra ball loses its zip. This bears even more significance given that Ashwin’s batting has been on the wane recently and that India often fields three number 11s after him. It is high time that the team management lays off Pujara and accepts him for the player he is, without unnecessarily dangling a selectorial sword over his head.

With Sri Lanka and West Indies on the decline and India playing Pakistan only in world events, unfortunately, the calling card for the great Indian batsman is a good record in the SENA countries. Pujara’s feats at this stage are dwarfed by Dravid’s deeds, but imitation is the best form of paying homage to an all-time legend. Indian fans will surely hope that this showing augurs well for his batting all over the world and that he has his own prolific run.

Disclaimer: The image used in this article is not the property of this blog. It has been used for representational purposes only. The copyright, if any, belongs to the respective owners.

 

 

 

The Evolution of Opening Batsmen – Kris Srikkanth’s place in ODI cricket history

We wrote an analytical piece for the good folks at Nation of Sport about understanding Krishnamachari Srikkanth’s place in the annals of ODI cricket. The article is behind a paywall and hence we can’t reproduce it on our blog like we normally do so. Here is a short summary:

Ardent cricket fans have come to believe that opening batting in the ODIs changed after the 1992 World Cup, when Mark Greatbatch showed everyone the way by blasting his way through the fielding restrictions. While there is some truth to this statement, this isn’t the entire picture. These stories ignore the pioneering role of Srikkanth, who performed something similar many years ago more consistently (at a time when field restrictions were not uniformly applied, mind you) and for a much longer period, thus standing out amongst all his peers. We analyse his record in the context of his time and pay tribute to this trailblazer who was ahead of his time.

You can read the whole piece at: https://www.nationofsport.com/stories/kris-srikkanth?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email

You need a subscription to access the entire story and we urge you to subscribe to this wonderful website to check out many other interesting stories as well.

 

 

Memories from Down Under

Size of the challenge: Virat Kohli leads his Indian team on what could be one of the best chances to win a test series in Australia. Image source: 1.

Indian tours to Australia have mostly been one-way traffic—the late Jaywant Lele’s (no, not McGrath’s) famous prediction of a 3-0 drubbing just before the 1999-00 tour comes to mind. In addition to India traditionally being poor travellers, Australian teams have been the toughest opposition for most teams. However, as teams around the world got crushed by the Aussie might, India were the one team that competed—often, in the most trying circumstances—against the Aussies during their period of dominance.

With Smith and Warner serving their post-Sandpapergate bans, the chatter among pundits and fans alike is that the imminent series represents a great chance for the Indian team to win their first ever test series in Australia. It is also worth remembering that India went with high hopes in the last two away tours but eventually fell short; before each tour, Ravi Shastri boldly proclaimed that their performances would define the legacy of this Indian team, but the post-series press conferences witnessed a tetchy Virat Kohli showing his combative side to the media. While the fans have been buoyed by the sight of Indian fast bowlers dismantling the opposition, questions about the batting and team selections still linger.

With this backdrop, this is a great time to recall some memorable Indian tours to Down Under. Additionally, can an analytical approach be used to draw some insights based on what was expected and how the series panned out?

In this article, three tours have been chosen: 2003-04, 1991-92 and 1980-81. The 2007-08 series was memorable as well, but going further back in time presents a chance to relive one of India’s greatest wins.

Now to the methodology. The strength of the two teams in the lead up to each tour is measured by 4 parameters—Batting experience (matches), batting strength, bowling experience (matches played by bowling unit) and bowling quality. Readers should note that the matches played by the bowling unit features both in the batting and bowling experience; this is because bowlers are called upon to bat much more frequently compared to batsmen rolling their arms over. Since home teams call up fewer players than away teams, the number of players has been indicated in brackets to provide additional perspective.

Table 1: A dissection of pre-series positions a post-series results on previous Indian tours to Australia

Consequently, batting strength is calculated by summing up the batting averages of all players (weighted by matches played in the series) and adjusting it to 10 dismissals. The batting strength (the higher the better) can be thought of as the average score that the batting lineup would have made during the series. Similarly, the bowling quality is calculated by adding bowling averages weighted by with the overs bowled. This can be thought of as the quality of composite bowling lineup (the lower the better) faced by the opponent; multiplying the bowling quality by 10 can give a sense of the runs conceded per innings.

For both these measures, career-to-date averages (till the start of the series) have been used, except in the cases of players who have played 10 test matches or less. Typically, new players take time to establish themselves in the side and hence their values have been fixed looking at historical trends (batsman-30, wicketkeeper/allrounder-20, tailender-10 for batting strength; bowler-35 for bowling quality). An argument could be made to account for home-away disparity (adjusting by ±5%), but in the interest of simplicity, the values have been used without further adjustment as they can be easily gauged.

2003-04

India faced off against a very strong Australian team, which scored ~20% more runs per innings compared to the average. Boasting of champion batsmen, Australia had the license to go all out and pummel the opposition into submission. The Indian batting was just about finding its feet in overseas conditions and they delivered most memorably in Adelaide. However, this magnificent victory has to be tempered based on the bowling lineup India faced; Australia, missing McGrath and Warne, presented a rookie bowling attack (79 tests old) which was far worse than the ~30 bowling quality. Additionally, their one world-class bowler, Gillespie, bowled only 10.2 out of 72.4 overs when India chased 233 for victory at Adelaide.

The two absent champion bowlers were veterans of 202 tests and had captured wickets at 21.71 and 25.71 respectively, and their replacements weren’t simply good enough. Just one stat is enough to distill their importance to the Australian team: with either of these two bowlers in the side, Australia lost only a single match at home in over a decade (that too, by 12 runs). This is not to belittle Dravid’s finest hour as one can only score against the bowlers bowling against you, but one has to be mindful of the circumstances in which this fantastic result was achieved. Keeping this in mind, the standout performance on the tour was undoubtedly Agarkar’s—taking 6/41 at Adelaide against this Australian lineup. The Indians also didn’t have the bowling to win the series in Sydney, allowing Steve Waugh to hold fort for a drawn series in his farewell test, but performed admirably throughout the series given their bowling quality.

1991-92

On paper, this tour looks like a drubbing at the hands of a less-experienced, lesser skilled Australian team; the first two tests were certainly so, but the next two were mightily close. Trailing by 170 runs, the Aussies slipped to 114/6 before a lower-order rescue act by a dogged Allan Border took them to a draw against below-average Indian bowling. Similarly, chasing an improbable 372 to win in the 4^th innings, Azhar and Prabhakar kept India in the hunt but India would lose narrowly by 38 runs (~2 lower order partnerships). Though India lost 4-0, the result could have been easily different if a few events had fallen in India’s favour. Sachin Tendulkar’s emergence as the next champion batsman was India’s biggest plus on the tour.

1980-81

In our opinion, this tour contains India’s finest ever away win. The two teams were evenly matched before the series, but truth be told, India’s bowling was poorer than the suggested bowling quality of ~29, for, Dilip Doshi and Shivlal Yadav were far worse in Australian conditions compared to their bowling averages of 30.37 and 26.15, which were largely bolstered by home performances.  India were duly walloped in the first test by an innings, and barely held on for a draw in the second, but it was the third test which was the stuff of legend. The test, now more remembered for the Gavaskar-Lillie spat, featured a lion-hearted performance by an injured Kapil Dev. Trailing by 182 runs, India managed to bat better in the 2^nd innings and muster 324 runs to set the Aussies a target of 143.

The fuse was lit by Karsan Ghavri on the fourth evening, but it was Kapil Dev who finished the Aussie demolition job by coming in to bowl in the 4^th position and taking 5 wickets, skittling them out for 83. Without a doubt, this rivals the immortal 2001 Kolkata test in terms of the difficulty of the task. Of course, a juggernaut of an Australian team—on a 16 match winning streak—halted in its tracks by an Indian team facing imminent defeat after being asked to follow on, is the stuff of a Bollywood potboiler and hence the better story.

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The upcoming test series resembles the 2003-04 in some respects; here too, Australia are missing two crucial players in Warner and Smith. The two teams should be well-matched in the bowling department, but the key to the series will be based on which team can negotiate the other’s bowling and put the runs on the board to avoid defeat.

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 the respective owners.