The appeal of 4-day test matches

Recently, the ICC set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons with by saying that it was going to consider the idea of 4-day test matches. If the cricketing world was looking forward to a quiet new year, this certainly yanked people off the usual boilerplate end-of-the-year self-congratulatory tweets. Suddenly, people were divided into two camps—the ones who thought it was a good idea (the likes of Michael Vaughan) and the ones who thought who thought it wasn’t (Sachin Tendulkar and many others). Let us examine what such a possibility may entail.

Cricket is a unique sport among those with a large following that its format has been tinkered with from time to time in order to fit it better with respect to the ongoing temporal demands. While the length of a football match has been 90 minutes (normal time), cricket has changed its spots often. First of all, cricket has three formats at the international level (with some new-fangled ones bound to enter the fray). The overs in an innings of the showpiece that is the ODI World Cup has varied from 50 to 60. Even in the “original format” of test cricket, the duration has varied between 3-day and “timeless” tests; heck, even the balls per over was not six always. Then what is the big fuss?

The argument behind such a move is financial—already very few teams can afford to play test cricket and the uncertainty regarding the fifth day’s expense burns a hole in many a broadcaster’s and home association’s pockets. And, considering the recent trends of an increasing number of tests finishing before the fifth day, this seems like a natural progression. Also, test matches can follow a Thursday to Sunday calendar, which is friendlier to the fans. So far, so good. But are there other reasons?

One of the peculiarities of test cricket is the draw (different from the tie); cricket fans worldwide have probably struggled to explain this concept to befuddled fans who don’t know much about the sport—how one can play a sport for days on end and still end up with no result? Only cricket fans know the value of a hard-fought draw. That idiosyncrasy aside, there is another pattern to be gleaned here—the Draw% indicates of how many matches finished with a result.

Decade	Matches	Draws	Draw%	Balls per test
1870s	3	0	0.00	1586.00
1880s	29	4	13.79	1666.97
1890s	32	6	18.75	1939.13
1900s	41	10	24.39	1803.41
1910s	29	4	13.79	1791.21
1920s	51	16	31.37	2247.33
1930s	89	36	40.45	2127.21
1940s	45	22	48.89	2378.04
1950s	164	51	31.10	2282.72
1960s	186	88	47.31	2409.01
1970s	198	84	42.42	2255.38
1980s	266	122	45.86	1986.76
1990s	347	124	35.73	2017.58
2000s	464	114	24.57	1974.86
2010s	433	84	19.40	1953.18

 

As the above table indicates, the 2010s has been a very productive decade for test cricket, with more than 80% of the matches ending up in a result (100%-draw% practically gives the result% as only 2 tests were tied throughout test cricket). This is a far cry from the days of, say, 1960s to 1980s, when this number was well south of 60%. The balls per test also shows an interesting trend with the draw%–both move in the same direction and seem to be correlated. Reducing the number of days is bound to eat into this high figure and push the percentage of results lower. The ICC plans to counter this by increasing the number of overs bowled in a day to 98, resulting in a “real loss” of 58 overs. Of course, one could also argue that pitches could be prepared accordingly and that the test match might “settle” into a new “rhythm”, but there are other inherent dangers.

One of them is weather related. In the sub-continent, cricket is a winter-time sport (unlike in England, SA, NZ, and Australia, where it is a summer-time sport) and teams routinely struggle to bowl 90 overs in a day, leave alone a greater number. And this problem is exacerbated at higher latitudes (as the duration of daylight reduces as the latitude increases). This was one of the factors why the Ranji Trophy increased the duration of the knockout matches—to increase the chances of an outright result. Additionally, the benevolence of the weather gods would play a bigger part—one washed out day has greater consequences. Both these factors would reduce the number of results.

The other is about the spinners. Though spinners have played important roles in test cricket, from a statistical perspective, they have slightly “inferior” records than fast bowlers (lower percentage of pure batsmen dismissed, lower bowling averages, higher strike rates and so on); this is natural since fast bowlers bowl before them and set the “tone” for the match—just the nature of the game, that is all.  But slice the numbers based on the innings number, you see a different pattern.

Innings	Bowling Average (spinner)	Bowling Average (pacer)
First	40.03	31.68
Second	35.09	31.56
Third	30.76	28.75
Fourth	28.30	27.68

 

As the test match progresses, the spinners show drastic improvement (~30% over the 4 innings), indicating the help they receive from the deterioration of the playing surface. For a fast bowler? Not as much—it does become easier to bowl, but the improvement isn’t as colossal (~13%). Yes, these figures aren’t grouped by Day 1 to 5 (ball-by-ball data wasn’t available until recently), but these trends are too big to ignore by themselves and are indicative of increasing assistance for spinners. Without the aid of an additional day (in which the pitch would be exposed to the elements and deteriorate further), spinners will surely suffer and be relegated to second-class citizens unless turning pitches are made world over.

The workload of the bowlers would increase as well, with each bowler having to bowl more number of overs per day. And, some of the most memorable matches have gone the distance—think Kolkata 2001 or the recent South Africa-England test. Decreasing the duration would only rob fans of some classic finishes.

Hence, the reasons to play test cricket over 4 days are purely financial; according to calculations for this test cycle (2015-2023), reducing the tests by a day would “free up” 335 days, which the boards can use as they please (probably to schedule more T20s to subsidize test cricket). Therefore, at best, the ICC should trial this in the matches involving the newer teams to reduce the costs and not tinker with the 5-day formula for the World Test Championship as it has a lot of balance for all players involved.

 

Why India’s home streak in tests has to be put into perspective

Unsurprisingly, India has won the test series against South Africa with a test match to spare. And though the test match at Ranchi is irrelevant to the outcome of the series, valuable test championship points are there for grabs. Though this series result was largely expected with the recent retirements of several South African stalwarts, the manner in which this was achieved was particularly impressive from India’s standpoint. Especially, the way the Indian pacers out-bowled their South African counterparts was heartening, to say the least.

During the Pune test, the South African batsman Temba Bavuma conceded that second test was played on a “more South African type of conditions” ground. The contrast from four years ago could not be starker; back then, the Saffers complained about “designer pitches”, which suited the bowling attack of the Indian team. But one statistic sort of slipped under the radar—this Indian team has won its 11^th consecutive series at home, a streak longer than any other in cricketing history; not even the mighty Aussies or the West Indies in their pomp managed to win 11 consecutive test series at home (although, it must be added that Australia won 10 consecutive series twice).

Given this, why isn’t India’s streak at home celebrated as a hallmark of cricketing excellence? Why isn’t there much myth-making around India’s obviously incredible record at home? Yes, Steve Waugh did label it the “Final frontier”, but it has rarely featured since in the cricketing folklore.

Let us put India’s streak in perspective. In 2010s alone, India has lost only 4 test matches at home  out of 47 played, giving a scarcely believable W/L ratio of 8.5. And yet, I suspect many Indian fans will pooh-pooh this with the oft-repeated “Tigers at home, lambs abroad” punchline. While there was some truth to this two decades ago (I’m looking at you, the decade of the ‘90s), its home record is nothing to be scoffed at after the turn of the millennium.

Since 1970, 4 sides have had exceptional home records (Australia, Pakistan, South Africa, India), with little to choose between them over nearly a 50-year period; each one of these teams won between 2.75 to 3 tests to every test lost. While there might be allegations of biased umpires and designer pitches, it can’t be denied that this is an exceptionally consistent winning record at home over nearly five decades.

Slice this even finer, and three sides stand out. Lo and behold, the present Indian side is in great company (it must be noted that the overall Win% was much lower when the West Indies were trampling every side around the world).

Team (Era)	Won	Lost	W/L	Win%
West Indies (1978-1994)	31	5	6.2	58.5
Australia (1995-2007)	58	7	8.3	75.3
India (2007-2019*)	41	5	8.2	66.1

*all stats correct until the third test

Even if you were to examine teams under long-serving captains at home, 3 Indian captains—Azhar, Dhoni, and Kohli are close to the very top, once again showing that India have been formidable at home over multiple decades. Whichever way you look at it, these are insane numbers. However, there isn’t much acknowledgement about India’s home prowess, either from home or from abroad. Quite often, eyebrows are raised and aspersions are cast on India’s spinners abroad, especially outside the subcontinent. While there is some truth to this statement, it begs the question—if India is so friendly for spinners, why haven’t opposition spinners been able to take advantage (like Saqlain Mushtaq did)?

	2016-present averages			2012-2015 averages
Host country	Home spinner	Away spinner	Away to Home Ratio	Home spinner	Away spinner	Away to Home Ratio
India	25.32	51.18	2.02	21.67	32.22	1.49
Sri Lanka	28.38	31.42	1.11	27.51	33.09	1.20
Bangladesh	24.27	27.86	1.15	41.02	43.12	1.05
England	32.49	38.07	1.17	33.88	40.34	1.19
Australia	36.68	64.04	1.75	36.19	66.46	1.84
West Indies	41.51	29.88	0.72	30.79	35.77	1.16
South Africa	34.11	52.08	1.53	38.05	45.3	1.19
Zimbabwe	48.17	23.74	0.49	36.33	26.84	0.74
New Zealand	48	42.95	0.89	46.21	61.38	1.33
Pakistan/UAE	26.24	32.76	1.25	27.12	45.33	1.67

If one were to look at bowling averages of spinners in various countries (classified by home versus away), one can clearly see the locations where home spinners have enjoyed bowling—largely, the subcontinent. However, it can also be observed that in countries such as India, South Africa, and Australia, the home spinners dominate the away spinners by a large margin (as seen in ratio of bowling averages of away spinners to that of the home spinners). While the latter two can be labelled as pacer-friendly countries, opposition spinners should still be able to do perform in Indian conditions, isn’t it? Additionally, India is not as spin-friendly as it was between 2012 and 2015—meaning, results over the last four years should be viewed from this perspective.

In fact, while Indian pundits are trigger-happy in shooting down the performances of Indian spinners, they have performed really well abroad post-2015; coincidentally, it is also the time when the Indian pacers turned on the heat on the opposition batsmen in foreign conditions, pointing back to one of our earliest analyses on the necessity for pace-bowling support for spinners to perform to their fullest potential. In a similar vein, it is certainly worth wondering why certain pacers (looking at you, Jimmy Anderson and Vernon Philander) are not as effective as some of the legendary fast bowlers such as Malcolm Marshall, Richard Hadlee, Dale Steyn, Glenn McGrath, Alan Donald and others, who performed in Asia as well. Far too often, the Indian media is guilty of overvaluing Indian frailties abroad compared to that of the overseas media about their records in India/the subcontinent.

Therefore, there is no harm in recognizing and saluting India’s record at home—we should give credit where it is due. Over the last 20 years, it has taken superhuman efforts from South Africa, Australia (with the last day of the Chennai test rained out), and England to win a series in India. It is time that a test series victory in India is valourized and anointed as the toughest assignment in cricket.

 

 

 

 

 

What is the point of the WTC points system?

After much deliberation and many, many false starts, the ICC World Test Championship is finally underway. Test cricket is undoubtedly the most storied of the three cricketing formats, but one big complaint that many fans have repeated over the years is that there was no “context” and a “central narrative” to this glorious game. Make no mistake, much of the fables of test cricket have been relayed from generation to generation through heroic deeds in (mostly) bilateral series, but results in one series rarely had an impact outside of that “context”. Now, with this system, there is something—a big, shiny trophy—to play for, for the top two teams in the league phase, culminating in a final at Lord’s. As an aside, this time around, if the final match were to result in a draw or a tie, both teams will be declared as joint winners.

All good then? More fans will buy into this new-fangled system? Not quite. I’m not convinced.

In a nutshell, the ICC World Test Championship is a league competition for Test cricket, with the top two teams advancing to a one-off (playoff) final to decide the winner. While this sounds good in theory, there are many flies in the ointment. Dig deeper by going to the ICC World Test Championship FAQ page, you’ll be left asking—What the FAQ?

Take, for instance, the points system. Throughout cricketing history, the length of test series have varied from 1 to 6 test matches (let us ignore the number of days in a test match for the time being); these could be because of market reasons, competitive reasons (test cricket rarely sees upsets) and others. And, as Ravi Shastri has reminded us ad nauseam, all 4 results are possible in test cricket: win, tie, draw, and loss.

No. of tests in series	Win	Tie	Draw	Loss
2	60	30	20	0
3	40	20	13	0
4	30	15	10	0
5	24	12	8	0

 

Looking at the above table, especially examining the ratio of points between a win, draw, and loss, the inspiration behind the scoring system becomes obvious—the 3-1-0 or “Three points for a win” formula of football. This system (which superseded the 2-1-0 system) encouraged more attacking play as both teams stood to gain two extra points by “going for the win”. An argument can be made that teams will be encouraged to “push for the result” here as well. For instance, in 2011, with this points system, it would be hard to imagine Dhoni’s India playing out a draw in Roseau; when systemic incentives are aligned this way, teams would be more encouraged to secure maximum points.

But then, is the above table really similar to the model followed in the footballing world? Take any top league in European football, for instance. Each team plays every other team twice, once at home and once away; in a 20-team league, each team plays 38 matches. Of course, fixture congestion and injuries can play a minor role, but this format is fairer compared to that of a knockout competition, in which upsets are more common. It is very rare that someone like the 2015-16 Leicester City team wins a league competition after 38 games—kinda similar to the test format. But herein lies the important difference—every one of the 38 games is equal, with an equal number of points on offer.

First of all, in the Test Championship, all teams don’t play each other in each cycle (India vs Pakistan is another matter altogether); but more importantly, in the above table, some test matches are worth more than the others. Additionally, there is nothing in this system that factors in the difficulty of the opposition or home/away disparity (though, to be fair, neither does the 3-1-0 system in league football).

In the above system, the “unit” is not a game, but instead a test series (with a 120 maximum points to play for). In a 2-match series, a test win is worth 60 points, whereas the same test win is worth far lesser in a longer series. So, a team could lose all 5 matches away to a strong team, and recoup all those points lost in a 2-test match series at home against a weaker team. For instance, if the Indian team had won 3-1 away in Australia (it won 2-1) in the 4-test match series it would have racked up only 90 points, but would instead win 120 points if it wins 2-0 at home to Sri Lanka in a 2-test series. However, hardly any cricket fan or player would value the latter as the higher achievement in today’s cricketing context.

Therefore, bizarrely, this system rewards doing well in 2-test match series. If I were a team captain, I would be mightily worried when there is a chance of weather disrupting a win in a 2-test match result; one rained out session can see my team lose out on 40 points (60 to 20), and the team would have to work towards winning two test matches from “draw positions” in a 4-match series (10 to 30) to make up for lost points. The ICC could have easily mandated a standard (either 3 or 4) test match series format to prevent this from happening.

With such incentives, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine teams lining up “weaker” opposition at home to rack up the points and game the system. If you think I’m being paranoid, hear me out one last time.

The footballing counterparts of the ICC, FIFA, have a ranking system to rank national football teams. These have ramifications on how teams are slotted in multi-national tournaments (World Cup, Euro etc.). In 2011, Wales were 117^th on the rankings, but in four years, they were in the top-10. How? After their loss to Netherlands, for over 1.5 years, they didn’t play a single non-competitive game which could have affected their ranking. If you’re thinking they were alone, Switzerland and Romania indulged in this as well, gaming the system to rise up the table and getting into more favourable pots and groups in the big tournaments, thus lessening the chances of playing a “big team” in the group stage. Therefore, it isn’t irrational to dream up such a situation in this competition as well.

For all its faults, the pre-existing ICC rankings is a much better system and could have been tweaked for this purpose; after all, it takes into consideration the difficulty of opposition and number of matches, but is much more difficult to understand. If the ICC was worried about the Rankings’ complexity, imagine the confusion that will arise when the dissonance between the Test Championship standings and ICC Test Rankings shows up because of the above factors. If you thought the Test format is hard to explain to a newcomer, the day is not far off when you will have to explain why a test team ranked at number 6 (but is number 2 on the points table due to clever scheduling and optimization) is playing the final. Therefore, it is just a matter of time before the novelty wears off and fans complain about this lopsided system which is at odds with how cricket has been played.

 

 

 

Kohli’s team learns to converse in the language of test cricket

Success, at last: Team India ended a long wait for its first series win in Australia. Image source: 1.

Team India has finally won a test series in Australia.

Over the last 40 years, Australia has lost at home only to good cricketing teams—the recent South African side, a competent England team (2010-11 Ashes) and the West Indies team (no additional description necessary). The chroniclers of cricketing history can add this Indian team to this impressive list. Let the magnitude of this achievement sink in.

Multiple generations of Indian cricketers and their fans—who had been accustomed to seeing defeat after demoralizing defeat in Australia—would be rightly enthralled after this series win. The manner in which the Indian team achieved this victory has been impressive too. The first two tests were relatively close, but it was all one-way traffic after that; the leads that Australia conceded after the first innings in the Melbourne and Sydney tests have been some of the biggest in their cricketing history. Virat Kohli’s team and the support staff definitely deserve the bouquets for putting up a great performance in this hard-fought series and wearing down a weakened Australian team to clinch the series and wrest back the Border-Gavaskar trophy.

How did Virat Kohli’s team manage to surmount this hurdle? Indian teams have traditionally been good at home and not so great overseas, so how has this Indian team been different from its predecessors with respect to touring abroad? Is there something that this team has done right? Why have the away results turned out the way they have for this team, and not so for Indian teams before this one?

In order to understand the discrepancies among the results achieved under different long-term test captains that the Indian team has had, it is important to understand the underlying mechanics of test cricket.

Over the history of test cricket, batsmen and bowlers have averaged ~30.27 and ~31.84 runs per dismissal (the difference between the two is due to extras and run outs). Specifically, over the last five years, the corresponding statistics are ~30.81 and ~32.03—meaning, even after all these years, the variation is quite small and overall statistics can be used as an excellent stand-in for the state of test cricket today.

Result	Batting average	Bowling average
Win	37.23	21.94
Loss	20.91	39.26
Draw	39.81	44.35

If one were to examine the variation of batting and bowling averages with respect to results, clear trends emerge. Looking at the numbers alone, it can be seen that a good batting performance can feature in both a win and a draw. Also, a good bowling performance is absolutely mandatory to win a test match. Simply put, good batting is absolutely essential if a team has to not lose a test match, but for a victory, it needs the support from the bowling department. With this in mind, let us proceed to look at the away records (versus top 8 teams only) of four recent Indian captains—Ganguly, Dravid, Dhoni and Kohli (with due apologies to Anil Kumble).

In the case of team records, two sets of statistics will be examined: The Win-Loss (W/L) ratio and the Win percentage (Win%, which represents the percentage of matches won by a test team). It is prudent to use both Win% and W/L to look at team performances as they have their own advantages. A high Win% suggests that the team won most of the tests that it played in, whereas a high W/L indicates that the team won a lot more tests for every loss incurred. In the shorter formats, due to the rarity of tied matches & no results, both can be used almost interchangeably, but since draws are a regular feature in test cricket, both W/L and Win% are needed.

Away, top 8	Matches	Won	Lost	Draw	W/L	Win%	Bat avg.	Bow avg.
Ganguly	21	5	9	7	0.56	23.81	34.74	40.34
Dravid	15	4	4	7	1.00	26.67	38.23	36.97
Dhoni	29	5	15	9	0.33	17.24	30.69	41.99
Kohli	24	11	9	4	1.22	45.83	33.41	28.35

At a macro level, the Win% of the three captains before Kohli don’t look too far apart but the W/L ratio tells a different story. Against top opposition, the captains before Kohli managed to win only about 1 in 4 matches (about a match every tour). For Kohli’s team, that number is almost close to 1 in 2 matches. From the correlation seen between bowling well and winning matches, it is easy to see why. Kohli’s team has bowled extremely well overseas—the Indian bowling in overseas test matches has never seen such a year in its history. The other 3 teams had bowling averages close to loss or draw territory. With such ineffective bowling attacks, it is therefore to no one’s surprise that Indian teams led by previous captains such as Ganguly, Dravid and Dhoni were unable to win more than a single test in an overseas series. Usually, test series abroad followed the same script—with the batting holding fort to avoid defeat in all but one test and a freakish bowling performance, often in adverse conditions, delivering a famous win—think Adelaide 2003, Johannesburg 2006, Nottingham 2007 and Lords 2014.

The batting average of those teams also tell a similar story; Dravid’s and Ganguly’s teams had better than average batting (compared to the rest of the world) and hence could draw matches regularly. Kohli’s team, though it can take 20 wickets regularly, hasn’t had the best of times batting-wise and therefore has lost matches that it could have won or drawn. Of  course, it is also worth remembering that 2018 was one of the worst years in over half a century for batting, and these numbers have to be seen in that context. People might point to the absence of Smith and Warner in this series, but the Indian batting did perform admirably against a full-strength Australian bowling. Unlike the 2003-04 series (where McGrath and Warne didn’t feature), Australia had the bowling attack to force victories in this series.

Dhoni’s team? Even though the overall batting average is quite low, before the 2011 World Cup, the W/L, Win%, Bat avg. and bowling avg. numbers read 1.5, 37.5%, 39.56 and 40.88 respectively—thus showing that even at the peak of the Dhoni-led team, it never had the bowling personnel to consistently win test matches overseas; it was more or less the continuation of the same formula adopted by Ganguly’s and Dravid’s teams.

In summary, Kohli’s team has learned to converse in the language of test matches victories—by making the ball talk. India’s bowling has learned to be hostile, to exercise control, and the art of maintaining pressure and hunting in packs. This Indian team is a couple of elite batsmen light from joining the ranks of great teams from yesteryear; the bowling attack is quite close to being the best test bowling attack in all conditions though. Now imagine a bowling attack do this for more than 10 years (with world-class batting to boot), and you can imagine what West Indies and Australia were like.

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, belongs to the respective owners.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

—

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.

 

Aiming for two birds with one stone

 

Playing with the big boys: Mirroring Afghanistan’s own rise, Rashid Khan has gone from strength to strength. Image source: 1.

After blanking Bangladesh in the T20 series in Dehradun, Afghanistan is set to play their first ever test match at Bengaluru against India. This historic moment is yet another marker of the team’s progress, and at the same time, a wonderful opportunity for the players to test themselves against elite opposition. The news of their country’s cricket team doing well would have no doubt brought a lot of joy to their supporters.

Over the last few years, the Afghanistan cricket team has gone from strength to strength. In 2013, they qualified for the 2015 ODI World Cup in Australia (they made the cut for the 2019 edition against all odds in the recent ICC qualifiers). It was in 2015 that they won their first ever series against a full member (Zimbabwe); a year later, they beat the eventual champions, the West Indies, in the World T20. Over the last few years, their progress has been nothing short of meteoric: not only have they beaten Zimbabwe and Ireland, but they have also recorded a win against the West Indies on Caribbean shores; and now, they have whitewashed Bangladesh.

The star of the team has been undoubtedly been Rashid Khan, the young leggie who has hoodwinked batsmen world over with his delightful wrist spin. What is more, he has also proved his mettle against some of the world’s leading players, playing pivotal roles for several T20 franchises that availed his services. And this is what multi-national, professional T20 competitions have done—they have given these opportunities (where a player can test, evaluate and improve themselves) to players like Rashid Khan and Mujeeb Ur Rahman.

On the other hand, Test cricket is an exclusive club, with an extremely high entry barrier. The test arena is where newer teams have traditionally floundered due to a lack of early exposure. A case in point is the test cricketing record of Bangladesh. They made their test debut in 2000 (against India), but it took them over a 100 test matches in total to win against England, the game’s ultimate establishment team. But this victory should also be been in context; they achieved this result against a nation which had a 200 year old history of first class cricket.

In fact, if one were to compare the records of Bangladesh and India in their first 100 odd test matches, they are eerily similar. Before Bangladesh, India was perhaps the underachiever in test cricket. In the first 116 matches that India played, it won only 15 matches (3 of them abroad against a weak New Zealand team). Present-day Bangladesh have won 9 matches in their first 100 tests, four of them abroad—against West Indies, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka. This is not a one off example. New Zealand’s first win against an establishment team (England/Australia) came in its 113^th test match; similarly, Sri Lanka’s inaugural victory was achieved in its 45^th test outing. So, Ireland’s showing in its first test was certainly admirable, even though they lost to Pakistan.

The basic issue that new teams face is the lack of competitive fixtures and a patronizing attitude from the establishment. Back in the day, English star cricketers would refuse to travel to India without an inducement of a guaranteed purse. The situation hasn’t changed much even today— why, Australia cancelled its Bangladesh tour recently. Authorities continue to groan about how new teams aren’t competitive, but without a chance to face the big boys, it is daft to expect the new teams to do any different compared to what their predecessors have done in the absence of requisite exposure. In short, test cricket suffers from a massive chicken-and-egg problem, which can be seen in the disparity between the fixtures of a team in their infancy and England’s calendar.

 

Team	Year of debut	Number of test matches played in 15 years since debut	Number of test matches played by England in the 15 year period
South Africa	1889	11	45
West Indies	1928	22	88
New Zealand	1930	14	72
India	1932	16	64
Pakistan	1952	50	139
Sri Lanka	1982	68	156
Zimbabwe	1992	83	178
Bangladesh	2000	88	188

 

On the other end of the spectrum is a team like India with superstar players, fantastic feeder structure, a retinue of specialist coaches, analysts and so on. In spite of all this, they weren’t able to win the series in South Africa. While it is true that this has been an era of home dominance, the truth is that they didn’t give themselves the best chance to compete on even ground.

Firstly, there wasn’t much gap between the Sri Lanka series and the South Africa one, but that could have been mitigated by sending test specialists earlier to South Africa in order to facilitate better acclimatising (incidentally, a fellow thREAD contributor wrote about this recently). Secondly, India dropped its only tour game ahead of the first test, citing a need for a higher intensity. With the series lost, Ravi Shastri talked about how an additional ten days would have made a difference to the Indian team. Great insight, Einstein!

Better late than never though; the Indian team management has taken note of this, and players like Pujara and Ishant are currently playing county cricket (Kohli will be missing his stint due to injury) ahead of the series against England.

But truth be told, Kohli and co. weren’t entirely off about some of the concerns regarding warm-up games. These largely feature experimental sides with almost everyone getting a chance to bowl and bat. A 2 or 3 day fixture against a lightweight provincial side neither serves as a proving ground nor replicates the seriousness of a test match. Also, to keep the mystery intact, teams often dish out unrepresentative pitches to the touring sides while holding back their top bowlers. The warm-up fixtures are never telecast due to a combination of these factors as well.

Is there a way the two needs can be resolved? How about putting two and two together?

One obvious solution to address this demand-supply problem is to pencil in the newbie sides for full test fixtures against touring established sides. To elaborate, while it is great that Afghanistan are getting a match against India, this serves only one purpose of competitive exposure. India would not be getting much out of this fixture given that the match is in India, especially when they are due to play England on English shores following this match. One can expect history to repeat itself if India don’t learn from the mistakes of the South African tour. Imagine, for instance, India facing Ireland on English shores in a test match prior to the England series (similar to what Pakistan did, and, incidentally they beat England in the first test before reverting to type in the second). A test match like this will serve the dual purposes of practice and vital competitive exposure. To ease Ireland (or Afghanistan or any other new team) in, it would be great if they play a few first class fixtures of their own in order in the local host country to hone their own skills.

In order to make the logistics smooth, it is best to anchor these fixtures on the basis of geography and the traditional home season of the local host. The sub-continent can thus serve as a base for Afghanistan, where they can travel to India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and UAE to play matches against various sides; England can be Ireland’s base; South Africa would be the obvious choice for Zimbabwe’s. Right now, there are no teams of similar aptitude around Australia and West Indies (some would argue that West Indies themselves are at that level now), but that shouldn’t be the basis for denying the present teams in dire need of competitive fixtures.

Of course, this idea hasn’t yet addressed how much the international calendar should yield to this, but on a rough estimate, it would probably be in the range of 1-2 weeks given 2 away tours on an average per big team per year. And the newbie teams would be exposed to at least 2-3 test matches a year against top class opposition, apart from test matches between themselves and first class fixtures, which should fast-track their initiation to test cricket. Also, as a sweetener, a full test match would probably yield much more viewership compared to a warm-up fixture for the aspirant broadcasters of the visiting teams.

Unfortunately, the cricketing administrators and boards missed this trick when they came up with the latest Future tours program (FTP). As a result, these fixtures are conspicuous by their absence. This no doubt reeks of the same exclusivist mindset, further perpetuating entrenched attitudes. Hopefully, with the World test championship coming into play, this issue will be sorted out.

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, rests with the respective owners.

 

 

 

 

 

Setting expectations for Ashwin and Jadeja in South Africa

A new turn awaits the spin twins. Image source: 1.

The cricketing world and its citizens will be watching with great anticipation when the Indian team takes on the mighty Proteas in the upcoming series in the Southern Hemisphere. An Indian team—with personnel who have experience of playing in South Africa—which has won its last nine series, will be facing off against a South African team which polished off Zimbabwe in two days. This contest that will be played over three test matches has all the makings of a marquee series if one were to look at the ICC rankings. The top two test teams taking on each other. Seven of the world’s best 14 batsmen.  Six of the world’s best 14 bowlers. Two returning stalwarts in A B de Villiers and Dale Steyn, who will no doubt remember the drubbing they received in India, and will be motivated to return the favour.

When the Indian team takes the field in the first test in Cape Town, the spin bowling department will be under intense scrutiny with multiple sub-plots. Is there space for both Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin, ranked 3 and 4 on the ICC rankings (the top ranked spinners)? Unlikely, considering the traditional conditions in South Africa, and given that Rahane’s recent form has been patchy, the team management may not play the fifth bowler. Then which one will get to play in this cricketing version of Sophie’s choice? Would it be the higher ranked Jadeja who had a six-for in the previous series, or would it be Ashwin, who went wicketless in his 42 overs of the solitary test he played the last time around? How will they hold up against Keshav Maharaj, the opposition spinner?

Regardless of the difficult decisions that the team management undoubtedly have to make, one reckons if this is an acid test for both these men with regard to their test cricketing stature. Both these tweakers started off as limited overs specialists; however, their limited overs stock has plummeted in recent times just as they have made their names in the test arena. Both spinners have bowled extremely well and at home, and also at West Indies and Sri Lanka recently. But unless they muster eye-catching performances overseas, starting from this South Africa tour, it looks like they will unfairly labelled as home-track bullies.

So what do these bowlers have to do to excel in South Africa? Are there any clues that can be obtained from spin performances of the past? Can we expect them to rip out the South African lineup or do we have to temper our expectations?

Since their readmission to the cricketing fold, South Africa have been a formidable team, even more so at home. They have a Win-Loss ratio of 2.8, and have triumphed in nearly 60% of their home matches. Barring the champion Australia team, only England have found success in South Africa. Spinners have struggled, taking 448 wickets at a bowling average of 39. In 125 matches, a haul of five wickets or more has been snared by spinners only 17 times. Keeping all this in mind, it is fair to say that only a handful of spin bowlers have flowered and bloomed in this desert.

Bowlers like Shakib Al Hasan, Mushtaq Ahmed, Danish Kaneria, Rangana Herath, Harbhajan Singh and Graeme Swann have had the one good tour in South Africa. But since this is the second tour for Ashwin and Jadeja, they need to aim higher.

Bowler	Matches	Bowling average (away, SA)	Wickets
Shane Warne	12	24.31	61
Muttiah Muralitharan	6	26.02	35
Anil Kumble	12	32.02	45

 

Of the spin bowlers who’ve visited South Africa at least twice since readmission, three names have performed on more than one tour: Shane Warne, Muralitharan and Anil Kumble—all legends in their own right. Overall, only Warne and Murali have had great returns in South Africa over their entire career. However, even they nabbed a five wicket haul at a much lesser rate compared to their 1 in 5 combined career tallies. Hence, a lesser tally can be expected in Ashwin’s and/or Jadeja’s cases as well. What about the other variables? Upon careful examination of their records, several trends become clear.

Bowler	Bowling average (1st innings)	Wickets (1st innings)	Bowling average (2nd innings)	Wickets (2nd innings)
Shane Warne	30.41	24	20.35	37
Muttiah Muralitharan	31.75	20	18.40	15
Anil Kumble	38.87	24	24.19	21

 

Barring a few outlier performances, South African pitches have been unfriendly (even for these spin-masters) in the first innings; their strike rates (balls per wicket) hover at values greater than 12 overs, a clear marker of the uphill task awaiting the Indian spinners. On unhelpful pitches, they must be ready to embrace a support role. In complete contrast, bowling in the second innings has been far more rewarding. Of course, one mustn’t forget that the second innings only comes into play once parity has been achieved in the first—a traditional Achilles heel for the Asian batsmen.

Bowler	SA batting average (1st innings)	Away team batting average	Bowling average (2nd innings)	Away team batting average
Shane Warne	27.24	36.93	27.52	36.20
Muttiah Muralitharan	41.68	23.91	26.92	20.21
Anil Kumble	34.57	28.10	34.68	22.21

 

Of the three spinners, only Shane Warne bowled with the relative comfort of a first innings lead. The all-weather, all-conquering Australian team were able to compete on both the batting and bowling fronts against South Africa. On the other hand, the Asian champions suffered from a lack of batting support. For perspective, consider the first innings batting average differential. Shane Warne bowled in the second innings with nearly a 100 run lead. Whereas, Kumble and Murali bowled magnificently in spite of a ~60-120 average run deficit; meaning, they were always chasing the game.

Bowler	Fast bowling support (10 wickets, bowling average<30)	Spread of bowler wickets across the batting order
		Top order (1-3)	Middle order (4-7)	Tail (8-11)
Shane Warne	5*	23.0%	42.6%	34.4%
Muttiah Muralitharan	0	22.9%	48.6%	28.5%
Anil Kumble	3	31.1%	35.5%	33.3%

 

Share Warne was also blessed with other wicket-taking bowlers like McGrath, Gillespie, Brett Lee and Stuart Clark. Why, even Steve Waugh (denoted by *) took wickets at an impressive rate. Anil Kumble bowled alongside Srinath, Prasad and Sreesanth—three Indian bowlers who did well in the Rainbow Nation. Bowling support is also a recurrent theme in the tales of the spinners doing well in a solitary series– Mohammed Asif, Waqar Younis, Lahiru Kumara and others set the stage for their spinners to do well. But one must doff his/her hat to the Sri Lankan champion Muralitharan—who bowled with virtually no batting or bowling support. All things considered, it is easily the best bowling performance by a visiting spinner on these shores since their readmission. Also, Warne and Muralitharan had a similar distribution of wickets across the batting order; whereas, Anil Kumble made more inroads in the top order.

What about the upcoming test series then?

The first two tests are at Newlands and Centurion, where spin bowling has traditionally suffered. The third test is at Jo’burg, where spinners have had it easier; with no Kingsmead on the list, the one venue where spinners have feasted is missing. Looking at all this, the Indian spinners have to play a supporting role in the first innings, and only come into play in the second for most of the series. Batting and bowling support is very much a necessity to influence the outcome of the match. The traditional second innings advantage will surely come to naught if the batting collapses. All eyes will be on the batsmen and the fast bowlers to stand up to the challenge.

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, solely rests with the respective owners.

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

The overseas bowling puzzle for India

The recently concluded, enthralling test series between India and Australia represented a watershed moment for the Indian cricket team. In the process of defeating Australia in the final test in Dharamshala, it became the third country (after Australia and South Africa) to hold all bilateral trophies in test cricket (concerning its own team, of course) at the same point of time. From Steven Smith’s quip of being one or two sessions away from the Australian team retaining the Border-Gavaskar trophy after the Pune reverse to winning the series at Dharamshala, this was a stunning reaction from the Virat Kohli led team. Of course, India having played most of its recent tests at home has contributed to some part of this achievement; greater challenges lie abroad.

The spin twins: Who will make the cut in an overseas test? Image source: 1.

The bedrock of this match-winning juggernaut has been built on the foundation of a well-oiled bowling unit. Leading from the front are India’s two match winning spinners, Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin. Ranked 1 and 3 (Ashwin was ranked at 2 when the series concluded) on the ICC player rankings, they have been at the forefront of dismantling opposition teams at home—emulating the illustrious Bishan Singh Bedi and Bhagwath Chandrashekhar, who occupied the top two slots way back in 1974. Ashwin even managed to breach the elite 900 ranking points level, hitherto unscaled by Indian bowlers.

However, the two spinners took contrasting paths during the extended home season.  Ashwin took off from where he left, becoming the third player (after Malcolm Marshall and Imran Khan, no less) to snare four consecutive Man-of-the-series awards with his showing against the New Zealand team. However, he ran into a wall (relatively speaking) in the form of the English team. He wasn’t able to run amok against Bangladesh or Australia either; his batting form tailed off as well.

Of course, injury might have played some part in his less-than-stellar showing; during the home season, Ashwin bowled over 700 overs and picked up 82 wickets (a record). He was first picked for the Ranji trophy quarterfinal match against Karnataka, and subsequently withdrew due to a sports hernia to recuperate. The same injury reared its ugly head after the India-Australia series, and the bowler rightly gave the IPL a skip.

On the other hand, Ravindra Jadeja went from strength to strength as the home season progressed. He maintained a high level for the first three series, and was the standout performer in the Border-Gavaskar trophy, usurping his teammate Ashwin from the top of the ICC rankings. He too missed the initial matches of the IPL, but his improved test match prowess hasn’t exactly boosted his IPL showings. Both of these bowlers were ineffectual during the Champions trophy.

Versus team (number of tests)	Ravichandran Ashwin		Ravindra Jadeja
	Wickets	Bowling avg.	Wickets	Bowling avg.
New Zealand (3)	27	17.77	14	24.07
England (5)	28	30.25	26	25.84
Bangladesh (1)	6	28.50	6	24.66
Australia (4)	21	27.38	25	18.56
Recent ODIs
Champions trophy	1	167	4	62.25

This raises an interesting conundrum with tours to Sri Lanka in July-August and away to South Africa in December-January: what will India’s bowling combination be when it tours different countries?

When India last toured many overseas countries in 2014, Ashwin had been left out of the eleven seven times in nine test matches. He was dropped after he bowled 42 overs at the Wanderers with nothing to show in the wickets column. The man who replaced him in the next test was Ravindra Jadeja—who toiled for 58.2 overs in the first innings, but got 6 wickets. Even the unheralded Karn Sharma leapfrogged him in Adelaide.

Ashwin didn’t impress when he got the chance in England or Australia either. After a period of introspection, he turned a corner and has been a different bowler since. But the question remains—who will be the primary spinner when India tours? What would be done with Kuldeep Yadav, another interesting prospect?

Fortunately, there exists a period in India’s recent cricketing past when the team faced a similar conundrum—the spinners being the previous Indian coach Anil Kumble, and the man who Ashwin replaced, Harbhajan Singh.

Between Harbhajan Singh’s debut test (25^th March 1998) and Anil Kumble’s final test (2^nd November 2008), India played toured many a country abroad. In 20 of these matches, both Kumble and Harbhajan featured.  Sometimes, one player was favoured over the other—Kumble made the cut 26 times, whereas Harbhajan was picked 12 times.  Is there any evidence that playing one or two spinners led to the other bowling better?

	Alone	Together
Kumble	34.35	35.38
Harbhajan	38.60	40.27

The effect, if any, is quite marginal. In fact, the statistics show that both spinners bowled marginally better alone (overall bowling figures are woeful, nonetheless). The choice of bowling combination is revealing in terms of the opposition strength; they featured in tandem mostly for tests against “weaker” nations like Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and West Indies, and against stronger opposition at well-known spin friendly venues like Galle, The Oval, Sydney and their ilk.

Keeping this in mind, it will be interesting to see the Indian team’s approach when it lines up against teams abroad. Would it pick one over the other? Will the team management play both in a five bowler combination, and hope for the lower order to click? Which two spinners will they play? Will there be a third spinner in this equation on overseas rank turners? Here is the flexible approach that Anil Kumble had advocated before his time as the Indian coach:

“We have gone into this theory of three seamers and one spinner the moment we sit on an aircraft which travels more than seven hours – that’s the mindset… If your 20 wickets are going to come with two spinners and two fast bowlers, so be it. If it comes with three spinners and one fast bowler so be it.”

To his credit, Kumble stuck to his philosophy during his tenure. Now if India worked out a bowler management program to go along with an approach like this, it would have a great chance of competing with the best sides overseas. But with Kumble being no more associated with the Indian team and Ravi Shastri yet to air his views regarding this in public, the Indian team’s strategy remains to be seen.

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, solely rests with the respective owners.