It is a well-known fact that cricket in India is no less than a religion. It is the most popular sport among masses and there are crores of people in his hugely populated country who follow this sport which has its origins in England. Indian cricket has experienced considerable amounts of success over the years across all the formats. Other than winning global and continental trophies, Indian cricket boasts of holding few of the most significant individual records.
What has been haunting Indian cricket and its fans is its lack of success outside the sub-continent especially in tests which is inarguably the most important format of the game. Famously Indians have been forever known to be “Tigers” at home and have been equally infamous as poor travellers. This is owing to the difference in pitches wherein Indian pitches are mostly dust bowls aiding spinners and wickets outside sub-continent having pace and bounce assisting the fast bowlers. The team experienced some amount of success outside the sub-continent at the start of this millennium under the captaincies of Sourav Ganguly and then Rahul Dravid. One of Ganguly’s main focus was to win outside the sub-continent and he was successful in bringing that belief inside the team. Presence of legends like Tendulkar, Dravid, Sehwag, Laxman, Kumble and Zaheer was also instrumental in this success.
Take the example of India’s recent 5 match test series against England in England. There were hypes about India being the favourites and this being the best travelling team in the last few decades! The fact that these hypes followed a series loss in South Africa was more dismaying. Irrespective of the hypes, fans like us were realistic and we were proved totally right. India lost the series by a huge margin of 4-1. The team management is trying to put up a brave front by projecting that all the matches were close and could have gone either way, something which simply does not matter in the final equation. A loss is a loss and the overall result says 4-1 which is no less than a huge margin! Matches getting close also essentially means that India simply could not hold its own during the big moments.
Complacency seems to have taken over logic in certain cases with this Indian team management. They didn’t opt for practice matches and the only practice match they played was reduced from 4 to 3 days at their behest. One of the reasons cited is the nature of opposition and pitches. Test cricket has been in existence for almost 150 years where one of the opponents is always playing in foreign conditions. Over decades, foreign teams have preferred practice matches where opponents have always been local domestic teams whose level of play is definitely inferior to their national teams. However irrespective of the nature of opponents, practice matches always help outside teams to acclimatise to the conditions, batsmen to find their feet and confidence and bowlers to warm up and find the right length. But this Indian team seems to be different instead preferring to have only high intensity net practice, something which hasn’t yielded the desired results. That’s one of the reason a hard task master and perfectionist like Anil Kumble was needed as the coach, someone who would have tried his best to tie all the loose ends and also provide the technical insights. But unfortunately, he was unceremoniously forced to resign paving the way for another coach who is known more for his talks and someone who was at best an average player during his playing days!
Other than the surprising approach of team management, a lot of other key issues also need to be addressed. Our overall batting has been failing in pitches aiding seam and bounce. The openers haven’t been giving the kind of starts that is expected to ease things on the middle order. Murali Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan and KL Rahul have all failed consistently. More than the runs, it is the time spent on the crease which is important and the trio have horribly failed in that. Rahul finally scored a hundred in the final innings of the final test, but that is hardly a consolation. The opening slots need two fresh bloods who in the likes of Mayank Agarwal and Prithvi Shaw are readily available. The entire middle order other than Captain Kohli has been inconsistent. It is now time to look beyond Ajinkya Rahane and give Rohit Sharma a few more chances as he is a match winner on his day. Someone like Karun Nair who has been kept out even after scoring a triple hundred also needs to be given more chances. Selectors even need to start thinking about the likes of Ambati Rayudu, Shreyas Iyer, Manoj Tewari and Manish Pandey. Wriddhiman Saha stands out among the wicketkeepers but his biggest problem has been the recurring injuries. He is definitely among the best keepers in the world but being injury prone, the BCCI and team management needs to take special care of him. Keeping with its tradition, India boasts of two of the best spinners in the world in Ravi Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja with Kuldeep Yadav as a readily available back up. For a change, India presently have a wonderful pace attack comprising Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah and Ishant Sharma. Shami with his pace and variations with both old and new ball needs to be used as the strike bowler. For some reason he is rarely given the new ball which doesn’t ensure the best use of his talent. Bhuvneshwar with his swing, Umesh with his pace and Bumrah with his pace and unorthodox action ensure a proper diversity in this attack. It is also time to move beyond Ishant now inspite of his recent improvements. 250 odd wickets in 85 matches with an average of almost 35(it was almost 39 not too long ago!) isn’t impressive at all and is quite disappointing from an experienced bowler like him. Certain hard decisions are the need of the hour. Also, the constant chopping and changing of the playing eleven needs to be stopped as it creates an element of instability.
With the Asia Cup and home series against West Indies coming up in sub continental dust bowls, there is every possibility of India winning those events very comprehensively. And with fans having short memories, the constant shortcomings in overseas series’ might again be forgotten!