It is unfortunate that India fields mostly the same so-called best players for all three formats of the game, that is Tests, ODIs and T20s. The country should adopt a horses-for-courses approach
Several of us gathered around our television on August 23 to see India win the third Test match against England. In the second over, A Rashid hit the ball which appeared to be heading to the boundary. Ishant Sharma chased it lazily but saved the four on the edge. My colleagues forgave him, after all they said, the match was bound to be won with only the last wicket left.
My thoughts flew to 1946 England, when India was playing the Surrey county, as was customary for a visiting team to do in those days. The match was nearing the end. Chandu Sarwate had come in to bat at number 10 and Shute Banerjee at number 11, both specialist bowlers. To the crowd’s astonishment, each of them scored a century, a total of 249 between them before the play ended, a record yet unbroken. Never take anything for granted.
A mindset is more comfortable to live with than continual new thinking. India is an enormous country. All other cricketing nations are incomparably smaller. Yet we have only one competitive international cricket team. About the same stars play Test matches, One-dayers as well as Twenty-20s. Whyij All the three are different.
In a Test, the bowling is the attack, whether speed or spin. The bowlers’ primary function is to take wickets. On his retirement, the judgement on a bowler is based on the total number of Test wickets he took during his career. Seldom is his run average per wicket discussed or the number of wickets per innings.
When we come to One-dayers, the bowlers should be looked upon as the defence, not the attack. With overs limited to 50, the onus of scoring as quickly as possible is on the batsmen. Even all 10 wickets securely saved but with only 150 runs on board is unlikely to win a match. All wickets down but 400 runs on board is far more creditable.
In other words, in a 50 overs match, the batsmen has no alternative but to attack sooner or later. Sanath Jayasuriya of Sri lanka innovated the tactic of hitting out in the first 10 overs of powerplay when there were field placement restrictions. Moreover, the bowling is fast, which makes scoring effortless if the batsman can get his bat to contact the ball. Spinners most often demand greater batting effort.
Most of the time, captains chalk out the batting order as they have done over the decades in Test Matches. One-dayers require much more tactical and flexible batting sequence. Say for example, the first two batsman play well and score 65 runs or more and the going appears good, the captain could gamble on sending in a hard hitting normally number 7 batsman. Without pressure or tension, he might click and score, say up to 50 runs. The same player under pressure might not be able to score fluently because he would not have a wide stroke range to safely hit every variety of balls. He is likely to be able to score freely only by hitting out, which is not wise to risk when there appears a risk of his team losing. In short, when the traditional good batsmen fails, the burden of recovery falls on the later order players; there are no class batsmen left by then as per the declared order.
The third variety of matches, the Twenty-20 is less cricket and more hit-out or get-out. Again, bowling would be the defence. The best defensive bowler this writer has seen was Bapu Nadkarni, who consistently bowled straight on the stumps, with perfect length but with little guile or spin. It was almost impossible to score runs off his bowling. His record bowling analysis once was 30 overs, 27 maidens, 7 runs and no wickets. That is the ideal bowler for 50 or 20 over matches. For the latter matches, the batsmen selected should be those who can hit the most, no matter the consequences.
Unfortunately, India fields mostly the same so-called best players for all three types of games. We over strain these players and might even be risking their quality of game. What is worse is that we deny opportunities for many budding cricketers. A large country like ours should have available and ready five top national teams. Say, one team for Tests, two for One-dayers and two 11s for Twenty-20. Between them, these teams could tour other countries more frequently as well as host as many visitors as are interested in coming.
We should no longer treat sports, whether cricket or any other, including athletics, as merely games as in the old days. They should also be looked upon as generators of wealth for the country as well as for the participants and backup services. The more our youth is enthused to play, the healthier the nation would be.
To come back to, shall we say, the technology of cricket, what about the ambidexterity of playersij There are quite a few cricketers who bowl with say the left arm but bat with the right hand; and vice versa. There are fielders, who use one arm while throwing the ball to the wicket-keeper but while batting or bowling, they use the other. Herein lies the potential for more versatile players. Wherever a coach sees this phenomenon in a youngster, could he not teach the child, whether a boy or a girl, to bat with both the hands; and similarly bowl or fieldij
A left hand batsman is valuable when it comes to facing an in-swing ball or a googly bowler. Similarly, a left arm bowler is useful against most right hand batsmen. Of course, an ambidextrous player should declare to the umpire which hand or arm he proposes to use in the ensuing over.
Until now, it is customary for selectors to choose 11 players plus three reserves. Now on, they should begin to keep in mind that hypothetically, the horizon of their choice is 52 and not 11 players plus a captain. Begin gradually avoiding those players who are not all rounders. Just as for some years now, poor fielders are not chosen.
This writer remembers overhearing a conversation, in the corridor of Elphinstone College, Mumbai, in 1954, among Subhash Gupte, the outstanding googly bowler, and his cronies. One of them had asked Gupte as to why he never chases a ball and allows it to travel to the boundary. His answer in simple Marathi was: If I chase balls to save boundaries, who do you think would do the googly bowlingij I would get too tired. In those days out-fielding was considered the function of the non-bowlers only. Nor was a catch a catch unless it came spontaneously into a fielder’s hand.
The writer happened to be present when once, Syed Mushtaq Ali, the charismatic opening batsman of the 1940s and early 50s, spoke to people present in a sports club tent on the Kolkata maidan. One of his remarks was that we Indians are satisfied if we can gather six good batsmen, four steady bowlers and a wicket-keeper. If there happened to be two or three all-rounders among them, they were bonus. But that was not so in England and Australia, he said. The selectors in these countries deliberately looked out for all-rounders and insisted on reliable fielders. Every player had to have at least two merits, either bowler batsman or if only one then a good fielder.
Happily, we Indians have come a long way since then. Now, let us try to have five merits in a player: Both arm bowling and both hand batting, plus the present standard of fielding. If we can produce one or two such versatile players, many others would follow the example. And we would witness yet another revolution.
(The writer is a well-known columnist and an author)
