It’s commendable that we have a battery of pace bowlers. But steps must be taken to ensure minimum injuries to them

For Indian cricket fans of the 1980s and 1990s, fast bowling was not something we excelled in. And as accomplished as the careers of Kapil Dev, Manoj Prabhakar, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad were, to describe them as fast bowlers operating at the same time as the legendary West Indies pair of Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, the frightening Allan Donald from South Africa or even the Pakistani duo of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, would have been a stretch that even the most jingoistic fan would not have done. But today, India has a fast bowling apparatus that can quite rightly be considered one of the best in the world alongside the Australians. None of India’s bowlers has the terrific pace of Jofra Archer of England but the line-up of Ishant Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mohammed Shami has mastered an unerring sense of line and length. They manage to hurl the ball with pace, one that the previous generation of Indian bowlers lacked.

Shami’s feat of taking five second-innings wickets in the fourth innings at home against South Africa in Visakhapatnam must be celebrated. This, not just because it was the first such feat by an Indian fast bowler in almost a quarter-century at home (after Javagal Srinath) but also for the reason that this feat would have been considered unattainable on a sub-continental pitch with a team whose line-up included a rejuvenated Ravichandran Ashwin, one of the best spin bowlers of his generation. In fact, Shami produced a brilliant hat-trick in the recent World Cup too in England and became the second Indian after Chetan Sharma to do so in the biggest ICC event. The success of India’s fast bowlers is a testament to the training imparted by the National Cricket Academy, which made this area one of its main focus points. Indian fast bowlers have learnt well and played some good series abroad as well. In the age of the super-short T20 format, they have done extremely well in the Indian Premier League to boot. But as Bumrah’s injuries prove, risks remain. Even Shami and Bhuvneshwar’s constant niggling injuries are proof that we run the risk of over bowling our players. India has an impressive production line of fast bowlers but many of them are far too raw to make the cut into the test side and will take many more coloured clothing games to hone their skills. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is already playing around with pitch preparation for domestic first-class games. This will help develop a strong core of fast bowlers so that the next time an Indian fast bowler takes five wickets in the second innings, we do not have to wait for 23 years.