Lack of quality sees India switch to five-man attack

Ajit Vijaykumar 09:29 10/08/2015
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  • Attack leader: Ishant Sharma.

    India bowling coach Bharat Arun made an observation the other day. While discussing captain Virat Kohli’s liking for a five-man bowling attack, he said all great Test teams of the past relied on a five-man attack to take 20 wickets and enforce wins.

    While it’s nice to see India thinking on those lines, the reasoning provided is not correct. The two greatest teams of all time did not have a five-man bowling attack and they dominated for more than a decade in their respective eras.

    Let’s start with the original dream team. The West Indies side of the mid to late 1970s and early 1980s under the captaincy of Clive Lloyd made it a habit of intimidating opposition batsmen with a four-pronged pace attack. And all four fast bowlers in the playing eleven were frighteningly quick.

    From Michael Holding to Malcolm Marshall, Joel Garner to Andy Roberts, Colin Croft to Sylvester Clarke, the batsmen very rarely had any respite. And the Windies almost always fielded four quicks, with the job of filling in the overs taken up by Viv Richards’ off-spinners and later on by Roger Harper.

    The West Indies seldom needed the fifth bowler as the first four they picked were simply outstanding. Similar was the case with the Australia team of the late 1990s and early 2000s under Steve Waugh.

    They had, arguably, the most complete bowling attack in the history of cricket with pace bowling legends Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie supported and complemented by the iconic leg-spinner Shane Warne.

    Of all their ‘support’ bowlers, only Andrew Symonds was of a decent pedigree as others like Mark Waugh, Darren Lehmann and Greg Blewett were fairly innocuous. Once again, four world-class bowlers were enough for them.

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    In fact, the two teams who consistently played Test matches with five proper bowlers were generally regarded as the second best teams of their era. South Africa and Pakistan were blessed with seam-bowling all-rounders and used to play with five or even six bowlers.

    While the Proteas had the likes of Shaun Pollock, Allan Donald, Fannie de Villiers, Lance Klusener, Jacques Kallis and spinners Pat Symcox and Paul Adams playing side by side and jostling for spots, Pakistan had the two W’s – Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis – with Shoaib Akhtar, all-rounders Abdul Razzaq, Azhar Mahmood, Shahid Afridi and spinner Saqlain Mushtaq to chose from.

    What this proves is that both the four and five-bowler strategies work. But the first one can be employed by only those who have four world-class bowlers with them. The rest need to have five good ones. Since India don’t even have three top class bowlers, Kohli has been almost forced to go for the second option.

    Strangely, fast bowling has becomes India’s forte simply because they only have one good spin bowling option in Ravichandran Ashwin for the Sri Lanka Test series that begins on Wednesday. Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and leg spinner Amit Mishra have been discarded and then recalled, which doesn’t say a lot about their potency.

    Beanpole quick Ishant Sharma picked up five wickets in the tour game and looks set to lead a pace bowling attack which has Umesh Yadav, Varun Aaron and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in it. Since only Ishant and Ashwin can claim to be top class, and that too just about, it means Kohli has to accommodate five bowlers and give up on some batting stability to pick up 20 wickets and enforce a result.

    The four-bowler strategy would have worked for India if all-rounder Irfan Pathan had lived up to the promise he had shown way back in 2003 as a lively left-arm swing bowler and a handy lower order batsman. But he lost his way badly and can now be seen strutting his stuff in a dance reality show on Indian television.

    The next best option that India have managed to unearth is Stuart Binny but the 31-year-old bowls at medium pace and his batting is energetic at best. He is more of a luxury than a necessity.

    So when bowling coach Arun gives the example of great teams of the past to support Kohli’s five-bowler theory, he is giving the wrong impression. India are not looking to emulate the all-time great teams of the West Indies, Australia or even South Africa and Pakistan.

    The reality is a four-bowler attack simply will not take 20 wickets a Test on a consistent basis for India. Kohli has no option but to pack in five bowlers to go for victories he so badly needs to rein- force his attacking mantra in Test cricket. It’s a simple case of India having no choice but to go all out.

    Kohli’s predecessor Mahendra Singh Dhoni believed in filling his team with batsmen and never gave bowling in Tests too much importance, which is one of the reasons India lost eights Test matches in a row away from home under him.

    Kohli is at least open to the idea of beefing up the bowling attack, even though he doesn’t have a lot to work with. 

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