Indian cricket has a real problem. Getting rid of the opposition’s tailenders. England were 202 for 7 at Tent Bridge, over 250 runs behind India’s score, with all specialist batsmen back in the pavilion except Joe Root, who was looking highly uncertain with the bat until then. Stuart Broad walks out, smashes a brilliant 47, hitting the Indian bowlers all over the ground. Joe Root gets back his confidence. Jimmy Anderson joins him, makes an incredible 81, playing shots of a calibre that David Gower, the famously elegant English batsman of the 1980s would have been proud of. Root and Anderson share a record 198 run partnership for the last wicket, which is almost as much as the sum total of the first seven partnerships for England. A horrible Test match for India. But haven’t we seen this happen before?
Well, as a matter fact, this always happens with the Indian cricket team. Tailenders simply love Indian bowling. Who can forget how Indian bowlers had sent all the top Pakistani batsmen packing, in Kolkata 1999 and Karachi 2006, only to have their lower order stage a fight back and costing India critical Test matches that they should have won. Or how on the last tour of South Africa they had half of the South African team dismissed, and needed only 5 wickets on the last day to win – only for AB de Villiers and Faf du Plessis to stage a familiar rear guard action against India. Or for that matter, as recently as in New Zealand just a couple of months back. India had a massive 250 run lead in the first innings an had dismissed half of the New Zealand side for under 100 in their second innings and were on the verge of a rare win in a Test match outside the subcontinent – only for Brendon McCullum to get together with tailenders BJ Watling and Jimmy Neesham, adding a massive 550 runs and putting a win beyond India’s reach.
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Why do Indian bowlers struggle so much to finish games off? Why can’t captain MS Dhoni inspire his team to go that extra mile and actually win matches? Well, for one, India lacks a genuine fast bowler with the speed and the zip to frighten tailenders, to york them or to bounce them out – the way Mitchell Johnson and Dale Steyn do so consistently for their respective countries, or how Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis used to do for Pakistan. Nobody is scared of India’s medium pacers. India’s best pace bowler? That’s Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who bowls at a top speed of 130 kmh. Far from being scared or worried about facing the Indian bowlers, tailenders of all teams would be queuing up to face them. Playing India is always a great opportunity for the Jimmy Andersons, Peter Siddles and Dale Steyns of the world to get a prized Test match fifty.
Another issue is that Dhoni is a highly defensive minded captain, who prefers to spread out his field at the slightest show of defiance by the opposition batsmen, even by tailenders. And instead of relaxing his bowlers, Dhoni seems to make them more desperate. It’s not that his bowlers do not try hard enough to get tailenders out. In fact, the problem is that they try just too hard. Instead of bowling their normal full pitched deliveries that allows the ball to swing, Indian pace bowlers try bouncing the opposition tailenders out. Which is not a good strategy, as they lack the pace to do so, only to get mercilessly pulled, cut, slashed and hooked for runs all over the ground.
So what does Dhoni do? There isn’t much that he can, except hope for more helpful pitches that help his pace bowlers cover their deficiencies. One more pitch like the one we had in Trent Bridge, and Jimmy Anderson may well become the first batsman in the history of Test cricket to score a hundred coming in at number eleven.
