Tag Archives: bowling

India Does Not Have a Fast Bowling Problem

Posted on by

Karthikeya Date at a Cricketing View has a couple of posts bemoaning the lack of fast bowlers in the Indian lineup and attributes it as the reason for the recent England series loss. I am not convinced for a variety of reasons, especially with statements like this that apparently seems to be a problem because of the lack of fast bowlers:

India did not win a Test Match outside the sub-continent between 1986 and 2001.

There are 3 main lines of arguments against this. First is anecdotal: In the past, when you have read about India’s struggles in Tests abroad, what was the first criticism you have heard? As far as I can remember, the primary analysis has usually been “Indian batsmen do not know how to handle fast bowling because they are not used to pitches that favor bowlers“. It has rarely been “Indian fast bowlers were ineffective“.

The second is what if you use the argument for some country, say Australia playing in India. Since 1970, Australia has won a total of 4 Tests and lost 12 Tests out of 26 Tests in India. That is a staggeringly bad record. What do people advocate for Australia? Do they say that Australia needs to bring better fast bowlers? Or they should have better spinners (better than Shane Warne with an average of 43 per wicket)? No, it is taken for granted that Indians are very good at batting on their pitches and they are really good at handling spin. The problem has been Australians unable to cope with the subcontinent.

The last is looking at the record between 1986 and 2001. India actually only played 38 Tests in these 15 years outside the subcontinent – 9 against the West Indies, 8 vs Australia, 7 vs South Africa, 6 vs NZ, 6 v England, and 2 vs Zimbabwe. We lost 18 Tests out of 38, but 7 came in Australia, 3 early in the period against a still strong West Indies and 3 against South Africa. We lost twice against NZ and England.

In general, that points to the relative strengths of the teams. Beating Australia in Australia was not easy and so it turned out. During the same period, Australia was also decimating other teams and running up record consecutive Test wins. One exception also shows the rule. This was the infamous 38-run loss to the West Indies, India being bundled out for 81 while chasing 120 runs.

What does this have to do with fast bowling? One point is that it is easier to explain India’s lack of success by simply looking at the overall team strength and also factor in the usual home advantage. A 1-0 loss in 4 Tests against a newly admitted South Africa in 1992 and a 2-0 in 3 Tests against a more experienced side is fully explained by that theory. Conversely against a West Indies that had the opposite trajectory in form, we have the 3-0 in 4 Tests in 1989, but only 1-0 in 5 Tests in 1997. And solitary losses to England in two 3-Test series.

But there is another factor also. If you look at some Tests in detail, you will find that surprisingly the bowling was a small factor in India’s fortunes. The 1991/92 Australia series is a great example. India went to Australia with the “strongest batting line up ever”. But what ended up happening is that India crossed 300 only twice in 5 Tests and were bowled out for scores such as 141 and 156. The batting average for the series was 23. And that does not even show the true picture because several times, the lower order especially Kapil Dev boosted the scores. The Indian bowling was not that great, but they did not allow Australia to cross 350 in any of their first innings. If the batting had been a little better, perhaps the final scoreline may have been different. The batting in the next away series against Australia was no better, with India thrice bowled out for less than 200.

It is taken as a fact that better batting does not win matches and you need 20 wickets to win matches and therefore you need bowlers to perform. But it is also true that bowlers need a total to defend as they try to buy wickets with runs, enticing batsmen to take risks. India’s poor batting abroad has often put bowlers in a bad position. So the blame should not solely fall on the bowlers.

Separate Batting and Bowling Teams

Posted on by

RAAF Cricket Team 1943

Mahesh left a comment on the last blog post suggesting that it would be good to have separate captains for the batting and bowling innings, and also perhaps have separate squads for each innings itself. I am not so sure about the first idea, but the second is intriguing. Let us explore both.

The idea of having different captains for the two innings would be good if there was actually much to do while the team is batting. As far as I can see, the main job of the captain during the batting innings is to decide who bats next and recommend a target, if batting first. Most of the thinking is actually done by the batsmen on the pitch. So I am not sure whether there is much value for a special batting captain. It is easily something that a fielding captain could easily handle with experience.

The different squads for each innings can be a great idea because, as Mahesh said, it pits the best batsmen against the best bowlers and fielders. Right now, a third of the batting lineup is made up of the tail who don’t contribute very much to the score. The bowling usually has 4-5 bowlers and, if they are not in form, the batsmen have it easy. Also, the fielding team has to hide some people who cannot run or throw fast.

So we could have a match where during the batting innings, there are 11 specialist batsmen, “specialist” including some pinch hitters too. During the bowling innings, 10 of the best fielders take the field and the bowler bowls. When the bowler finishes bowling, he will go back to the bench and be replaced by the next bowler. So always there is one bowler and 10 good fielders on the ground. This is similar to pitching in baseball.

This suggestion raises the question of how many players will be part of the fielding team if bowlers just come out to bowl. We are talking about potentially 32 players (11 for batting, 11 for bowling and 10 for fielding). Theoretically possible, but practically (especially with money involved) impractical. I suppose a team of 16 players could fit the bill (11 good batsmen, 6 bowlers + 5 batsmen fielders). So 5 players both bat and field and 6 players both bowl and field. We can think of other combinations too that can be feasible from a logistics and financial standpoint.

I think the value of 11 specialist batsmen may be less in T20 and increases as we go to ODI’s and Tests. Since there are only 20 overs in a T20 match, most of the time, the bottom batsmen never get to bat. If they are batting for some reason, it means that the other batsmen are failing terribly because the bowling is top-notch or the pitch conditions are poor for batting. Hence they cannot be expected to contribute much. In ODI’s and Tests, the lower batsmen have more opportunities to affect the game.

The ICC had tried an experiment sometime back where the teams had “tactical substitutes”, where they could select a batsmen or bowler. This was poorly implemented because the substitute had to be named before the toss was made, and this gave a huge advantage to the team that won the toss because they could decide whether to bat first or bowl first depending on who they had selected as a substitute. After much uproar, the rule was cancelled.

This was a mistake. They should fix the toss advantage issue and perhaps allowed more substitutes. As we mentioned before, if teams could choose from 16 players and they can switch players in and out during the match at any time, provided the 10-wicket rule and bowling over restrictions are maintained, that could work.

I suppose the biggest issue from the governing body’s standpoint would be how to make sense of cricket scorecards. Suddenly, you have statistics from 16 players instead of 11. How do you keep track of which substitute played as a fielder and therefore mark the match count for him. Cricket has to learn from other sports like soccer which have had a longer history of using substitutes.