Spin stress

Is India's reputation of being the finest players of spin a fallacy?

Virat Kohli held his pose. No, this was no picturesque cover drive that went piercing through the field and then galloping to the fence. For once, Kohli’s stupefying genius had betrayed him. His face, otherwise lit up by a brattish smile, was now a picture of unmitigated consternation. Behind him, his stumps lay shattered. By then, Steve O’Keefe’s unrepressed glee had taken him to the other side of the pitch, precariously close to the Indian captain. Eventually, no pleasantries were exchanged. O’Keefe didn’t have to say anything, the ball he had bowled had done that — and quite spectacularly so. 

O’Keefe’s joy was understandable: he had just got the world’s greatest all-round batsman shouldering arms. If O’Keefe was doing this to Kohli, then what hope did the mortals have? Very little, it would turn out. O’Keefe’s gamboling down the pitch would continue for the rest of the match. For India, the Pune minefield would end in devastation. 

There is an undeniable — almost farcical — paradox in India asking curators to prepare raging turners. On pitches that behave well on the first three days and then metamorphose into spitting cobras on days four and five, the Indians generally tend to do well: the batsmen make merry and, Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja mostly manage to put a swift end to the opposition’s resistance. However, on surfaces that seem to be specially imported from some remote planet in the solar system, like the one in Pune, the Indian batsmen often play like locals from Dunedin or Nottingham — guys who’ve never seen a turning ball in their life. 

Aussie Steve O’Keefe picked up 12 wickets against India in the Pune Test last week. Photo: Reuters

Over the years, cricket watchers around the world have been strafed with the notion that the Indians tackle better than anyone else; with dexterity, they can negate the mightiest of spinners on the nastiest of surfaces. Unfortunately, that is rapidly taking the shape of a terrible fallacy.

Maybe, the Indians don’t play spin as well as they think. Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar showed that in 2012. Rangana Herath repeated it at Galle in 2015. New Zealand brought India back to earth at Nagpur in the T20 World Cup last year. And, now this. If things don’t improve quickly, more painful reminders are likely to be served. 

“The way they played was shocking. If they keep playing like this, then they’ll have to stop preparing pitches like the one in Pune,” says former India off-spinner Erapalli Prasanna. “The resistance offered was not the kind you expect from a team like India.” 

There are reasons why India has been hailed as the team that plays spin better than anyone else. It has, over the years, found ways to dominate spin — some with flair, like Mohammad Azharuddin, others with force, à la Navjot Singh Sidhu. Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman all averaged above 70 against spin from 2006 to 2011. In fact, during the same period, Indian batsmen’s average against spin was 46.43, the best among all teams. Since then, that number has been languishing in the mid-30s.  

“Against Australia, overconfidence played its part. But the guys these days play spin differently from the way it used to be played,” says Anshuman Gaekwad, former India coach and opening batsman. 

The numbers seem to corroborate India’s misery against spin. In the 2012-13 England series, which India lost 1-2, only two Indians featured among the eight batsmen with the highest average during the series. More worryingly, the second Indian batsman on that list — apart from Cheteshwar Pujara — was not even a top-order one: Ashwin. 

England’s Adil Rashid picked up 23 wickets against India last year, finishing just behind Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, who had 28 and 26, respectively. Photo: Reuters

Against South Africa in Mohali in 2015, Dean Elgar, only a left-arm part-timer, ripped through the Indian batting in the first innings, picking up four wickets. Imran Tahir and Simon Harmer snapped up four apiece in the second innings. India still somehow won the match within three days, primarily due to two reasons: Ashwin and the Proteas’ amateurish insipidness in countering the turning ball. 

At Galle in August 2015, Herath spun Sri Lanka to an unlikely win by obliterating India for 112 in the fourth innings. 

It would be fatuous to not expect the spinners to pick up the bulk of the wickets in the subcontinent, but what makes India’s case all the more alarming is the disquieting manner of their recent implosions. While facing the leg-spin of England’s Adil Rashid last year, for instance, both Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane often struggled to pick him. Rahane, in fact, succumbed to the leggie’s googly a couple of times. 

“There was a clear lack of application against Australia. Nobody put their head down and fought it out,” says Gaekwad. 

O’Keefe and Nathan Lyon were made to look monsters in Pune because of a crumbling pitch. In actuality, though, they are the kind of spinners the Indian batsmen would’ve whacked out of the attack only a few years ago. Not anymore. “O’Keefe and Lyon are nowhere near the same quality as Swann or Herath. Yet, India struggled so horribly. They have to alter their approach while taking on spin,” says a former Indian spinner, on the condition of anonymity. 

If you look back some more, the numbers start getting all the more unpleasant for India. On their tour of Australia at the fag end of 2014, the series’ top wicket-taker wasn’t Mitchell Johnson or Mitchell Starc, but Lyon, with 23. Clearly, the spin torment extends to overseas territories, too. 

Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar tormented India in 2012-13, with a combined tally of 37 wickets. Photo: Reuters

However, some are still backing them to come good. Former captain Ajit Wadekar believes that collapses like Pune don’t happen every day. “This happens in cricket sometimes. That doesn’t mean that they’ll perform like this in every match,” he says. 

In the past, Indian batsmen have developed their own coping mechanisms against the spinners. Tendulkar used to go after them with ferocity, Laxman liked to use his feet and Dravid would simply block them out. The current crop operates in extremes: either it does nothing or adopts a ruinous amalgamation of the three. More importantly, most of them don’t trust their defence. 

“They can take a cue from Aussie skipper Steve Smith. This is how you should be playing spin,” says a former player. 

Smith, with his twitchy hands and bobbing head, doesn’t quite commit on the front foot — an archaic theory still prescribed by several coaches in dealing with quality spin. He stays deep in his crease and plays the ball mostly on length. Moreover, he sweeps and uses his feet with brutal efficiency. “Smith is the kind of batsman who adopts the modern-day method of overcoming spin,” says the former player. 

Nathan Lyon, with 23, was the top wicket-taker on India’s tour of Australia in 2014-15. Photo: Reuters

The problem is most Indian batsmen don’t do that. With the exception of Pujara and Vijay, all of them are infrequent users of their feet, preferring to play from the crease instead. None of them — barring K L Rahul and Karun Nair — is a prolific sweeper of the ball, either. And even with Rahul, his will to dominate often ends with a reckless mistake. For some odd reason, our batsmen still choose to play spin the conventional Indian way — a plan that leads to embarrassing capitulations on challenging wickets. 

Recent numbers and performances suggest that India’s days as the masters of spins are long gone. The last thing that they need in the second Test against Australia, which begins in Bengaluru today, is another rank turner. Hopefully, the curator will spare them that cruelty.