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Bowlers hold the whip hand

Posted on | December 2, 2009 | 2 Comments

India’s 100th Test match victory by a massive innings and 144 runs over Sri Lanka just shows the precarious nature of sport because in the previous Test they had been hanging on for a draw.

They got out of jail in Ahmedabad and when they were in the ascendancy in Kanpur they finished off Sri Lanka to prove the adage that batsmen score the runs which put you in a position to win but bowlers have to take 20 wickets to pull it off.

India were able to do that with the variety and quality of their attack with the seamers taking six wickets, five of them for Sreesanth, in the first innings and the four spinners sharing seven wickets in the second. It was a high scoring match in the first Test and it just goes to show that however good your batsmen, if your bowlers can’t finish them off you won’t win.

In the second Test the first three in the Indian batting order, Gautan Ghambir, Virendar Sehwag and Rahul Dravid, made big hundreds and put them in a position to dictate terms but it was the bowlers who made those runs count.

A small consolation for Sri Lanka was the emergence of Rangana Herath, the first left arm spinner to bowl the ‘doosra’. There have been plenty of off spinners who can do it, Harbhajan, Murali and Johan Botha among others but we’ve waited quite a long time to see a left armer. Nobody’s quite sure how he’s doing it which is good for cricket and he became more effective when the pitch, which was very flat at the start, began to take turn. But India are a hard side to beat on their home ground and they won this one much more easily than they might have expected.

It was a much closer affair in Dunedin where New Zealand won a wonderful cricket match by 32 runs against Pakistan. The thing that strikes me about Pakistan is that the opportunity to win was there and they must be kicking themselves at falling short. They’ve got to get a lot more steel into their cricket. They’ve always got talented players but they’ve got to learn how to get over the winning line. Umar Akmal, brother of Kamran and Adnan, is a wonderful young batsmen, just turned 19, and he made 129 and 75 in the match but their old failings came back to haunt them. They just don’t have good opening batsmen. The top three in the order made a combined total of 67 for their six wickets, that’s not good enough and it’s been like that since Sohail and Saeed Anwar retired. There’s no quality at the top and it haunts them every time because they’re in trouble from the word go. They seem to just shove youngsters in first and keep chopping and changing and until they solve this problem they’re always going to struggle. If they think they’ve got problems with New Zealand wait until they play Australia in England next year.

Pakistan must get Younis Khan back in the side as soon as possible. I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s been going on behind the scenes but I do know he’s far too good a player not to be in the side. I also think that someone at the top should talk Shahid Afridi into playing Test cricket again. Not so much for his batting which is hit or miss but for his bowling and his infectious enthusiasm which appeals to colleagues and spectators.

Attention needs to be paid to Mohammad Aamer the very talented left arm seamer. He needs to get closer to the stumps in his delivery and maybe someone should tell him to have a look at Wayne Parnell, the South African, to see how close in he gets at delivery. At the moment Aamer is so wide on the crease that to hit the stumps he has to pitch outside leg stump and that makes it impossible to get a leg before. He must be able to pitch the ball between wicket to wicket so that if the batsmen misses, he hits and if he gets closer to the stumps he’ll find he’ll be able to swing it in to the right handers more.

Pakistan are good but it’s nearly impossible to win consistently without good openers because in Test cricket the new ball can do so much damage and that’s where their weakness lies. Talent is not their problem, mental strength is.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Bowlers hold the whip hand”

  1. Cricket Betting Blog
    December 5th, 2009 @ 2:03 pm

    Reading this article (with regard to 2nd test, India V Sri Lanka) reminded me of England’s test against India in Chennai this time last year and a failing of the England team in general.

    The batsman set the game up for England to win, setting India 387 to win in the last 4 sessions and the bowlers failed miserably to get anywhere near the 10 wickets required.

    For me that is one of the big differences between England and the top test playing nations. In that game Anderson, Flintoff, Harmison etc relied on the Indian batsmen making mistakes and when the mistakes didn’t come England looked clueless and ended up losing the game.

    The batsmen can put the runs on the board and in doing so can create ‘scoreboard pressure’ but ultimately if your bowlers aren’t good enough you won’t win.

    This is why I conclude that England only have a decent attack, but not a good enough one (at the moment) to be the best team in the world. On pitches and in conditions that suit our bolwers we can beat anyone and our bolwers can be unplayable.

    When it comes to an unhelpful pitch where you need a wicket taker or a bit of cunning and guile I think England struggle with a lack of invention and at times, brains.

    A game that springs to mind is the 3rd Ashes test at Edgbaston. In the 1st innings with helpful conditions we skittled Australia out for around 250 in just over a session. Then even with scoreboard pressure our bowlers were not good enough to press home the advantage the 2nd time the Aussies batted in more batsman friendly conditions, in the end England were the happier team with the draw.

    Two tests and a series England could have won with just one or two better bowlers.

  2. IRANNA
    December 10th, 2009 @ 9:22 am

    Mr.Geoffrey Boycott sir,

    i read your comment about SEHWAG on cricinfo

    you said sehwag cant get 300 on moving tracks so he is modern day great on batting picthes…

    sir, how many players got 300 on moving picthes like newzealand and england to become great..

    whole world says that dravid, tendulkar,gavaskar they are great batsmans,did they got 300 on moving picthes to become great…

    why sehwag needs to get 300 on moving picthes to become great …when all the players like dravid,gavaskar,tendulkar needs to get just 100 to become great….is that not unfair on sehwag to say that get 300 on moving piches to become great.. if others in the history considered great just by getting 100s on moving piches….

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