Indian cricket caught in the spin web

The batsmen at the domestic level don’t play spin well and there aren’t enough good spinners coming through.

Sometime last year, a young player turned out at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bangalore for a three-week camp where the players were slotted into three categories — batsmen, pacers, spinners. He was asked to join the spinners camp. Only problem was that he was more of a batsman than a bowler until then. He batted for two days, spending the rest of the time rolling his arm over. The process of a batsman who wanted to bowl to move up a step in his career was underway.

Here is a scene from a Ranji Trophy team during the season. A batsmen gets out after a struggle against spinners on a rare pitch that had something for the tweakers and shrugged when the coach later suggests that he should perhaps practice playing spin on specially prepared tracks.

“Why, sir? Where are we going to get these kinds of pitches often? I would rather focus on batting against pace as that would help my career,” the batsman retorts.

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A few years ago, Axar Patel was at an under-19 spin camp under the tutelage of Venkataramana and Co. Patel, a young man who thought himself as a batsman who can bowl, got some valuable tips on how to bowl spin and the art of getting the ball to loop, flight, and dip. Axar went back to Gujarat to try out the skills. The ball rarely landed in the strip and the full tosses left Patel disappointed. More importantly, he found out that in Gujarat, as in the most of the country, the men in charge of teams weren’t really interested in the dainty stuff; they wanted their spinners to focus on containing the runs — fire on the pads, bowl middle and leg, don’t allow the batsman to whack you. Spin be damned.

Turning point

Indian cricket is at a curious stage right now. The batsmen at the domestic level don’t play spin well and there aren’t enough good spinners coming through. A vicious cycle is on. No wonder the national team too has its problems against spin. So much so that forget the likes of Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar who helped England to a series win in India, even Moeen Ali takes a five-for in England and almost helps them win a Test on his own.

The talent below the national team is even more worrying. So much so that Rahul Dravid, India A’s coach, has registered his concern about the batsmen’s ability to play spin after the A team went down tamely to Australia A in the first-class matches. Sunil Gavaskar talks about how the modern-day batsmen don’t use the crease. Neither they do go down the track nor do they go on the back foot to create their own length. They lunge forward or back from the crease, which unsurprisingly gets them into trouble against decent spinners.

So many reasons have been bandied about and have taken a lot of print and air space. Some of them are known: the quality of pitches in domestic cricket in the recent years where a mandatory 4mm grass covering has put the spinners out of business, the surfeit of the limited-over cricket, the demands it puts on young batsmen and spinners, and the lack of specific skill sets during the formative years.

The Indian board is trying to address the first issue. An important piece of news came in couple of days ago: the board is cancelling their plan to leave 4mm grass and aim to prepare tracks that will aid pace and spin at Ranji level. Time will tell whether they manage to produce sporting tracks that will test the skills of batsmen and bowlers, but at least there is the admission the existence of the problem.

Chopra, the gamechanger

It’s difficult to trace a complex issue such as this to its genesis but perhaps we can rewind to the end of the 90’s and the start of the new decade when a new kind of player began to emerge. The utility cricketer, someone like Nikhil Chopra. Neither can they be considered a spinner or a batsman but instead someone could roll his arm over and bat a bit.

This specimen started to flourish in ODI cricket and soon, the line between Tests and ODI s started to blur. Chopra himself debuted in ODIs in 1998 and ended up playing a Test a couple of years later. A year before Chopra played in an ODI, there was Noel David, a offspinning allrounder with middling ability, who was sent to a tour of West Indies much to the surprise of the captain Sachin Tendulkar, but that at least was registered as a selection mistake and surprised people.

Within couple of years, though, with the likes of Chopra, the selection of similar middling-level players had become a norm. Unsurprisingly, the situation has deteriorated over the years and today we have the likes of Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel flourishing around the country. The utility player has become mainstream.

WV Raman, a former India player and a coach, traces the problem to how the players are “categorised” as they come through the ranks.
“There is no clarity, and an identity crisis almost. Is he a batting allrounder, a bowling allrounder, or someone who isn’t actually good enough in either department? Increasingly, I see players come through who think they are batsmen who can bowl but soon, their roles are muddled. Perhaps because of the pitches, limited-overs format, the demand for these low-quality allrounders have increased.”

As a coach, Raman has identified another problem that has crept up. At the domestic level, the captains just don’t value spinners much. “They want a spinner only on a rank turner. In other times, the thought is the spinner is ineffective, so why not have someone who can bat a bit. We have captains enclave already. I would love if the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble and players like them stress on the captains on this issue. If a spinner isn’t allowed to bowl, he won’t evolve and without that, he can’t do much even if presented with a turning track. Forget the art of dip, loop and flight, we are going to have more and more of these utility players only.”

Flight of fancy

The last Indian spinner who dared to flight and slow up the pace was Romesh Powar. Even in his playing days, he was considered an anomaly and he is astonished to see the decline of the art.

“I think the whole country is into IPL culture. Parents want their son to play for IPL teams. Back in the day, for us it was Team India. It’s big difference now. Aane wale time mein spinners nahi milenge. Abhi nahi mil rahe hain toh aage kahan milenge? (You are not going to find spinners in the future. They can’t be found now, where are you getting them later?)

It’s the attitude change that has led to the rise of bits-and-pieces players. Apart from the lack of good coaches.

“There are not enough people who can teach spin bowling. It’s not easy to teach also,”Powar adds. “To bowl slow one has to know to dip the ball. You will tell a boy to bowl slow but the moment ball starts going full toss, youngsters do start to lose interest.”Just like how Axar Patel lost after trying to put in practice the lessons he learnt in a spin camp.

“T20 and ODI influence is too much now,” Powar says. “All club cricket matches are now of limited overs only or at the maximum, matches are played for 75 overs. We need more days of cricket otherwise mushkil hai. I have also bowled over the head frequently, ball used to go straight to wicket-keeper, I was 20 years old then. Luckily I had someone like Vasu Paranjpe sir, he gave me the confidence that, he told me this happens to everyone. Ungli cut-ta tha (cuts and cracks on the finger); once that happens, it was discouraging that I’m putting so much effort and now this has happened to fingers. Spinners need patience and if you need to learn this art, you have to work hard. But yes, once you learn it one will get results.”

And without spinners, how are the batsmen going to get proper practice? Powar makes a stinging observation.

“Just look at the way the batsmen practice.Most of them face bowling machine a lot, what is the speed they face? To face a spinner one has to face between 60-70 kmph but in bowling machine they face 80-90. So how will they learn to play spin. They practice a lot indoors where the ball doesn’t turn much.”

Another point, made by both Gavaskar and Raman, is how the batsmen grip the bat these days. They are held so firm that they struggle to change the bat speed and play the ball down softly. The flat tracks where the ball doesn’t deviate, and the intent to score runs means the batsmen hold the bat like an axe, to quote Raman, and they just look to scythe through the line. When the ball starts to spin and bounce, or for that matter start to swing, the firm grips end up acting as a great obstacle. All in all a vicious cycle is in place: lack of quality spinners affects the batting, lack of trust in spinners and rise of utility players hurt the growth of spinners.