Something is rotten in the state of India’s bowling and it has been rotten for a while now. Time and again India’s bowling attack appears to get on top but just when they should be closing in for the kill, they go absent without leave instead.
On the second morning at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, India rolled up with the game very much in the balance. With Australia 259 for 5, early wickets would have tilted the match India’s way, a match they have to win to avoid losing the series. Instead of attacking off stump and getting the batsmen to drive on a pitch where four of the five wickets fell to catches behind the stumps, Dhoni and his brain trust decided the short ball was the way to go.
On a slow pitch with tennis ball bounce, it meant the ball sat up to be smacked. What’s worse is that India telegraphed their intentions by having the fast bowlers go around the wicket with men out on the hook. It allowed Brad Haddin to clear his front leg and send a couple of Mohammed Shami bouncers racing to the long-on boundary with a pair of flat-batted straight pulls. Fifty eight runs came from the first 10 overs and Australia were off to the races.
Mohammed Shami took four wickets but gave away 138 runs to do it. Getty Sports Images
Yet of the 80 balls Shami bowled to right-handers on the second day, 58 were short of a length. Despite the clear lack of success, India persisted with the tactic and nobody – not Dhoni, not Kohli, not the bowlers – chose to do anything about it. They just let the game drift on in the same vein.
India’s tactics were so poor that Ian Chappell said Dhoni's captaincy was “senseless” and “the worst” he had seen in Test cricket. Admittedly, Chappell is not a Dhoni fan but it was clear to everyone watching that India’s plans were awry.
When India lost the first Test to New Zealand in Aukland in February, Dhoni said India needed to capitalise on situations better. After losing the second Test in Brisbane to Australia, Dhoni said it was a matter of India learing to capitalise on those crucial 30 minute or 45 minute sessions of play that often decide the direction of the game.
Over the course of the year, little has changed. Dhoni appears to know what the problem is but so far hasn’t been able to find a solution. On occasion he has also exacerbated the problem with poor strategy, as was the case today morning. That means either India lacks the necessary talent to compete at this level away from home or the team’s plans don’t match the skills and abilities of the players.
Against India in 2014, opposing teams have averaged averaged 42.4 each for the top five wickets while wickets six to 10 have averaged 49.89. It is a trend that is as baffling as it is worrying. India has conceded 85 runs on average to the eighth, ninth and 10th wickets this year, the worst of all the Test playing countries.
In this series, India has been even worse. They have scored 336 runs for 20 wickets following the fall of the fifth wicket, an average of 16.80. Meanwhile Australia have amassed 622 for the loss of nine wickets – an average of 69.11 (hat tip to Ric Finlay for the stat).
This year, Indian bowlers have individually conceded over 100 runs in an innings 26 times. Pakistan and Sri Lanka are next, having done so on 14 occasions. Four times over the last 12 months, four different India bowlers have conceded 100 runs in the same innings, including Australia’s first innings at the MCG.
With those sorts of numbers, it is impossible to win games. And it raises the larger question of why India continue to go AWOL at crucial times in Tests. If the bowlers can dismiss top order batsmen, surely they should be able to dismiss lower-order players as well?
It was a discussion Sanjay Manjrekar, Sunil Gavaskar and Matthew Hayden had in the Star Sports studio during the lunch break.
Gavaskar said, “They [India] don’t believe they can win. It is the only way to explain this kind of wayward performance.” He pinned the blame on the limitations of India’s bowlers, saying they weren’t good enough to take 20 wickets.
Hayden, however, took a different tack. He said attempting to bounce the Aussies out was “complete rubbish strategy”. He pointed out that Shami burst on the scene by bowling full and getting the ball to swing and seam. Having him bowl bouncers at 135 kph was taking Shami away from what he does best and also playing to Australia’s strengths. It was, in effect, a double whammy.
You have to work within a bowler’s limitations, Hayden said. Australia did that the hard way with Nathan Lyon. He was originally criticised for what he lacked rather than appreciated for what he could do. Now that Australia has accepted Lyon as the bowler he is, rather than the bowler they wish he was, Lyon has begun to win matches for them.
“If you keep on searching for what you don’t have, it leads to an endless conversation,” Hayden said.
India, said Hayden, have the artillery. They just need to figure out how to use their weapons better. He thought that if India had bowled in the channel outside off-stump, then Australia would have struggled.
The different in approach is instructive. Pointing out flaws is one thing but the job of a good leader is to make the best use of the team you have, not pine for the team you want. Ishant Sharma, Shami, Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron (plus the missing Bhuvneshwar Kumar) all have talent. It is how that talent is polished that is the issue.
Another important factor, raised by Tim Collins at Bleacher Report, is India’s lack of mental discipline in the five-day game.
“In the Test arena, Dhoni's men are neither here nor there. They've got so many qualities, an abundance of skill and plenty of flair, but there's just as much that is missing.
“They squander opportunities. Their focus comes and goes. Their attention to detail, to the little things, is poor. Their successes and failures are pinned solely to talent, not fundamentals.”
Taken together, Collins’ and Haydon’s comments point to a collective failure in the Indian camp. It is the culture and discipline of a winning team that is lacking, not the talent to win. The leadership – captain and coaches - hasn’t figured out how to get the best out of the bowlers, nor does it seem able to get the bowlers to do the basics right, or sometimes even appear to want them to do the basics at all. Dhoni keeps talking about the lack of experience in the side, but then forces the bowlers to try unusual lines and lengths to one batsman while bowling conventionally to the other. It is a task many more established bowlers would struggle have struggled with.
To be fair, the bowlers don’t appear to show a desire to take personal responsibility for their performances in the way batsmen such as Virat Kohli and Murali Vijay do. Shami, for instance, said he was focused on bowling the right lines and lengths on day one but did not explain why that resulted in his bowling short and wide or full and straight for most of the day.
We can’t expect answers from MS Dhoni either. “Don't speculate what was going on in my mind,” he said after Brisbane. “Only I know. Leave it for me.” He would, no doubt, say the same thing after this morning’s fiasco.
India have used eight different bowling combinations in the 10 Tests they have played in 2014. The problems have persisted no matter who has been given the ball. India have only one more away Test to play after this one before they go into their home season after the 2015 IPL. Losing both would give MS Dhoni the record for most away Test losses as captain. If he wants to avoid that dubious honour, India needs to find a way to solve the riddle of their bowlers, or find a leader who can.
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