India searching for settled combination

It isn’t a criticism as this Indian team is one in transition and still in search for a settled combination, a road usually paved with hurdles such as the ones facing them. Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron keep playing the game of musical chairs; Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s troubles with swinging the ball was mentioned by Zaheer Khan; Rohit Sharma hasn’t quite been able to seal up a Test spot; Cheteshwar Pujara is just recovering after a couple of humbling overseas tours; and Shikhar Dhawan dishes out one-knock-of-substance in a series.

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These expected hurdles are further compounded by the horses-for-courses policy that can upset the quest for a settled combination. Amit Mishra, who might push out Varun Aaron from the playing eleven for this Test, has been a frequent casualty in the recent times. Sometimes Stuart Binny plays and bowls a handful of overs, as he offers the seaming all-rounder option on paper. Binny incidentally might be making way for Rohit Sharma for this Test.

Right man for the right pitch

The admirable, even if misplaced — almost cute — talk of aggression in a five-bowler attack has meant even more chops and changes. It might look unsettling from the outside but Virat Kohli asserts that it’s just down to the right-man-for-the-right-pitch approach. According to Kohli, there is always going to be uncertainty about the allrounder spot, a switch between a spinning all-rounder and a seaming all-rounder.

“When you are touring somewhere where the conditions are seamer-friendly, then you can have a set combination with the seamer all-rounder fitting in. In the sub-continent, a spinning all-rounder fits in for you. It is just that one slot which brings balance to the team must be decided according to the conditions we are playing in. Other than that anything could be a possibility, seeing the nature of the wicket we got to go with a few changes,” Kohli said.

“That (all-rounder spot) will always be an area that we will experiment on. Other than that we haven’t really chopped and changed too much.”

The other instances have been necessitated because of players not stepping up, triggering forced changes.

Kohli’s brain would have been scrambled a lot more had South Africa been better. He would have been faced with his batsmen’s troubles against spin, concerned a lot more about his seamers, and fretted about the quality of his all-rounders. Even this below-par South Africans had posed a tough little moment in Mohali.

Chasing India’s 201, South Africa had reached 85/2 with the gritty opener Dean Elgar and Hashim Amla in 30’s when Ashwin thrust in psychological wounds with a double blow. He sent Elgar on his way with a few words and teased out Amla with a lovely loopy delivery that spun and bounced, triggering panic in the South African camp. If those two had carried on for a while longer, allowing AB de Villiers to ease into a less-nervy state of play, Amla’s whataboutery wouldn’t have looked a criticism-deflecting move. That was Ashwin’s carpe diem moment, and South Africa’s slide towards mediocrity.

Nagpur can cue up such decisive moments, what happens if Ashwin is unable to keep engineering jailbreaks for India? To rely on opposition’s nerves fraying is one way to win a Test and this young Indian team will obviously take it. However, the ideal state would be when the captain can trust his batsmen to consistently do well, at least in Indian conditions, his bowling line-up to have a settled look about them.

There will always be the odd fret about a spot or two, someone or other is going to have a lean trot, for that’s the nature of sport, but to go into a home Test waiting for the opposition to collapse meekly and give the game on a platter isn’t ideal for long-term growth. Sometimes, a young team can mature quicker, develop valuable skills that much better, and learn more about themselves as a unit, when put under real pressure. It will be masochistic for India to reject or cheapen easy success of course but it can create bad habits and illusions. For India’s sake, South Africa needs to show more heart.

Parochial love, best love

A local Nagpur journalist asked Virat Kohli a question in a most endearing way. “Kya hamara sheher ka cricketer Umesh Yadav ko dekhna milega?” A big smile spread across Kohli’s face and he said, “Hum sheher ke hissab sey players nahi select kar sakte hain, na?! (we can’t select the players according to the city). Then we cannot guarantee results. We will make changes according to the conditions.”

A dash of dark humour

The Nagpur track has already thrown up some dark humour. On Monday, it was M Vijay, Indian opener, who triggered peals of laughter with his straight-faced remark about the strip. Asked his views on the pitch, he first said that he still hadn’t had a look as he had come to the press-briefing straight and then added, “I am hoping it will be a sporting track”. Even as laughter filled the room, he smiled gently. On Tuesday it was the turn of Hashim Amla, South Africa’s captain. “Well, it looks like a good cricket wicket,” and he paused before adding, “one that we kind of expect in the subcontinent.” More laughter.

A gentle put down

Over the years, Indian team managements have become cagey, and secretive, about revealing their team compositions. They like to reveal the surprise after toss in their chat with a television commentator. And so when a direct question on the likelihood of Rohit Sharma and Amit Mishra replacing Stuart Binny and Varun Aaron was put to Kohli, he talked about how there will definitely be changes, before suddenly stopping to smile and say, “That was a nice try, obviously I won’t disclose it here!”

Times they are A-changin’

The former Indian cricketers, or at least the previous generation of fans who have seen lazy Indian fielding, will probably choke on reading this. The current Indian team , stunningly good on the field as they are, have tweaked their fielding practice routine. They no longer train for boundary fielding or aiming direct hits but are practising taking close-in catches more. This was Kohli’s take on it. “We as a team have decided to put in 15-20 minutes every day on reflex catching and close in fielding rather than boundary fielding and hitting the stumps, which we have done since we were small. This is something we started in Sri Lanka and we saw the results there as well. Those half-chances were the turning points in both the Test we won.”

He’s good, but so were we

Hashim Amla wasn’t in a mood to offer unadulterated praises to India. When asked about his team’s batting, he pointed out how India were also struggling. When asked about how good Ashwin has been, he pointed out how good his own spinners were. “Ashwin’s has bowled well. The tracks have kind of helped spin bowling and to his cricket and to the other spinners in the Indian team, they’ve bowled very well. In the second innings of the first Test, our spinners took eight of the 10 wickets, so our spinners have also done a very decent job whenever they’ve managed to bowl on tracks that turn. Imran has always been an attacking spinner and Simon has been growing in stature.” — Sriram Veera