Absence of back-foot players cost India dear
The incredible megalomaniac in me normally makes me blossom whenever I have to say ‘I told you so’. But when it comes to India being smashed out of the World T20 championships, then it hurts. India had the potential to regain the cup. The loss because of an incomprehensible lack of acumen and cricket sense on the part of the selectors which led to this debacle should make me angry and frustrated. Yet it doesn’t. Instead I am deeply hurt and dismayed because I know, as before, the system has failed, yet again.
Well before the team left for the West Indies on April 15, 2010 I wrote a column which, at the risk of boring you with repetition, read as follows, “I wonder if the selectors have a selection policy which they work with? If so, does it state that playing in the West Indies one needs better players of the back foot, not front footed destroyers?â€
Our selectors took front footed dinosaurs and that too selected well before the IPL ended. They were exterminated on the faster tracks of the West Indies like prehistoric reptiles floundering under the impact of a meteor. If India continues to maintain such ridiculous selection policies, which do not cater to the playing conditions nor to the strengths and weaknesses of the players, even Indian cricket will go extinct.
Even a child knows that a left-handed bowler, because of the angles he creates, necessarily has to pitch in the slog areas to a right-hander. His strength is derived from pitching the ball in an area where the right handed batsman is partially blinded and then spinning the ball away making the player grope for the ball as it spins across him.
But that’s on our turning tracks. On batting wickets as in the West Indies, where the ball does not turn and more so where it bounces hard and true, the bowler needs to have the ability to deliver rotation, beat the batsman in the air, disguise the spin and keep the player guessing mid-flight.
If you don’t have bowlers who are at least a shadow of Rajendar Goel, Padmakar Shivalkar, Bishan Singh Bedi, Mumtaz Hussain or Saleem Durrani it is safer to go with the right-handers, especially in this fast moving short version of the game, where an expensive over can lose the match.
Poor selection, a perfect example is Ravindra Jadeja being retained as a front-line bowler; cost us dearly. Neither does he impart the necessary rotation nor does he have the ability to disguise his deliveries and deceive batsmen in the air. He should never have been there.
Couldn’t it have been different had we taken Robin Uthappa and Virat Kohli? Sad isn’t it that selection of a team is never on proper planning or on performance. Now that we are back disgraced, will Indian cricket change? Be assured that what hasn’t changed in decades is unlikely to change now.
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