It didn’t take Nostradamus to predict the result of the recent Border-Gavaskar Trophy series; the visitors played white-ball cricket with the red ball and consequently only once going the full five days of a Test match
Team India during Day One of the Boxing Day Test against Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground last year. Pic/Getty Images
Inconvenient Truths. The phrase needs no explanation. It is a reality that Team India must be prepared to confront if anything is to be learned from their Australian mis-adventure.
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I read back through my prediction for the series (published in mid-day on November 11). It didn’t take Nostradamus to predict the future. India were always going to struggle to go the full nine yards with an Australian team, who outpointed them on a man-to-man comparison in almost every category, albeit on pitches that suited Australia.
In some senses, this was a result a decade in the making. I’ve always maintained that India will one day pay the price for their obsession with the IPL and short-form cricket. This series was that payday — it was white ball cricket played with a red ball, only once going the full five days.
Woeful batting
India’s batting was woefully not Test match standard. For all the flair and flamboyance, what was needed was more Pujara, more Dravid, more Agarwal even. It’s not just the runs they scored, but the length of time it took to score them. Only once in the series, in the second innings in Perth, did India force the Aussie quicks to come back for multiple spells. Their lack of potency was laid bare in the very first Test and yet, curiously, bizarrely, India never went there again. There’s that Inconvenient Truth again — learn to bat long and you probably win the series.
Tail end runs was another area of obvious advantage to Australia. India’s only genuine resistance came in Brisbane under threatening clouds, but even that was because the Australians were hamstrung by the injury to Josh Hazlewood and the subsequent fatigue of Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc. That was in the Third Test, but they never tested that theory again. The end result spoke for itself.
Poor quality of catching
The quality of catching was always going to be an area of concern for India. Australia were by no means perfect, but were rarely made to pay for their blunders. How does a team with multiple coaches and support staff not get the basics right? What is the point of a support team that outnumbers players if the simple skillsets are not addressed? Is it a case of the players not taking enough responsibility themselves? Inconvenient Truth — big heads, big wallets, dwindling work ethic?
The other major disparity of course was the lack of support bowlers. In the end, the brilliant Jasprit Bumrah was always likely to break down. Carrying the workload singlehandedly broke his back. When you compare that to Scott Boland, who came off the bench to be arguably Australia’s best bowler, it is a wonder that India were actually in the series until that last morning in Sydney.
No support for Bumrah
Inconvenient Truth — for all the rivers of gold flowing from BCCI reservoirs, they simply haven’t cultivated the depth to match a country of just 27 million people. If the irascible Mohammad Siraj is the next best fast bowler in this vast country, the truth is that the system has failed India badly. Harsh, but true. And the elephants in the room cannot be ignored. Where to now for Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli?
Kohli at least has more credit in the bank and may yet live to fight another day, but surely there must be a million young batsmen (literally) who should be ready to walk into the Indian set-up. Surely Yash Jaiswal cannot be the only jewel in India’s crown. That too can probably be traced back to a generation who’ve been spoon fed on IPL and have scorned the art form of Pujara, Dravid and his ilk.
Kohli must come at No. 6
Kohli may have to take a leaf from Allan Border’s book. He may have to drop down the order to No. 6 and finish his career in a less glamorous but equally important position, often taking on the second new ball if the top order actually ever bat long enough to enjoy that luxury. Whether Kohli can swallow his pride and do that is another question. He wasn’t able to rein in that little push outside off-stump, so maybe it is a bridge too far to expect a player of his reputation to retreat gently into the twilight. His desperate behaviour towards the end of the series spoke volumes for a man who may have confused Inconvenient Truths with Convenient Excuses.
The writer is a Brisbane-based former first-class cricketer.
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