Cricket gods must have a wicked sense of humour. First they give you results that make you, either as a player or a fan, overconfident, then they deliver the stinker: in sports as in life never be too sure of yourself. Just as Indian cricket fans were settling into smugness after the team’s emphatic victory over Bangladesh, the series defeat to New Zealand lands as an ego deflator.
For a team that could do nothing wrong, two Test losses to the Kiwis in succession are a rude reality check. The defeats are on home ground, where the team had not lost a series in 12 years. Before the beginning of this fixture, India had registered its 18th consecutive series victory on home soil. Worse, they were comprehensively outplayed. There simply can be no second opinion on it or any face-saving excuse.
New Zealanders have always been competitive opponents – low profile yet meticulous and clinical in their approach. They ooze quality and certain calm confidence that the rival team can ignore at its own risk. Did India do the mental shift from the Bangladesh series to prepare for them adequately? It doesn’t appear so. In both batting and bowling they fell way short. A score of 46 in the first Test could have been an accident, but certainly not 156 and 245 in the second. Of course, the bowling attack was not potent enough to swing results India’s way.
New Zealand are the same team with almost the similar set of players India have defeated earlier. The potential of Team India and the talent therein is not the question here. That’s where the question of mental preparedness for a new challenge comes in.
In an earlier article, this writer had mentioned a ‘niggling doubt’. It said: ‘Are the [Indian] batters, groomed in the T-20 mindset, going to be good enough when the pitches are less predictable and the opponent bowlers have conditions favourable to seam and swing bowling?’ The context was India’s ability to maintain the performance graph in countries like Australia, England and New Zealand where pitches would be less predictable compared to those in India.
But the last two Tests reveal we could face the same problem in India too if conditions turned favourable to bowlers. New Zealand’s pacers and spinners were impactful in both. Our batsmen had problems negotiating them. The influence of the T-20 mindset may be impacting the batters’ ability to hang on there and fight it out. The latter is a different school of batting altogether, where soundness of defensive technique and patience count above adventurous stroke-making. There’s another point to note. In India, our batters, traditionally good players of spin, are failing to handle quality spinners. It has happened before this series too.
The more worrisome revelation is the inability of Indian bowlers to have the similar impact as New Zealand’s. Pacers Matt Henry and William O’Rourke troubled India in the first Test with 15 scalps between them. In the second, tweaker Mitchell Santner claimed 13 in both innings. Team India’s surprise pick Washington Sundar claimed 11 in the second, but it was not good enough. Senior bowlers such as R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja could have capitalised on the pitch better and restricted the New Zealand score much lower. In the first Test, after a score of 46, bowlers were not able to put enough pressure on New Zealand batters.
Bowling, not so much batting, is a serious problem for India. Spinners, despite their occasional lapses, are not the real problem, the pacers are. Jasprit Bumrah needs good bowlers to back him up. Mohd Siraj has not exactly delivered up to expectations. With Mohd Shami iffy due to injury concern, the options for the team appear limited. This is one area the team must focus on.
Coming back to cricket’s gods, they can continue with their wicked sense of humour and make fun of us fans, but they must know we are not giving up on our team, not anytime soon.
(By arrangements with Perspective Bytes)