V Ramnarayan
Listen to Bedi
The former left-arm spinner's trenchant views on selection, and on the treatment of India's spinners in particular, should not be ignored
V Ramnarayan
02-Jun-2015
Bishan Bedi has been known for plain-speaking and relentless truth-telling all through his cricket career and after, even if it sometimes means taking a spade to a soufflé. Though he has his share of critics, some of us who are admirers of his wonderful left-arm spin bowling, his respect for history and tradition, and his genuine concern for cricket, tend to agree with most of his views. I have, in particular, been a fan of his frank and often loud disdain for the dictates of commerce in cricket and the merits of T20, his outspokenness on the doosra and illegal bowling actions, and his contempt for doublespeak in the corridors of power.
Strong as his views are, his outrageous sense of the absurd forces you to laugh with him at the foibles of lesser mortals. I still vividly remember the shocked expression, many years ago, of a TV anchor when Bedi claimed on air that the financial irregularities in the BCCI were bigger than the hawala scandal raging then.
On another TV show, he told a long story of how debutant Nilesh Kulkarni sought Sachin Tendulkar's advice when a second wicket eluded him after he took one with his very first delivery in Test cricket. Sri Lanka made over 900 in that innings, and Bedi slowly built up to a climax, narrating how Kulkarni reeled out a detailed list of tricks and stratagems he tried in vain as the Sri Lankans piled on the agony. Bedi ended the suspense finally by quoting Tendulkar as saying, "Go get Visa power" - a line from a popular TV commercial (featuring Tendulkar) then. And whether they agreed with him or not, the audience at Bedi's over-the-top Nani Palkhivala Memorial lecture in Chennai a couple of years ago went into paroxysms of laughter over his views on a wide range of subjects from the BCCI and the IPL to the alleged timidity of umpires in the matter of chucking.
Full postIndia's one-day selection needs a rethink
The World Cup showed that those picking the side need to focus on the team's weaknesses and be bold enough to replace players who may have come to take their places for granted
V Ramnarayan
02-Apr-2015
Nothing succeeds like success, we know. Sometimes nothing misleads like success. India's dream run into the last four of the World Cup served to mask a number of grey areas in the team's line-up. A series of successes meant that the gifted Rohit Sharma could continue to get away with soft dismissals, as has been his wont all along. We kept waiting for him to put his head down and start contributing to the team's cause in a measure matching his ability. That was not to be, and India did not change their opening pair through the tournament.
In his time, golden boy Mark Waugh had an extended run in the Australian team, despite a long bad patch. Form is temporary, class is permanent, the experts like to say - though the sentiment is rarely shared by the honest-to-goodness workmen of cricket that these stylists keep out. Waugh did prove his class, but it has been a long, agonising wait for Rohit to explode on to the big stage; and I am not making light of his superhuman feats when there has been less at stake.
Someone like Murali Vijay must wonder at the unfairness of it all. After his sterling displays on the England and Australia tours, he should have been an automatic choice for the World Cup, especially as he has the flexibility and skills for all three formats of the game.
Full postTahir, Ashwin and Vettori buck World Cup trend
While other spinners have struggled, the three have kept the runs down and broken partnerships through low trajectory, controlled turn and minimum width
V Ramnarayan
07-Mar-2015
In a recent interview, former offspinner Erapalli Prasanna said that a bowler like him would have been successful in the shorter forms of the game today, with the heavier bats, field restrictions and aggressive, innovative strokeplay. The spinner must accept the inevitable prospect of being hit for a six or two, but spinning ability and variation would be the key, he said. So long as he kept the batsman guessing the length of the ball, and practised deception by varying pace and turn, a bowler of his vintage would be effective without the aid of such tricks as the doosra or the carrom ball.
The scorecards from the first few World Cups reveal that the spinners were usually more economical than the pacemen, though they did not get too many wickets. To the sceptics who claim that it was much easier bowling to the not-so-aggressive batsmen of that era, I'll point out that even in those prehistoric times, the quicks were by and large going for many more runs. In fact, the role of the slow bowler was often seen as one of restricting the flow of runs in the middle overs. Rarely did the spinner play a role in the death, or in the opening overs - a trend initiated in the 1992 World Cup by Martin Crowe via offspinner Dipak Patel.
In this World Cup, spinners have found life difficult, at least in terms of runs per wicket, yet Daniel Vettori, R Ashwin and Imran Tahir have played vital roles in their team's successes. From what I have seen, all three have followed a few common principles: a relatively low trajectory, controlled turn, and minimum width - all this without necessarily having to fire it in fast.
Full postWhere have all the stylists gone?
You'll get powerful and innovative shots, spectacular fielding and express pace in this year's World Cup, but at the cost of artistry and mystery
V Ramnarayan
15-Feb-2015
White-haired Rohan Kanhai, with his calm, collected half-century in the first World Cup final will forever remain in the collective memory of followers of this quadrennial celebration of one-day cricket. His presence was a comfort and a consolation for those of us who rued the absence of Sir Garfield Sobers at the greatest cricket show on earth. The patrician-looking elder statesman of West Indies cricket kept alive the romance of the game, even as a young Viv Richards, with his three run-outs, announced the arrival of an altogether more athletic brand of the game.
Despite the dominance of the West Indies batsmen, led by the marauding Clive Lloyd, the final was not entirely one-sided, with Australia's pacemen, Lillee and Thomson, adding 41 frenetic runs for the last wicket in a 17-run defeat. Earlier, but for a 64-run last-wicket stand between Derryck Murray and Andy Roberts, West Indies would have lost a league game that Pakistan had under control till then.
My own West Indies hero of the Cup was bareheaded Alvin Kallicharran, who launched a spectacular assault on Dennis Lillee the first time the two teams met. An unlikely, plumpish Australian, Gary Gilmour, added to the unexpectedness of the tournament with his old-fashioned but devastating swing bowling and bold, attacking batting in the semi-final against England, and more swing bowling of substance in the final.
Full postWhatever happened to sportsmanship?
The nasty behaviour we continue to see on the field is threatening to drive fans away from the game
V Ramnarayan
15-Jan-2015
I thought I would never enjoy watching cricket again when the 15-degree flexion rule was introduced. But the die-hard cricket fan in me resurfaced sooner rather than later, and I learned to enjoy the game selectively. The match-fixing and IPL scandals nearly put me off the game permanently, but I continue to believe in the innate honesty of the majority of cricketers; and my affair with cricket continues.
Sledging and "mental disintegration" go against the lessons I learnt at the kness of my parents, mentors, coaches, and senior colleagues. These and other ugly features of the contemporary game sometimes make me wish I had had the talent and training to become not a cricketer but a violinist, poet or engine-driver. (In fact, I retired from league cricket because I grew tired of having to face, once or twice every season, the angry tantrums of someone I had played with or against since boyhood.)
The so-called banter between India and Australia down under could well be the last straw for me as a spectator. Yes, we know all about the Australian way of cricket, and for decades Indians (like other teams) have been at the receiving end of that strange paradigm of playing - and talking - the game hard, but these days the Indians seem to have decided to give as good as they get. It's quite another matter that, unlike the Australians, they tend to collapse like a deck of cards the moment they get all verbal and offensive. The one sane voice in the midst of all the brave talk by the likes of new captain Virat Kohli (whose stance was endorsed by the team director, Ravi Shastri), that of MS Dhoni, will no longer be heard in Test cricket.
Full postWhat India's spinners are doing wrong
They give the impression they haven't practised enough or come in with well-formed plans of attack
V Ramnarayan
07-Jan-2015
As someone who watched the great Indian offspinners of the past from close quarters, it is frustrating to watch their modern contemporaries failing to follow some of the basic principles of the discipline.
Before I go into the specifics of the offspin bowling on view in Sydney, with particular reference to India's R Ashwin, I will venture a sweeping statement about Indian bowlers, one that I'll be delighted to be corrected about. On the evidence of the last eight to ten matches I have watched, they give the impression that they do not practise bowling enough. The evidence - circumstantial, I admit - is there for all to see, as they spray the ball around match after match with seemingly no control over length and line. My suspicion was strengthened by what I heard from someone who followed the team around in England and was witness to their practice routine: a lot of gym work and physical training on the field, but not much bowling in the nets.
This is in sharp contrast to the way Indian bowlers in the 1970s and '80s trained. Spinners and fast bowlers bowled for hours at the nets. Not only does inadequate net practice make you inaccurate in a match, it also denies you the confidence you need to go all out to bowl in an attacking mode, because you are not sure you can land the ball where you want it. You can only play safe then by, for instance, choosing to push the ball through innocuously with greater confidence rather than trying to spin it sharply.
Full postIndia's Adelaide blunder
Picking a newbie as the sole spinner in the XI could be a mistake that will haunt them
V Ramnarayan
12-Dec-2014
India's fightback in the Adelaide Test through positive batting in relatively friendly conditions has served to divert attention from their poor bowling. With the exception of Ishant Sharma, who has, however, slowed down considerably in the seven years since he tested Ricky Ponting with probing spells in Perth, the bowlers have tended to spray the ball around.
If it was frustrating to watch Mohammed Shami run up ball after ball, seemingly mechanically, without a plan in his head, the blooding of Karn Sharma, the wristspinner, was at best mystifying. Here was a young bowler selected for the Test series against a tough opponent largely on the basis of excellence in one season of T20 cricket.
At the time of writing, Australia's second innings is in progress, and Karn can still prove me wrong by running through the lower half, but he will not have done enough to convince me that his selection made sense in the first place. His bowling resources on view are not so impressive as to justify his choice ahead of other wristspinners like Amit Mishra or Piyush Chawla for the tour - for all their failings - nor does R Ashwin's exclusion from the playing XI make any sense. True, Nathan Lyon's beautifully flighted and well-directed offspin has posed so may problems to the batsmen that it has played a part in exposing India's folly in not including Ashwin, but it is hardly hindsight to question India's decision to go into the Test with three seamers and one unproven spinner.
Full postHome advantage: everyone's property
In years past, the term was something of a pejorative; not so much these days, when just about every side seems to enjoy it
V Ramnarayan
15-Nov-2014
During the Tiger Pataudi years India regularly ran through visiting teams with a three-pronged spin attack on turning tracks. But the stratagem did not always work against the fabulous West Indies batting line-up: in 1967, when the spin trio of Prasanna, Chandrasekhar and Bedi came together for the first time, and in 1974, with the three still in force and Venkataraghavan in and out of the attack, the Caribbean batting juggernaut proved just about too strong, though they were severely tested by the slow men.
The Australians too managed to stay just ahead of the Indians despite India's home advantage. Ajit Wadekar, who led India successfully in the West Indies and England, pursued the Pataudi policy successfully, sometimes fielding as many as four spinners at home when allrounder Salim Durani could be fitted into the scheme of things. Tony Greig and his men did deal with the conditions better than previous England teams when they toured in 1976-77, but Indian domination at home was the norm.
India's successes abroad, in New Zealand in 1968, and in England and the West Indies in 1971, and in England in 1986, were exceptions to the rule that the Indians travelled poorly. English and Australian critics used to be fond of saying patronisingly that India were hard to beat at home.
Full postRemembering Budhi the dasher
Before Sehwag, and even Srikkanth, India had a swashbuckling opening batsman who also kept wickets
V Ramnarayan
19-Oct-2014
Who was the first Indian opening batsman to play shots from the word go?
My audience, consisting of journalism students interested in cricket-writing, had no hesitation in answering this question. To a man, they said Krishnamachari Srikkanth. Name an outstanding wicket keeperbatsman, I said. Again pat came the reply: MS Dhoni. Did they know an attacking wicketkeeper-opening batsman? One of them muttered Viru Sehwag, who, according to him once donned the keeper's gloves. "I am as much a fan of Sehwag as you are," I had to tell him, "but I mean a regular wicketkeeper who opened the innings and batted aggressively." We had met in the first week of October and I gave my friends a clue: "One of the players I have in mind was born on October 2, but there was nothing Gandhian about his batting. It was violent, often explosive."
I proceeded to describe Budhi Kunderan's stunning 192 against England at the Corporation Stadium, Madras, back in 1964. Barry Knight and David Larter were the quick bowlers to suffer that first morning of the Test when he hit three consecutive boundaries twice early on in the innings and four of them in a row soon after.
Full postAny multi-skilled bowlers out there?
Bowlers who can switch between pace and spin, left-arm and right-arm and vice versa will spice up the contest between bat and ball
V Ramnarayan
06-Oct-2014
Bernard Hollowood wrote in his book Cricket on the Brain that at "appreciably more than medium pace he [the former England fast bowler Sydney Barnes] could, even in the finest weather and on the truest wickets in Australia, both swing and break the ball from off or leg. Most deadly of all was the ball which he would deliver from rather wide on the crease, move in with a late swerve the width of the wicket, and then straighten back off the ground to hit the off stump."
Hollowood, who played with Barnes for Staffordshire in the 1930s, quoted his father, Albert Hollowood, as saying: "Oh, yes, he could bowl 'em all, but he got his wickets with fast leg-breaks. Marvellous, absolutely marvellous, he was. Fast leg-breaks and always on a length."
Break the ball from leg to off and off to leg? Did new-ball bowlers of the late-19th and early-20th centuries bowl offbreaks and legbreaks, and that with the accuracy and vicious effectiveness of Barnes, who had the incredible career bowling figures of 189 Test wickets in 27 Test matches at an average of 16.43 and strike rate of 41.6? If you go by the match reports and player profiles of that era, it seems many bowlers regularly did. They bowled swing, seam and spin, all of it - including spin - at considerable pace, with no attempt to flight the ball.
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