CricDigs Blogs

If the last test series against Australia is compared with the happenings of the day two of the first test match between India and Australia, one style of Indians getting dismissed emerges — the Indian batsmen are a bit susceptible against off-spinners who can make the ball dart in at a fair pace. This is something Krejza did in the last test match between Australia and India and got a bucketful of wickets and now Swann seems to have got the Indians hopping a bit. Why is it happening? This is something difficult to answer. None of these two can be regarded as outright world class bowlers, since both are pretty fresh on the international scene. Again, the Indians are used to facing a lot of spin bowling on the placid wickets. So why is it happening repeatedly?

I say repeatedly because it happened when Mendis bowled against the Indians in the Emerald Island. The so-called carrom ball that he bowled and got a lot of the Indian batsmen lbw was again a ball that darted into the pads of the batsmen. The reason could be a bit of complacency. How?

For one, the Indians pride themselves on playing on the on-side. This means that most of them tend to remain a bit rooted on the backfoot and work the ball on the on-side. This has two impacts, one — they tend to wait for the ball to spin and come in towards their pads, second — this makes them a bit susceptible if the ball bends in a bit too quickly. The pattern of dismissals against all the three bowlers is very similar. The batsmen get trapped in front of the wicket or get bowled. One would suggest that the Indians need to become a bit more front-foot oriented when facing off-spinners on the sub-continent but then they have scored tonnes of runs milking the bowling on the on-side and this technique of theirs would be encoded in their DNA by now. How they solve this problem is a bit beyond me, but I guess my theory is worth a look?