India’s new captain thinks it’s the only way to win matches, but are the batsmen good enough?
It’s hard not to hop on Virat Kohli’s bandwagon. In press conferences and interviews, he exhibits the persona of a champion boxer who is building up a head of steam to a pay-per-view title fight. He speaks with a sense of belief that is uniquely persuasive. His train of thought is crystal clear and yet to be tainted by the burden of results.
He is also a gambler who appears to have the blessings of the Indian public to take a punt on match scenarios. Evidence of this was seen after the Adelaide Test last year when Kohli was lauded for his efforts to take the attack to Australia on the final day even though the match was lost in trying to secure an improbable win.
So when the 26-year-old tells us the way forward is to play five bowlers, we lap it up and go ahead with it. When he tells us Rohit Sharma deserves a run in the team, we go with it. When he cites Ravichandran Ashwin’s Test average of 40 (it’s actually 36) and tells us that the off-spinner could be India’s all-rounder, we again go with it.
Since becoming Test captain, Kohli has insisted on a five-bowler approach. “You need to play a stronger bowling side in order to win Test matches and it's more exciting and satisfying as well. The idea is to take 20 wickets,” he explained before departing to Sri Lanka for his first full series as captain.
In theory, the approach makes sense for India because of the absence of a genuine all-rounder and the results from the recent past. India has traditionally been a batting powerhouse. The bowling, on the other hand, has been a weakness. Little has changed in recent times and Kohli has witnessed it firsthand. A look at the numbers since Kohli made his debut in 2011 makes for sorry reading.
Indian bowlers have taken the full quota of 20 wickets in only 17 (42%) of the 40 Tests, and dismissed the opponents in only 49 (67%) of the 73 innings they’ve bowled in. In those 49 innings, India conceded 400-plus on 13 occasions and 500-plus on seven – leaving the batsmen to chase the game. In addition to this, the opposition captain declared an innings against India 17 times (second only to England’s 18 in the same period), and seven times (the most for any team) the declaration was made in the opening innings of a Test – putting India on the back foot right away.
The numbers certainly add up to make Kohli’s case. There is no question that the six-plus-five strategy has a future in Indian cricket. It should also have had a past. The last time India visited Sri Lanka for a Test series was back in 2010 and the Lankan team totals read: 520/8 (dec.), 96/0, 642/4 (dec.), 129/3 (dec.), 425 and 267. The Indian batting line-up back then read: Murali Vijay, Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni. It was the perfect line-up to support five bowlers.
Move forward five years and, putting aside Kohli’s hypnotic assurance, you wonder whether it is wise to make this tactical change at this juncture of Indian cricket. Does the team have the necessary resources to execute it successfully?
In order to play with five bowlers, a team needs to be sure of three factors: The form of its top five; the batting ability of its wicketkeeper; and the ability of its bowlers to consistently chip in with runs. Only the last factor seems to be somewhat certain seeing as Ashwin, Harbhajan Singh and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are capable of scoring handy runs.
India’s top five in the batting order are hardly a settled bunch. Opener Shikhar Dhawan has been in and out of the team owing to his poor run of form. He averaged 29 in his last 20 away innings before scoring 173 in the one-off Test in Bangladesh. Only an injury to Lokesh Rahul – who had displaced Dhawan in Australia and scored a ton – allowed the left-hander a chance to redeem himself at Fatullah.
At number three, Rohit Sharma is a fixture in the Test XI because Cheteshwar Pujara isn’t putting up much of a fight. Both average less than 30 overseas but Kohli has put his faith in Rohit’s stroke-making abilities to eventually come good in the longer format as well. The captain himself is in the midst of a rough patch. Kohli’s last innings of note was the century against Pakistan in the World Cup opener and he hasn’t scored a fifty in his last ten knocks. Only opener Vijay, who has been ruled out of the first Test to add to India's troubles, and Ajinkya Rahane at number five are the in-form batsmen in the line-up.
Wriddhiman Saha, who is India’s first-choice wicketkeeper in the post-Dhoni era, averages 17 in nine Test innings. While he has runs in domestic cricket to show for, he has done little of note in International cricket to cement his first-team credentials.
This leaves the anticipated Indian XI with two in-form batsmen, a skipper struggling for form, a ‘keeper with an unproven batting pedigree, two other batsmen uncertain of starting berths and five bowlers (three of whom can score a handful of runs). If team structures from the past seemed skewed towards batting, this one doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence that India will pile on the runs.
By December, when India will have played three Tests in Sri Lanka and four at home versus South Africa, it will be clear whether the timing of Kohli’s plans was right.
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