The popular reaction to India’s defeat in Cape Town is summed up thus: “When they come here, they get thrashed because they can’t play spin. When we go there we get thrashed because we can’t play fast bowling. That’s life.”
For the Indian team, however, that is no consolation. They should take their lessons from A.B. de Villiers — surprisingly not Man-of-the-Match despite his two game-altering innings — who showed how to adapt white-ball batsmanship to red-ball cricket.
You often learn more from defeat than victory. India’s setback could be put down to psychological, technical and historical reasons. In the first category falls team selection. The question to be asked is, can India afford to play both Shikhar Dhawan and Rohit Sharma in the same Test? Had India won, the question would still have remained, for it segued into the second issue.
The essential difference between batting in the two formats is that in the longer one, you make the bowler come to you, in the shorter you go after the bowler. On a track with seam and bounce, even India’s best leavers of the ball — Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara — played at more deliveries than they should have.
The South African pace attack was brilliant, subtly bowling wider and wider incrementally till the batsman either reached out and edged, or as in the case of Virat Kohli in the second innings, played across when Vernon Philander made one dip in.
Even in the home series against Sri Lanka earlier, Indian batsmen had displayed a similar tendency; they just didn’t have the time before Cape Town to work it out. In a short series (cut from four Tests to three) India’s much-touted dreams of finally winning in South Africa may not be easily realised.
The historical reason is interesting. India have for decades suffered from the First Test Syndrome — struggling in the opening match-up that has usually set the tone for the series. Of the 59 bilateral series played since 1980 (including one-off Tests and the current one in South Africa), India have lost the first Test 28 times, drawn 18 and won just 13. Outside Asia, the number of victories falls to nine.
This brings into question matters of acclimatisation more than anything else, and team selection. You cannot prepare for the first Test in South Africa by playing a weak Sri Lanka at home and landing there just a couple of days earlier. It skews selection. The man in form at home, Rohit Sharma, was played instead of the more reliable player with a better record abroad, Ajinkya Rahane. Dhawan, a left-hander, began with an advantage, but K.L. Rahul might get a call-up now. In any case, Kohli doesn’t play the same team in two successive Tests.
Different teams, the answer?
These things begin as jokes but gain seriousness with every setback abroad: the suggestion that India should pick different teams at home and away. Rohit Sharma may have added his name to the list of flat-track tigers in India who turn into lambs outside the subcontinent.
Many years ago, I watched a Test in Bangalore with Dilip Vengsarkar and Ravi Shastri. They had been dropped despite good scores in the previous Test against the West Indies of terrifying fast bowlers. Vengsarkar had made 94 and Shastri 102 in the final Test in Antigua.
They were disappointed, but not disheartened. The following series was against the West Indies. “Let the fast bowlers come, and we will be invited back into the Indian team,” Vengsarkar said. He was right. When the going gets tough, etc.
Allowing selectorial favourites to inflate their statistics in home series is an old Indian custom. Rohit Sharma is far superior to many who struggled abroad; he is better advised, has the advantage of better technical inputs into his batting, and he could get over the hump in his career. But it will take much hard work and enormous inner strength.
Kohli’s aggression has permeated through the team, which can be a good thing if it does not develop into hubris. Batsmen have to respect the bowler just as they have to respect the conditions. India had the better batting conditions in both innings, but seemed to think that 208 would be a walkover. If their own splendid fast bowling dismissed South Africa cheaply on this track, surely it would have been logical to presume that the home team bowlers — even without Dale Steyn — would be a handful too.
Terrific advertisement for Tests
It has been a wonderful start to the series, though, and a terrific advertisement for Test cricket (which needs all the terrific advertisements it can get these days). The better prepared team won. But India’s fast bowlers did enough to suggest they could turn it around. Ironically, it is now the fast bowlers who are telling the Indian batsmen what generations of spinners did in the past, “Please give us 250 runs at least”!
