Among the various skills of batsmanship is one that the Indian team in South Africa will have to pay greater attention to: the art of leaving the ball. While there is an argument for getting on with it, perhaps even something to admire in a batsman’s bustle and energy and commitment to entertaining the crowd, the fact is, India lost the second Test in just over three playing days. Bustle can work against you.
It is tempting — and wrong — to focus on a single reason for poor performances, whether it is lack of preparation, team selection, or poor batting. It would be equally wrong to ignore contributory technical factors. These tend to be missed in the narrative.
Cricket is perhaps the only sport where not playing the ball is a significant strategy, a necessary part of the batsman’s armoury. Opening batsmen lie awake before a match visualising not so much the square cut or the cover drive as letting the ball go outside the off stump. Stylish stroke players are often stylish leavers too — Gundappa Viswanath sometimes described an arc with the bat while David Gower decided so late that he left the bowler feeling like a child who has had a sweet taken away from him at the last moment.
Brijesh Patel playing spin gave it yet another dimension, allowing the ball to go past a bat tucked in behind the pad. It took amazing confidence and a sense of mischief to do that. It also fooled the odd umpire into thinking that an attempt had been made to play the ball and thus saved Patel from a leg before dismissal.
It can all go wrong of course. To be bowled without offering a stroke is on a par with being run out by the bowler’s fingers at the non striker’s end as the worst way to be dismissed. But while the run out is seen as bad luck, being bowled is put down to a lack of judgement. In the 2014 Lord’s Test, Virat Kohli shouldered arms (as commentators say) to Liam Plunkett and was mortified when the ball crashed into his stumps. The iconic dismissal in India is still Gordon Greenidge’s to Balwinder Sandhu that started the rot for the West Indies in the 1983 World Cup final. No batsman can get out thus without feeling foolish and hard done by.
Leaving is a skill. Historically, great batsmen made their reputation with every ball they did not play. Here’s the Australian wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield on Jack Hobbs playing the tearaway pair of Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald: “To balls pitched outside the off stump, Hobbs appeared to play at them with the bat held high. It amazed me that I found (myself) continually taking these balls, which I thought he would be sure to play. At the very last fraction of a second he would draw his bat away from the line of the ball…”
Leaving is a skill, but it is not one that is taught in coaching schools or given much prominence in coaching manuals. Increasingly it has become a Test match skill (and not just among Indian batsmen) since in white ball cricket, every ball not scored off goes down as a failure, perhaps even a moral shortcoming. This might also explain the shortage of quality wicketkeepers in India — not enough deliveries get past the batsmen in domestic cricket!
As the fast bowlers keep bowling outside the off stump, tempting the batsmen into that fatal drive which ends up in the hands of slips, batsmen know they can meet temptation with temptation. By ignoring the deliveries — Sunil Gavaskar was a master at ignoring them, and with disdain — they force the bowler to readjust his line and his length too.
The change in line is manna for Indian batsmen who are strong off their legs. As for the change in length, here’s advice from a great leaver, Geoff Boycott: “Wait. Have patience. Let the bowler see you refusing to drive so he is forced to land the ball an extra foot closer to you. Then bang. Get on the front foot and drive the ball away.” Cricket remains a mind game, and getting the bowler to bowl where you want him to is a strategy that comes naturally to great batsmen. Virender Sehwag had bowlers tearing their hair out by getting them to bowl to his strengths. He enjoyed the challenge as he batted, literally, with a song on his lips.
Fast bowlers, like movie stars, get frustrated when you ignore them. Such a waste of energy. It is a calculated but subtle manoeuvre; an eyeball to eyeball encounter between batsman and bowler, and the fate of the match often depends on who blinks first. Neither can afford to get into a rut, though.
Letting the ball go is an important aspect of the game. Unfortunately for India, it is their slip fielders and not their front line batsmen who have been doing it consistently in the series so far.
