Follow UsIt’s a phrase that gets thrown about during and after every SENA Test India play: ‘If only they had someone like a Kapil Dev or Ben Stokes at their disposal’.
The phrase emerged once again in the aftermath of the side’s defeat at Headingley, where Shardul Thakur, the individual who was supposedly picked to ‘balance’ the side, instead ended up almost handicapping it, bowling 16 overs in total while not even contributing 10 runs with the bat.
Shardul, on paper, was supposed to add batting depth and give the side a fourth seaming option — the dream for every team in SENA Tests — but he ended up doing neither.
Harsh as it may sound, Shardul will never be the solution to India’s problems in SENA Tests, at least for the foreseeable future.
Because ultimately, what this team needs is not a bits-and-pieces player at No.8 but rather a specialist bowler who can bat. Meaning a bowling all-rounder who will walk into the XI based on his bowling alone, say as a first, second or third seamer, even if you were to take away his batting completely.
The likes of Pat Cummins, Chris Woakes, Brydon Carse, Mitchell Starc, Kyle Jamieson and Matt Henry all fit this description, and it’s this very player profile that’s the need of the hour for this Indian side outside the subcontinent, due to there already being a massive gulf between Jasprit Bumrah and the other frontline seamers.
Having a fourth seamer — at No.8 — who is a downgrade from the second and third seamers who are already a massive downgrade from the spearhead (Bumrah) will never aid the side in picking 20 wickets, and that’s precisely what we witnessed in Leeds.
And honestly, it wouldn’t have mattered even if Shardul had added 20-30 runs; the bowling still would have suffered due to the aforementioned point.
The case would have been a bit different had India, instead of Bumrah, Siraj and Prasidh, had Bumrah, peak Shami and peak Ishant as their three frontline pacers. Here you already have three world-class seamers capable of sustaining pressure and taking 20 wickets on their own, and so you can afford to have a fourth seamer who is a downgrade but adds some value with the bat.
But in the current set-up, where Siraj and Prasidh themselves are mercurial and unreliable, the team will never pose consistent threat with the ball with a bowler of Shardul’s capability. There will undoubtedly be exceptions but you can’t set up a team hoping for the players to over-deliver.
So, is Nitish Reddy at No.7 or No.8 the solution then? Again, picking Nitish as a fourth seamer will be no different. Worse, if anything, since his bowling is arguably a downgrade on Shardul as well. And we saw this in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in Australia: there, using Nitish as a fourth-seaming option backfired big time, with the all-rounder simply unable to consistently threaten the Australian batters.
The solution for India in this tour and in the foreseeable future in SENA countries, then, is this: sacrifice batting depth and go all-out on strengthening the bowling.
This might sound ridiculous, particularly following a Test in which the team endured collapses of 41/7 and 31/6. But the undebatable fact is that, you will only ever win Test tours if you have enough quality to consistently take 20 wickets. And the XI India fielded in Leeds was not set-up to take wickets, which was a big reason why the team failed despite posting 471 in the first innings and then setting a target of 371.
What India will need to do going forward in this tour is double-down on picking the strongest possible bowling attack. Whether the fourth bowler they pick has the ability to bat or not should be an afterthought.
They can, of course, go ahead and pick Nitish Reddy to give the captain even more flexibility, but if he plays, the 22-year-old will need to be picked in the top six in place of either Sai Sudharsan or Karun Nair, as a specialist batter who can bowl. Nitish should be seen as a fifth pace bowling option; not as a fourth.
Which will essentially mean India’s strongest bowling XI, when everyone’s fit, should look something like this: Bumrah, Siraj, Prasidh, Akash Deep / Kuldeep Yadav, with one of Akash Deep or Kuldeep batting at No.8. This will unquestionably mean India will have a very, very long tail, but the trade-off is that they will have a bowling line-up better equipped to combat the intimidating English batting line-up.
What the team does with its starting XI for the Edgbaston Test, then, will tell us a lot about Gautam Gambhir the coach. Is he *actually* an aggressive coach, or is it all talk, no walk? We’re about to find out.