Spin still rules in India, but the gap is closing

India’s focus has moved from preparing diabolical turners towards consciously making pitches that keep their fast bowlers in the game longer.

TELFORD VICE in London

THERE’S no hiding the 1.88-metre tall slab of humanity named Ravichandran Ashwin, who was easily spotted amid the shadows stealing across the gracious Brabourne as Halloween night closed in on Mumbai in 2015.

In the middle the South Africans were winding down their tour match. But the focus of all non-players present, and a fair few players, was on the other side of boundary.

Ashwin was in the throes of a fitness test to discover whether the side strain that had kept him out of most of the one-day series would also remove him from the tests.

Trick or treat? Depends who you ask.

Off-spinner Ashwin took 31 wickets in the series — more than twice as many as Imran Tahir and three times Simon Harmer’s haul — and left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja 23, one fewer than Tahir and Harmer combined — to power India to a 3-0 triumph.

The only pitch that wasn’t blatantly bespoke for India’s spinners, for the second test in Bangalore, went almost untouched: four full days were washed out.

South Africa were dazed and confused, and crushed by the collision of the conditions, the Indians’ confidence and their own insecurities.

Only eight of the 69 wickets India’s bowlers took in the series were claimed by seamers.

With the South Africans due back in India for three tests in October it’s pertinent to wonder if Ashwin remains the force he was then.

On the strength of the three first-class matches he played for Nottinghamshire in June and July, when he took 23 wickets at 19.91 and scored an unbeaten half-century, hell yes.

“I do not want to set goals or targets, to put pressure on myself,” Ashwin said last week ahead of India’s series in West Indies.

“I am bowling to a good rhythm; the ball is coming out nicely from the hand and I just want to continue in this vein.

“I had a rewarding time with Nottinghamshire in the English county, was among wickets and runs. So the confidence is there.

“I want to take it as it comes. I am fit and I am bowling well. And I can always bat.”

If you’re blessed with an ego as big as Ashwin’s why would you need help from the pitches Still, you can’t help but wonder what might be done to them when South Africa visit this time.

The rubber will be India’s first at home in the World Test Championship, in which pitches deemed unfit will cost the hosts in the standings. That is unlikely, not least because of India’s stature in the world game.

So a better answer might be had from examining what has happened there in the past four years.

In the eight tests played in India in 2016 their spinners claimed 109 of the 147 wickets that fell to their bowlers: 74.15%.

The slow poisoners’ share of the scalps shrunk to 59.31% in the eight tests in India in 2017, but it was up to 63.79% last year — although only three matches were played.

India’s bowlers did all that against a range of differently skilled opponents. They hosted New Zealand and England in 2016, Bangladesh, Australia and Sri Lanka the year after that, and Afghanistan and West Indies in 2018.

Even so, word from India is that the focus has moved on from preparing diabolical turners and towards consciously making pitches that keep fast bowlers in the game for longer.

The rise of quality quicks like Jasprit Bumrah — who has played all of his 10 tests away but seems set for a home debut against South Africa — and Bhuvneshwar Kumar are major reasons why.

Another is that Virat Kohli has long since answered all questions about his captaincy. The 2015 series was his first at home as India’s captain, and followed South African wins in both white-ball rubbers.

There was plenty of pressure on Kohli to deliver — and to give him all means, by fair means or foul, to do so.

Expect, then, a fairer contest this time. All it needs is for South Africa to turn up.

First published by the Sunday Times on August 18, 2019.