Cricket is followed ridiculously passionately in India. Having said that, what is most striking about this following is that there seems to be no basis for this following. Are people interested in cricket? Are they interested in cricketers? Are they interested in victory? Are they interested in being involved in a popular pursuit? To a lesser of greater degree, every cricket follower probably identifies with these interests. For the most part though, it seems to be a perpetual roller coaster ride between the euphoria of victory and despair of defeat. Heroes become villains, villains become heroes and after a while all of them become commentators. With absolutely unfettered freedom of opinion – anybody can say anything about cricket without being questioned or being held to their opinion, except possibly the players themselves (and coaches as Greg Chappell found out to his ultimate discomfiture), it is hard to gauge the standards to which cricketers may be held to.
Is Sachin Tendulkar held to the same standards that say Ramesh Powar or Zaheer Khan are held to? Is there a cricketing standard which informs any such judgement? These questions are both interesting and important because they can form a basis for argument and a basis for gauging performance. At the end of the day, that is what everybody is interested in doing be they interested in cricket, cricketers, victory or the “in” thing. Obviously, each of these different species will have their own measure of all matters cricketing – they will also spend differing amounts of time and thought in coming to these judgements. Cricket may reveal itself differently, but basically the same game is devoured by everybody. I don’t intend to say which of these four species (indeed there may be more than four) dominate the discourse, neither do i intend to speculate about the relative numbers of these devotees. Indeed, with silent majorities and noisy minorities, this becomes a slippery pursuit. However, i will limit myself to the cricket side of things as i understand them and illustrate in effect how i see a cricket match.
Cricket is a contest between bat and ball. Bowlers win games, batsmen prevent them from being lost, or at best enable bowlers to win them. This is a tricky relationship because batsmen can bat as well as they are allowed to bat by the bowlers, while certain exceptional batsmen can dictate how well a bowler can bowl. However, as the contestant who makes the initial play, the bowler in my view holds the initiative. Certain lines and lengths have proven to be extremely difficult to score off for the best part of a 130 years (and more if you look back to the advent of over arm bowling). Seam movement is almost impossible to play, simply because there is no time in which it can be humanly possible to make adjustments for the change in line and direction, especially of a “good” length (more on this later). Swing bowling and spin bowling are probably slightly easier to play, simply because it is possible to predict both earlier as compared to seam movement.
International batsmen are able to gauge the swing by observing the shiny side of the ball, and gauge spin “from the hand”. Batting technique has evolved in response to these challenges. Further enhancements in technique emerged due to developments in the LBW law. The advent of ODI cricket and the different type of trade off that it encourages between scoring quickly and losing wickets has further informed modern techniques. Sehwag, Gilchrist, Gayle, Jayasurya – all unorthodox players by any traditional measure are technically children of the ODI age. Even if techniques change, the realities of seam, swing, spin and pace remain. Seam, swing, spin, pace, line and length are a bowlers chief weapons. Some bowlers like Warne, having mastered the basics of their craft add another dimension to their game – that of being able to dictate a contest with a batsman – this essentially amounts to being able to produce a sequence of deliveries which enable a trap to be set and the batsman to be forced into this trap.
So how does the contest between bat and ball unfold at international level? The contest is one where bowlers try to force the batsman into error. The wickets are invariably extremely good and technique can be applied profitably. In short, good wickets ensure that what the bowler intends will invariably happen, and that the batsman can rely on the fact that it will happen. Wickets rarely fall due to a ball scooting through ankle high from the middle of the wicket (all though on some wearing 5th day wickets, this does occasionally happen). Good line and good length are therefore definable and indeed are well established. The quality of a bowler is basically determined by how consistently and how persistently he can hit this good line and good length, while a batsman’s quality is determined by how disciplined and how correct his application of technique is. By definition, batsmen take a risk when they play an expansive stroke, since they must commit to predicting the line and length of the ball earlier due to an extended back lift and follow through, than they would in a defensive stroke. Great bowling involves not giving anything away – Wasim Akram and Malcolm Marshall were great bowlers, basically because they rarely bowled a bad ball. This is the key to the cricketing contest in my view. If a statistical study were made, im willing to bet anything that in both Test and ODI cricket, the side which bowls more “bad” balls, invariably loses the game, given comparable batting strength (Australia and NZ or India and NZ would be comparable batting strength, while India and Namibia would not).
Shane Warne was the bowler he was not because he could turn his leg break square, but because he could land it perfectly nearly every time while employing all his variations in pace, length and trajectory. That control formed the basis of the thrilling, compelling narrative of his spells. Why did he struggle against India? Mainly because his leg stump line (pitching the ball on leg stump and turning it past off stump), which worked so beautifully against English, South African and other batsmen, didn’t work too well against India, he couldn’t control the runs, and his “good” balls ceased to be good balls. This illustrates the value of consistency – of finding the “good” line and length and then hitting it ball after ball. Often, for most batsmen there is more than one “good” line and length.
What then is good line and length? This is harder to define but easy to identify. For a spinner, in Bishen Bedi’s famous description, a good length is the shortest length which draws a batsman forward. Spinners getting cut or pulled have almost certainly bowled a bad ball. For fast bowlers, the “good” length is generally understood to be that length to which the batsman cannot decisively move forward or back – lengths which catch the batsman “on the crease”.
A good line and length is only the beginning of what a top class bowler will seek. He will seek in addition to this opportunities in accordance with field placing to bowl attacking deliveries. For fast bowlers these could be the bouncer or the yorker. These are difficult to play if delivered perfectly, but conversely are not only difficult to deliver perfectly, but become easy scoring opportunities if not delivered perfectly.
Similarly, with batsmen – most batsmen have good defensive techniques which enable them to face a good line and length. It is when they are denied scoring opportunities due to persistent and unrelenting line and length, that they tend to take risks. Sometimes they come off, sometimes they don’t. Some batsmen practice taking these risks (Ganguly and his premeditated slogs) and there by reduce the risk of failure.
Bowlers try and maximize the risk a batsman has to take to score runs, while batsmen try to prepare themselves in ways which would enable them to manage that risk. Thats why batsmen who can play “all round the wicket, of both front and back foot” are more likely to score consistently compared to other more limited batsmen. Some of them – geniuses like Tendulkar and Lara can do this better and more imaginatively and more skillfully than other lesser batsmen. It invariably shows in their records.
Records speak even more eloquently in the case of bowlers. The bowling average (and in ODI cricket the bowling economy rate) are extremely powerful measures of quality. Seen along with the economy rate, the bowling average, which gives the number of runs conceded for each wicket taken gives a unvarnished measure of how many “bad” deliveries a bowler tends to bowl – how much control he has, and also of how much variety and skill he has. A bowler averaging 28, with an economy of 5, may occasionally bowl brilliantly and win his side a game, but in the long run, he will always (without exception) be less effective and less useful than a bowler averaging 23, with an economy of 5. If you extend that to teams – teams with bowlers with better bowling averages always do better than teams whos bowlers have inferior bowling averages. This is true in both Test and ODI cricket. Any batting advantage that a team may have over the opposition is easily nullified by the bowling advantage. The reason is simple. Bowlers have to strike 20 times, while batsmen have to score runs and against good bowling (which is hard by definition), while the opposition batsmen score their runs against lesser bowling (much easier).
ODI cricket may be a “batsman’s” game, but the rules of line and length remain. Take the simple example of Sachin Tendulkar’s innings in the 7th ODI. He was able to score at a reasonable rate 30(46), but if you break those 30 runs down, and see the 4 fours that he hit – the first was a barely middled pull shot which went fine to long leg, the next two – he had to back away to leg and hit over the off side (and in the process take an enormous risk to turn good balls into balls of hittable line and length) and a genuine outside edge to third man. Thats 16 of his 3o runs. This was Tendulkar in terrific form. He got nothing to hit otherwise – thats how good the bowling was from Broad, Anderson and Flintoff. Contrast this with Ian Bell’s runs and see how many easy pull shots and square cuts and cover drives he was allowed. England bowled 46 balls at Tendulkar without allowing him a single easy four ball. Did India produce a single spell of 46 balls in the entire series (to the England team, let alone to the single batsman)?
Now, the added height and pace of the English batsmen gives them greater margin for error than someone like Agarkar, Zaheer and RP will have. But in a match analysis sadly leeway cannot be left for that. Contrast India’s ODI performance with Zaheer and RP’s fast bowling in the Test series (especially from the second day at Lord’s onwards). There, they were constantly threatening batsmen – they were able to move the ball, bowl a terrific length (which Sreesanth was unable to do) with the result that especially Zaheer was extremely economical. The ability to produce quality fast bowling has over the years been the single greatest determinant of success in ODI as well as Test cricket.
What of the batsmen then? What is their impact on the contest? With one single mistake being enough to end their innings, their role is simple – to not make unforced errors. Even without making unforced errors, they can still be dismissed by a great piece of bowling (such as perfectly pitched, late seam movement, which by definition is unplayable). Batsmen with good technique generally make fewer unforced errors than batsmen with bad techniques. The definition of “good technique” has been evolving. In India alone, the paradigm shift from the Gavaskar era to the Tendulkar era seems to have been from an emphasis on footwork to an emphasis on balance. Many will argue that the purpose of footwork is to achieve balance, but with the advent of unorthodox batsmen like Sehwag, this has been brought home more clearly.
None of this is unknown to most observers interested in cricket. What i have tried to do is to put it all together. In my view extraneous issues like “inspiration”, “killer instinct”, “playing for the team”, “team spirit” etc etc are mere window dressing. Without skill, none of this matters. The overwhelming majority of results tend to be in favor of sides which possess better skills and which execute the skills that they possess better. I have been intrigued and not a little dismayed by allegations of “selfishness”, “lack of killer instinct” and “lack of guts” which have been persistently levelled against Indian teams. The notorious late 80’s and early 90’s when team after team would get beaten by Pakistan and find themselves facing the most shameful diatribes, lost because they could not match the skill of the Pakistan side of that day – specifically fast bowling skill.
Fast bowling is gold in international cricket and the side whose fast bowlers bowl better almost always wins. This is my view as an observer of cricket.
