Discussing Declarations….

The third Test match at Bangalore ended in a draw giving India a 1-0 series win. India won against Pakistan for the first time in many many years, Anil Kumble won his first series as captain, the Indian batting was never seriously threatened, Irfan Pathan bowled and batted well, Wasim Jaffer batted brilliantly, Sourav Ganguly was majestic, Rahul Dravid was able to get a start every single time without ever making the opposition pay, none of the batsmen looked out of touch, Ishant Sharma got better and better as the third Test progressed, and like it was after the English series, we will discuss whether or not the Indian captain has “guts”, “confidence”, can “back himself and his team” and “make things happen”. In addition, this time around there is another elephant in the room along with our armchairs – Australia. This word is currently so overloaded with meaning, that it would require a post in itself to explain what it meant. Very briefly, Australia is not only the unstated final frontier in cricketing terms, it is also the entity which embraces everything that may present itself in our hazy armchair dreams for the Indian team. Australia are “aggressive”, “confident”, “believe in themselves”, “win” etc. etc. etc.

Coming back to mother earth, Cricinfo’s comment on the Bangalore Test is a classic armchair critics manifesto. The statement of the thesis is:

“In hindsight I probably should have bowled medium-pace in the first innings,” Kumble said after the draw. In hindsight, he should have perhaps backed himself, and the rest of the bowlers, and declared half-an-hour earlier”.

This is advice, admonition and commentary about strategy all rolled into one. Cricinfo are always fair though, and they present both sides of the story. Balance, you see. The arguments favoring the choices Kumble made are stated as follows:

“Those in favour will echo Kumble, who said India “had to get to a situation where we could absolutely ensure a series victory.” India were, after all, defending a 1-0 lead and were justified in wanting to shut the door completely. Another argument is that the poor light was unforeseen and, but for it, they would probably have comfortably picked up those last three wickets given the speed with which the first seven fell.”

Then comes the killer paragraph:

“Convincing, but not as emphatic as the counter to those arguments. India’s lead was 310 by lunch and the probability of Pakistan chasing a target of such magnitude, on a pitch where the bounce was getting lower by the over, was almost zero. Importantly, had the declaration come ten overs earlier, at the cost of 35-40 runs to the target, India would have had a buffer against the weather. The timing of the eventual declaration, little more than an hour after lunch, leaving Pakistan 374 to chase and 48 overs to save the Test, betrayed a defensive mindset.”

Really? Declaring 10 overs earlier would have given India a buffer against the weather? Doesn’t this fly in the face of all normal logic? The reason India got all those wickets was because Kumble decided to bowl seam up, after tea. Would declaring 10 overs earlier than he did, enabled India to squeeze in 10 overs more after tea? Or is it the cricinfo author’s case that Kumble would have thought about bowling seam up 10 overs into the innings anyways, and that the break at tea time which allowed then to take a moment and think things through had nothing to do with the development of the idea? Also, would 10 overs have given India a “buffer” against an “unforeseen” weather disruption? Is that not a contradiction? India’s lead was 310 by lunch, and there the Cricinfo author makes the beginnings of a good argument, but does not pursue it further for some odd reason .

The Cricinfo’s commentators argument, made so shamelessly with the benefit of hindsight, hits all the right buttons – “aggression v defensive mindset”, “aversion to risk”, “what of Australia”. It also suggests that this is somehow becoming a habit, reminding us of the Oval Test, where

“India left the declaration until an hour after tea on the fourth day, when they had accumulated a lead of 500, after having earlier decided not to enforce the follow-on. England finished the fifth day 131 short of their target with four wickets in hand.”

India made 59 runs in the hour after tea in that Test and about 90 runs between the hour after lunch and the hour after tea, having suffered a rare batting collapse (5/89) in this innings. Had India declared say an hour before tea, then would England have ended up 40 runs shy with 4 wickets in hand? Would giving Zaheer Khan two hours less to recover been in India’s favor? Would it have been wise to have allowed that kind of situation after having fought so hard to win the series?

I reject the “aggression” argument. Not declaring does not imply an aversion to risk or a lack of aggression, anymore than using the reverse sweep against Harbhajan Singh implies a liking for risk or an instinctively “aggressive” mindset on the part of Younis Khan. This was the juxtaposition repeated time and again by Bruce Yardley (who seems to really believe in earning his money – he talks all the time). The reverse sweep as used by Younis Khan was a carefully prepared method against a particular bowler. Harbhajan Singh has an aversion to coming round the wicket to the right hander, hence his line of attack is usually outside off stump. He also bowls without a cover point most of the time, choosing to have a silly point instead. Thus, the reverse sweep is a “risk free” option against him. The batsman can’t be LBW because he’s outside off stump, the batsman runs little risk of being bowled because the pad and the body is between the ball and the stumps, the batsman runs little risk of being caught close in, because the expansive stroke invariably causes the close in men to duck. It worked almost every time for Younis while Harbhajan Singh was bowling over the wicket. When Harbhajan came round the wicket, it became a different ball game altogether. Now, the LBW came into the picture, as did bowled, because the ball pitched in line with the stumps and straightened with the break, causing the batsman to be offside of both the stumps and the line of the ball. Younis went for the reverse sweep nevertheless, and was promptly bowled. Now, was this a fatal attraction to risk? Or did Younis Khan simply miss the point? Or, with the tables turned on him, and with Harbhajan doing something that the batsman did not expect, did Younis lose the plot? Or was he bull headed and stubborn in sticking to the same ploy?

I raise this simply to show how shallow and inadequate arguments about “aggression” can be. Why didn’t Anil Kumble declare at Lunch? Thats an excellent question. I wish some one would ask it. Then again, how many times has a Test match been won with a side being bowled out in the last two sessions of play? Almost never. Why did Kumble declare immediatly after Dinesh Karthik was dismissed? Could he have been swayed by VVS getting hit on the elbow? Could he have decided that it wasn’t worth risking either himself or Harbhajan with the Australian tour coming up? What did he expect when he declared with 48 overs to be played? Was it simply a case of “at this point, we would rather bowl, instead of exposing our bowlers to Shoaib on this wicket”?

There are clues to Kumble’s thinking in what he said, and indeed in the scorecard. The spinners achieved nothing of note in this game (Kumble’s success came bowling seam up). There was “no turn or bounce” in Kumble’s judgement. There was therefore nothing significant to work with. With a second string pace attack consisting of a rookie and a third seamer, could Kumble have seriously hoped to achieve what Shoaib and Sami with their tailor made styles for uneven wickets (pace, a habit of attacking the stumps) couldn’t? Did the wicket, prepared by the KSCA with the help of pitch experts from New Zealand, not defeat everyone in the end?

If the wicket was as bad as it was, how can you explain the fact that until Yuvraj Singh came along, and Anil Kumble’s seam up style paid dividends, the scoreline for the match read (India 626 and 284/6 d, Pakistan 537 and 144/3)? In fact, if you leave out the fact that the Indian and Pakistan tail end folded rapidly in the first innings, India reached 600/6 and Pakistan reached 500/6 respectively.

Pakistan went into this series 1-0 down. If Younis Khan was indeed interested in taking risks and winning, why didn’t he declare immediatly after the follow on had been saved? Then if India had batted on, he would have at least have tried to win but been thwarted by India’s refusal to make a game of it. Why is the onus for enforcing a win on the side that is ahead 1-0 and not on the side that must win to save the series? Did the ease with which Pakistan were batting in the first innings not suggest that they might have fancied a chase of say 350 in the last 8 or 9 hours of the game? Given that they were behind, and had conceded 600 in the first innings, would a 350 run chase not been worth going for? What happened to the “lets go for the win, it doesn’t matter if we lose 2-0” argument? With Shoaib back to full fitness (he bowled 17 overs in the 3rd innings), would it have not been worth the gamble?

To say that Kumble was not “aggressive” is to miss the point. It is to reduce every decision into two clear and ultimately useless categories – aggressive or defensive. Kumble the captain did not let down Kumble the bowler. Kumble the bowler was useless on this wicket. It was Kumble the “bowler”, bowling seam up who found something that he could exploit. Ironically Kumble the “bowler” was a creation of Kumble the Captain.

A left arm spinner, who would have out of necessity attacked the stumps more than an off spinner might actually have been effective on this wicket. Both Abdur Rehman and Murali Kartik will wonder about this.

As for India, Kumble and the Australian tour, we can rest assured that Anil Kumble will not do anything reckless in Australia. As for “aggression” – the Vengsarkar committee has just selected Virender Sehwag for the Australian tour, on a hunch, with no runs to his name in the Ranji Trophy. Almost exactly a year ago, this same committee made one other selection like this. That player made 534 runs in the current series and has made over 1100 runs since his comeback at an average of about 60.

This is a hunch, much like Kumble’s hunch about bowling seam up (note than Ganguly in his seam up avatar was not as effective). Hunches ought to be made when there is nothing to lose – either when everything is already lost, or when nothing significant can be lost if the hunch doesn’t work. Until such time, the Anil Kumble approach is the way to go.