Here we go again: Indian cricket and the problem of overthinking

The most endearing image of the WTC final at the Oval in London, for me, was that of a little boy eating ice cream. He really went for it, diving into the cone in a memorable display of commitment, enthusiasm and impatience. His baseball cap’s visor went into the ice cream, but he didn’t let this bother him. Keeping his calm, and not batting an eyelid, he licked off the ice cream on the visor, and went back to finishing what remained in the cone, with unalloyed Dravidian concentration. On the pitch, India was having another one of its forgettable outings in an ICC final. Right from the time we won the toss, India was on the back foot, always playing a game of catch-up. While they did put up a fight, keeping the Indian fan interested even at the end of the fourth day, it was really die-hard optimism of the hope-springs-eternal variety. The World Test Championship final is an odd beast. It comes after a test match cycle of almost two years. It does not have the momentum of a tournament, where a team might start ‘peaking at the right time’. The final springs up abruptly in the cricketing calendar, a mushroom sprouting in English summer rain. India captain, Rohit Sharma, came up with a series of non-sequiturs in the post-match press meet. “Why should the final be played in June? Why can’t it be March?” “Why should the venue only be in England? It can be anywhere in the world.” As it turned out, there was no rain, only glorious sunshine on all five days. Shubhman Gill was the only one incongruously wearing the classic short-sleeved cricket pullover on day four, when the temperature shot up to 32 degrees. The Indian team think-tank misread the conditions on the first day. It was overcast but was going to clear up soon. The pitch looked green enough to play Wimbledon, but was dry underneath. It takes a lot of gall to put the opposition in to bat, especially given India’s ‘jugaadu’ bowling attack, more so when we were missing Jasprit Bumrah. All we had were two strike bowlers in the form of Shami and Siraj. Australia took the final with greater seriousness than India. Only two of their players played in the IPL, David Warner and Cameron Green. They have the five-match Ashes coming up immediately after, a top priority. Players like Mitchell Starc have forsaken franchise cricket in exchange of prolonging their test careers. India made a feeble attempt, requesting their fast bowlers to bowl with the hard Dukes ball in the nets, while they were still playing the IPL. They just didn’t have the time or energy. It’s an absurd idea. The other problem that has plagued Indian cricket is our tendency to get bogged down in new-fangled corporate jargon: ‘workload management’, ‘bench strength’, ‘team composition’, ‘team balance’. Workload management translates into resting key players for matches that are considered ‘unimportant’, even though they are slotted into the international calendar. One’s best players, if fit, should be playing all matches. Bench strength is another bandied-about term. It’s obvious that with so much money involved, and given India’s population, and love for the game, we do have a talent pool. But it’s not managed with intelligence and honesty. The best are still not rising to the top; they are not being groomed with clarity. When Australia’s Josh Hazlewood was ruled out with an Achilles injury, Scott Boland, a cult hero in Australia, stepped into his shoes beautifully, bowling nagging lengths. By removing Kohli and Jadeja in the same over, he put paid to India’s chances on the final day. When India lost Bumrah to injury, we could only come up with veteran Umesh Yadav as replacement. This, when Ishant Sharma, far more effective in English conditions, was dropped for getting on in years. The more the team management talks about ‘balance’, the more they mess it up. There is a serious problem of over-thinking that plagues the Indian cricketing establishment. Ravichandran Ashwin, good enough to be captain, is left on the bench in crucial make-or-break test matches, even as he remains on top of the ICC bowler’s rankings. What does Ashwin do? Twiddle thumbs, deliver drinks, make YouTube videos, catch forty winks in the pavilion. His wife might put out a sarcastic tweet or two. Your best offie, a strike bowler, should be playing no matter what the conditions are. He’s good enough to play on any surface. Australia had plenty of left-handers playing; there was bounce to be extracted from the pitch. Still, no Ash. Meanwhile, an out-of-rhythm Umesh Yadav kept leaking runs, allowing the Aussies to reach 469 in the first innings. If nothing else, it might have been a good idea to blood young Umran Malik, India’s fastest bowler, who bowls consistently above 150 kph. At least, we would have had an eye on the future. Instead, they took Jaydev Unadkat who made his test debut in 2010, all this when injuries had opened up slots in the team. A word about test cricket, the most challenging and pleasurable format of the game. The greatest games go on till the final hour of play on day five. People who do not follow sport often grumble about sportspeople making pots of money, for not doing very much. Five sixes in the IPL and you become a star. Score a goal and you are a hero. One cannot hold this grudge against test cricketers. It’s a regular nine-to-five, five days of a full working week, with breaks for lunch and a cup of chai. Except that the players don’t work in air conditioned offices; a test match cricketer is a bricklayer working under a baking sun or in biting cold conditions. It’s hard. It’s tough. It’s back-breaking work. Which brings us to the question: What have we been doing to this format in India? And why? Our pitches are consistently graded by the ICC match referee, present at each venue, as ‘poor’, ‘average’ and ‘below average’. The only penalty is that the venue might lose out on hosting the next match. With the number of venues at our disposal, it’s a small price to pay. So we have pitches that start crumbling from day one, the ball turns square before lunch, the spinners –Axar Patel, Ashwin and Jadeja are pressed into play, sometimes from the opening over itself. Our pacers have little role to play. The match is over in two and a half days max. We don’t need to do this to ourselves; we are better than that. When you reach the WTC final by hook or by crook, your limitations and shortcomings are shown up on overseas pitches. Batting coach, Vikram Rathour, went to the extent of saying that the pressure to win now is so much because of the WTC cycle, and the system of points, that one cannot afford to lose a single home match. But that shouldn’t open the doors for what is simply not cricket. Stop turning test cricket into a travesty. A prickly team management will defend the decision to make rank turners, arguing that when we go there, they give us grassy green tops. This isn’t true. What we get in England and Australia are sporting wickets, that allow an even contest between bat and ball, and where everyone gets to have a fair go: batsmen (if you apply yourself), fast bowlers (on the first two days) and spinners (as the match wears on). It seems to me, that at the moment, we simply don’t have the physical and mental stamina to last five days. Shardul Thakur had cramps after making a hard-fought fifty. Contrast this with the teams of the past. So many test matches went into the final hour. The pitch wasn’t messed around with that much. Players of that generation were also big match players, playing out of their skin to win closely-fought games. There was glory in defeat. At present, the top four or five players simply don’t stand up and deliver in high pressure situations and games. Think of Ganguly striding out in big run chases and delivering with both bat and ball, Dravid’s stolidity and ability to rotate the strike, Sehwag’s triple hundreds and VVS Laxman, who built a career batting with tail-enders. Then there was Anil Kumble (who could bat), Harbhajan Singh and Zaheer Khan, spearheading the bowling department. All of them were sure of their place in the playing XI, no matter where the match was played; obsessing about conditions and pitches was not turned into a fetish. India has the talent. For all its talk of team balance, we are, for some reason, unable to put our best eleven on the field. It might be better that we think a little more with our heart than the head. Over-thinking has become a malaise in Indian cricket. Dravid constantly scribbling notes in his note pad is not helping the cause. The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .