Pujara the bowler: Why is Indian cricket penalising specialists?

You know Indian cricket is in a strange place when batsman Cheteshwar Pujara takes up bowling to try and get into the ODI team and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh talks about the need to out-bat Ravichandran Ashwin (another off-spinner) in a bid to break in. Once upon a time, the way to get into the team if you were a batsman was to score tons of runs – force your way into the team with the sheer weight of runs. And similarly for the bowler, picking up bagfuls of wickets was the only way to convince selectors of your quality. [caption id=“attachment_1430623” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] If the impression being given to Pujara is that he needs to start bowling to break into the team then the selectors have some answering to do: AFP[/caption] But now having multiple-facets to your game seems more important. Specialisation can take a back seat simply because you have nothing to fall back on if you fail in your chosen area, which will make it easier for you to be knocked out of the team. Greg Chappell first introduced Indian cricket to the concept of three-dimensional players – players who are good batsmen, fielders and bowlers; who provide tremendous value to the team while batting and bowling. But he promptly forgot to mention that such players are rare or else every second player would be a Garry Sobers or a Kapil Dev. In the last two series – we have seen Ambati Rayudu (who has also donned the keeping gloves for Mumbai Indians in the past) get a bowl. Suresh Raina, struggling with his batting, turns to bowling. Rohit Sharma bowls as well. Yuvraj Singh’s bowling is almost as important to the team as his batting now. Virat Kohli gets a bowl from time to time and so does Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Then come the bowlers who can bat. Ashwin and Jadeja are leading the way in that department. During the tours of South Africa and New Zealand, Ashwin’s batting seemed to be keeping him in the team as he just wasn’t able to take any wickets – so much so that he seemed to be morphing into the next coming of Ravi Shastri (who went from left-arm orthodox spinner to opening the batting). Jadeja, on the other hand, is a scorer of triple-centuries at domestic level who only managed to get into the team as a bowler. Even now, it is as a bowler that he makes the cut. So if Pujara is confused, we shouldn’t be surprised. “I’m bowling more in the nets as I want to contribute to the team’s cause more. I want to help my team with my part-time bowling if the captain wants me to,” he said on Tuesday. “I am also looking to bring other improvements in my game, most important playing on the rise. It will help me in the longer run,” Pujara added. It really is a sad commentary on the state of affairs. But someone needs to sit him down and talk some sense into his head. Pujara’s greatest strength is his focus – he can concentrate long and hard; not get carried away and bat out tough spells with a calm demeanour that rattles the opposition. His batting (List A average is 54.57) is clearly good enough for India’s selectors to bet on him but he needs to wait a little longer. They made him wait for a long time before handing him a spot in the Test team. In the end though, such was the pressure exerted by his huge scores in domestic cricket that they just couldn’t ignore him. Pujara asserts on every occasion that his knees are no longer a problem but anyone who sees him run between wickets will tell you that he isn’t the quickest and that remains true of him while he is fielding as well. At the moment, India doesn’t quite have the best close-in fielders – catches are dropped with amazing regularity at slips and perhaps that is an area that the Saurashtra batsman would do well to target. If the impression being given to Pujara is that he needs to start bowling to break into the team then the selectors have some answering to do. Specialisation isn’t all that bad a word. When times get really tough, India needs people who really know their job to step up – part-timers simply won’t be good enough to do the job. This may lead to a situation where India will have a squad full of bits and pieces players who are jacks of all trades and master of none – and that can’t be good.