(India’s narrow loss at the Lord’s to go 1-2 down in the Anderson-Tendulkar test series has brought about a clamour for change in personnel. Two of the players are ruled out due to injury. The rest have played as a close unit and given a tough battle to England in the three matches thus far – taking each of the games into the final session. Would the management cut them some slack or would we return to the hoary old ‘horses for courses’ logic?)
Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties, goes the hoary old cliché. And yet, our cricket pundits want a team that could win the next Test match, scheduled to start in two days. They are coming up with multiple permutations and combinations to ensure success, even if it means playing Jasprit Bumrah in back-to-back tests. The theory being that if India loses at Old Trafford, there is no point in the team’s alpha bowler coming back for the final test at the Oval as the series would have gone. And so would the Anderson-Tendulkar trophy. Suddenly, all their punditry has taken a 180-degree turn and the platitudes they mouthed about maintaining continuity as a panacea for success is swept under the carpet.
Discerning cricket viewers would recall that many of these experts had kept their expectations within certain limits following the departure of two legends in Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Some even wanted Kohli return for the same of Team India. Others felt, Ravi Ashwin should have called it quits after this series as the pitches offered in England could assist spin. Their reasons stemmed from how they perceived England’s Bazball tactics panning out. They took pains to describe how our hapless bowlers would be decimated and their bowlers would befuddle our batters, coming off an IPL that appeared to be on steroids.
And yet, the situation is far from what they predicted. New captain Shubman Gill and new coach Gautam Gambhir stuck to their guns on team composition after the first Test. They lengthened the batting lineup with three all-rounders in Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sunder. Each of them contributed bits and pieces in the Edgbaston and Lord’s games, while Jadeja headlined his new avatar as a proper batter at number six – a position he assumed after then coach Ravi Shastri asked him to take his batting more seriously and not play like a lower order hitter. If anyone, Shastri would know, because he was one left-arm spinner who batted in every position for India – from number 10 to number 1.
For the record, Indian batters scored more runs collectively (2428 runs) than England and their bowlers took 55 wickets, just one short of Ben Stokes and company. While it is true that the scoreline reads 2-1 in favour of England, the games weren’t one-sided. In fact, each of the three Tests went into the final session of play. Captain Gill reminded us after the Lord’s Test that India had lost a few moments across 15 sessions. And no single player could be held responsible for these. If anything, it was a momentary lapse in concentration as batters and possibly a lack of application as bowlers. Think of Gill and Pant getting out quickly after their stirring partnership at Headingly or the insipid bowling in England’s first innings at Lord’s that gave Brydon Carse an invaluable half-century?
So, do we genuinely need a change of personnel at this juncture? Or would it make more sense to give them a pep talk and a pat on their collective backs, asking them to never reduce the pressure even for a moment – both while batting and bowling. The young Indian batters and bowlers showed this in abundance at Edgbaston where inexperienced fast bowlers snapped up 17 of the 20 English wickets and the batsmen ground their bowlers out to score a mountain of runs that seemed too much even for Bazball to conquer.
As we prepare for the fourth of the five-Test series, there is every likelihood that the team would change. One would like to believe that these changes would be forced and not induced by any sense of insecurity. We already know that Nitish Kumar Reddy and Akash Deep will not make the playing-XI as they are injured. Arshdeep Singh too is on the injury list, which leaves us with Bumrah, Mohd Siraj and Prasidh Krishna to choose from, unless of course Gambhir springs a surprise by handing out a debut to Kamboj, who performed creditably against the England Lions. Personally, one would think that the Haryana bowler would rather prefer to sit out this one and play in the final Test at the Oval, given that the Englishmen would be on a high and eager to go back to their Bazball ways. So, the onus is again on Indian bowlers to get 20 English wickets with not much on the scoreboard.
Coming to the batting too, the coach and captain should not be considering changes to the top-5, though Karun Nair’s return to international cricket has been lukewarm. He has looked solid in both defense and stroke play till the time he got out – once without offering a shot to a ball slanting in from outside the off stump. A ready replacement in the form of either Sai Sudarshan or Abhimanyu Easwaran is available, but knowing Gambhir’s perspective, he may just give Nair an extended run. The only question mark is on Rishabh Pant, who did not keep wickets in the England second innings at the Lord’s. Should he play as a pure batsman, we could witness Dhruv Jurel stepping into the vacancy left by Reddy.
Maybe, that is the only change that the Gill-Gambhir duo needs to make. Maybe, they would cut our players some slack and reaffirm that all they need to do to end up on the right side is to be more aware of those magic moments that they allowed to slip away.
