In Mumbai, at Wankhade Stadium, Indian pacers struggle to bowl and bowled the West Indians, who have been one struggling side in the recent past.
We cannot be like our neighbours who produce 1 new fast bowler every month. Few days back Zaheer Khan rightly quoted in an interview that our bodies are not designed to bowl fast.
Here is a player who came down to Mumbai from Shrirampur town near Nasik in Maharashtra. There was no cricket coaching that he received in his formative years. But the tall and well-built Zaheer Khan seemed a natural fast bowler when he played in Mumbai. He was lucky that his coach Sudhir (former Mumbai captain) didn’t tinker with his technique and approach.
In the ongoing series against West Indies as well, India is trying to nurture the upcoming bowlers like Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron. There are many questions that are haunting Indian ardent cricket lovers; are we moving in the right direction? Are we taking too many chances?
Ajit Agarkar, Ashish Nehra, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh, Sreesanth, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Tinu Yohannan, VRV Singh, L Balaji and many more to add in the ODI format of Indian bowling. India, like any other country has produced a battery of pacers – but surely they end up as medium fast bowlers on the field, but none seemed adept enough to carry forward a big responsibility. Every bowler India tried in this meanwhile has shown initial zest & promise but mysteriously fizzled out.
The West Indian pace quartet of the 70s & 80s, Walsh-Ambrose in the 90s; Thomson-Lillee & McGrath, Lee & Gillespie for Australia; Allan Donald-Shaun Pollock for South Africa; Wasim-Waqar and later Shoaib Akhtar for Pakistan have all been potent new ball handlers & partnerships. Oppositions have feared and been wary off and they have been instrumental in their team’s successes during their career.
India’s fiercest new ball combo, even though they lacked express pace had been of Kapil Dev, Manoj Prabhakar. The duo operated together in the late eighties and early nineties. Kapil’s retirement put extra pressure on young Javagal Srinath; arguably India’s finest produce in the fast bowling department. He was quick, could swing both ways and was intimidating too. Prabhakar’s form dipped and the nip faded. He was an effective bowler once and turned out to be Miandad’s nemeses; later concentrated in a role as an opening batsman which has done all the damage, if we get into a bowler’s perspective.
The mysterious shell which Indian pacers take shelter into, once established has to be unearthed and a solution needed. It has become a perennial problem for Indian pacers that existed even two decades back in the 80s when exciting fast bowlers like Chetan Sharma, Vivek Razdan, Atul Wassan, Salil Ankola, Subroto Banerjee followed by the likes of Dodda Ganesh, Paras Mhambrey, Abey Kuruvilla, Debashis Mohanty, Harvinder Singh , David Johnson amongst others in the 90s showed promise but faded away soon in the haze of Delhi’s December.
We cannot be like our neighbours who produce 1 new fast bowler every month. Few days back Zaheer Khan rightly quoted in an interview that our bodies are not designed to bowl fast.
Here is a player who came down to Mumbai from Shrirampur town near Nasik in Maharashtra. There was no cricket coaching that he received in his formative years. But the tall and well-built Zaheer Khan seemed a natural fast bowler when he played in Mumbai. He was lucky that his coach Sudhir (former Mumbai captain) didn’t tinker with his technique and approach.
In the ongoing series against West Indies as well, India is trying to nurture the upcoming bowlers like Umesh Yadav and Varun Aaron. There are many questions that are haunting Indian ardent cricket lovers; are we moving in the right direction? Are we taking too many chances?
Ajit Agarkar, Ashish Nehra, Irfan Pathan, RP Singh, Sreesanth, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel, Tinu Yohannan, VRV Singh, L Balaji and many more to add in the ODI format of Indian bowling. India, like any other country has produced a battery of pacers – but surely they end up as medium fast bowlers on the field, but none seemed adept enough to carry forward a big responsibility. Every bowler India tried in this meanwhile has shown initial zest & promise but mysteriously fizzled out.
The West Indian pace quartet of the 70s & 80s, Walsh-Ambrose in the 90s; Thomson-Lillee & McGrath, Lee & Gillespie for Australia; Allan Donald-Shaun Pollock for South Africa; Wasim-Waqar and later Shoaib Akhtar for Pakistan have all been potent new ball handlers & partnerships. Oppositions have feared and been wary off and they have been instrumental in their team’s successes during their career.
India’s fiercest new ball combo, even though they lacked express pace had been of Kapil Dev, Manoj Prabhakar. The duo operated together in the late eighties and early nineties. Kapil’s retirement put extra pressure on young Javagal Srinath; arguably India’s finest produce in the fast bowling department. He was quick, could swing both ways and was intimidating too. Prabhakar’s form dipped and the nip faded. He was an effective bowler once and turned out to be Miandad’s nemeses; later concentrated in a role as an opening batsman which has done all the damage, if we get into a bowler’s perspective.
The mysterious shell which Indian pacers take shelter into, once established has to be unearthed and a solution needed. It has become a perennial problem for Indian pacers that existed even two decades back in the 80s when exciting fast bowlers like Chetan Sharma, Vivek Razdan, Atul Wassan, Salil Ankola, Subroto Banerjee followed by the likes of Dodda Ganesh, Paras Mhambrey, Abey Kuruvilla, Debashis Mohanty, Harvinder Singh , David Johnson amongst others in the 90s showed promise but faded away soon in the haze of Delhi’s December.
It is not that Indians body are not designed to bowl fast,its all about policy of indian cricket i.e bowl slow and play for longer tym.
ReplyDeleteIf we take an example of pakistani bowler like shoaib akhtar,he also got injured after playing for 5-6 years.
In india also we can select one bowler on the basis of pace,and so we can develop an environment of fast bowling in gali -muhalla cricket.
Now-a-days wat happens in local cricket is ,ppl r doing slow medium bowling with good line legth and focussing on batting.
If Milkha singh can be trained to run too fast,our bowlers can be trained to bpwl too fast.
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ReplyDeleteNice thoughts Gourav ! since pace is a rarity in India which is why we try to conserve and preserve every fast bowler that comes our way.Injury and pace bowling are hand and gloves to each other but we are too skeptical about it..
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