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Test Cricket: Then and Now

Test cricket has evolved over the years with quite a few factors facilitating that metamorphosis

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© Getty Images
Test cricket has evolved over the years with quite a few factors facilitating that metamorphosis © Getty Images

Post the recently concluded test series between India-England (Pataudi Trophy, 2014), Sayantan Sen takes a look at an changing conditions and challenge of Test cricket and what might be the new success mantra of Test cricket batting.

Test cricket is definitely the epitome of cricketing skill. This is the format where ones skill gets tested (batsman/bowler/keeper or a fielder) and so the mental toughness and this why all cricketers dream is to play Test cricket rather be just successful in one-days or T20. But has Test cricket become more tough and unpredictable.

This columnist tries to analyze how Test cricket in 70’s and 80’s is so different when compared to Test cricket played in this new century. Let’s Test our memory and go back to the days of 1970s and 1980s and how different they were…

1970s and 1980s Post-1990

Bowling

Express fast bowlers (men in the leagues of Dennis Lillie, Malcolm Marshall, Jeff Thomson, and Michael Holding) with almost a single mission to (literally) terrify the batsman with their swing, pace and bounce (bodyline).It was a delight to watch how batsmen would only focus on playing late, keep the bat as close as possible to the body, be aware of the fourth stump and play more with their pads and “well-left” till the ball gets worn out. A mental game along with skill and techniques. Then there used to be the set of classical spinners whose focus was on spin and variations, primarily in flight and trajectory. There were no doosras,those days (It seems there is a teesra  as well these days) just traditional spin bowling. A battle between two sharp minds who is trying to over-smart each other.  While fast bowling has become more taxing for the individuals due to the schedule that gets hectic with every passing day, bowlers have become smart and typically use tricks that were never known earlier.Slower deliveries have been their their biggest weapon along with Reverse Swing. Actually now fast bowlers wait to get the ball old and sessions post Tea is most exciting in Test cricket nowadays due to reverse swing.  Fast bowlers now believe in teasing and tempting the batsman more with their nagging line and length rather than their body-line techniques. 

Hence we have seen the likes of James Anderson, Glenn McGrath and Vernon Philander to be more successful. Brett Lee and Shoib Akhtar would perhaps been talked about fast bowlers if they were born may be a couple of decades back back.

 

Spin bowling has also revolutionized over past two decades. It seems spinners bwho can bowl straight are more lethal. Although we were gifted with unarguably two best spinners  (Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan) in 90s, but of late the spinners who are more successful are the one who can bowl doosras (Saeed Ajmal) and can drift the ball (can this be classified as  swing bowling?? ) more effectively in the air (Graeme Swann)

Fielding

Field positions were limited, and used to play a very crucial role legends were thus created. History would always remember Sunil Gavaskar and Greg Chappell, Syed Kirmani and Alan Knott for their keeping skills against the spinners and Eknath Solkar at short leg. For pacers slip cordon was the classical trap along with third man, deep fine-leg, and deep square-leg. Field placements have turned more unconventional. Shane Warne showcased great cricketing mind putting unorthodox gully and leg-slip during the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL) and made people consider him as “the best captain never to lead Australia”.  Placing two third men is not unheard-of; two short mid-wickets have been seen; and the mid-on can often be found standing next to the pitch.

Pitch, weather and tours

Even the pitch and weather condition seems to be very predictable across the world during that time. You would always get swinging and overcast conditions at Lord’s, flat pitches with cracks at Madras, and vicious bounce at Perth.Given that the conditions were more or less known previously, we hear stories how Grahame Gooch mastered sweep just to tackle India Spin wizards and Mohinder Amarnath build his hooking skill over the years to tackle the express pace of West-Indians. Of kate pitch curators love to bring in variations in pitch conditions and it is more of a gamble for the captain to choose between batting and bowling and hence prefer more to lose tosses. The pitch in Perth is a lot playable these days, and rather swinging one in Mohali and a bowlers’ nightmare at Lord’s.As for tours, they have got shorter, and the way the Future Tests Programme (FTP) has been laid out, the famous “long tours” to England, Australia, West Indies, or the subcontinent are a thing of the history.

Cricket Ball and bat manufactures

There were always predominantly three or four varieties of the cricket ball, always dyed only in red. There were very limited number of bat manufacturers across the world, and batsmen never used to believe in experimenting too much with their bat weight or on the number of batting grips on their handle.Of course, Lillee had used his famous aluminium bat, but that is another story. 

Yes there were players who used heavy bats (Clive Lloyd was a perfect example), but there was also a time in Indian cricket team when most used SS and SG bats.

Although the ball has not really changed over the year, the bat has gone through revolutions. Bat manufacturers are now many; thanks to Twenty20 cricket, bottom-heavy bats have become fashionable; and the way the ball flies outside the cricketing park, one would wonder whether it has to do with players strength, timing or just the marvel or woodwork.In this century different manufacturers have tried the bats to be more powerful within the norms of the International Cricket Council (ICC) rules and hence there has been introduction of technologies like ” Carbon fibre-reinforced polymer support down the spine of the bat used by Ricky Ponting during 2005″ and “usage of carbon fibre handle, the C6 and C6+, which weighed three ounces/85 grams less than a standard laminated cane and rubber handle.”

All-rounder

All-rounders were always respected and valued, but cricket of the era depended on specialists. Though the 1980s would be remembered as the era of champion all-rounders (Imran Khan, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev, Richard Hadlee, and Clive Rice were just a few examples), most players in the team were specialist batsmen, special bowlers or special-keepers. Players like Derek Pringle, Manzoor Elahi, and Simon O’Donnell were restricted mostly to ODIs; and the Kiran Mores were always preferred to the Chandrakant Pandits. The new generation of Test cricket has witnessed more all-rounders in the Test sides. Teams sometimes build Test squad after looking at the performance in the shorter formats where being an all-rounder is a more of a necessity. While Jacque Kallis might be the arguably the best all-rounder of all time playing in this era, but should not get surprised to see players like Ravindra Jadeja being a regular feature.As for the wicket-keepers, the breed of Test wicket-keepers who are rank tail-enders has vanished, more since the advent of Adam Gilchrist.

This columnist wants to highlight that for Test the current era, almost everything has changed and definitely this has heavily impacted the most glamorous component of any cricket team, the top order batsmen. The definition of copy-book batting techniques has changed: if Virender Sehwag or MS Dhoni can have an outstanding career with his unconventional technique, why bother about the coaching manual?

Test cricket has definitely become more challenging and result oriented (draws are almost a thing of the past now) and the biggest impact that has created is on the batting score card. Now score-card like 8-4 (8 runs for 4 wicket, what we saw in India-Eng 4th Test match, at Old Trafford, Manchester, 7-Aug-14) is not a rare phenomenon. General word of wisdom says that play your natural game. What is batsmen’s natural game now-a-days. Leave the ball or slash hard at the ball? Tuck the bouncers or play horizontal bat shot?

Fewer balls are left, and since Australia has shown the way at the turn of the millennium, giving the first session to the bowler is an outdated concept. In other words, batmen, especially the aggressive ones, can play their natural games as opposed to getting in a defensive shell the way they used to do a quarter 0f a century back — and get away with it.

If we look back at the just concluded India-England Test series, MS Dhoni was among India’s most successful batsman. What did Dhoni do differently? Most of Dhoni’s innings were full of horizontal bat shots (something that was a rarity in Tests in English), but he was more patient and grittier in approach. Thus, while his temperament was impeccable, his technique was certainly the most orthodox.

Actually implying the simple rule of bat position, when the ball gets the edge of a straight bat, the probability of ball going to slip cordon’s comfort zone is much more, when compared to a ball getting the edge of a horizontal bat. AB de Villiers has been another classic example of this: the angle at which his bat hits the ball has looked more of golf and baseball strokes. These have increased the chance of better timing and powerful edges in case the ball did not hit the middle of bat.

On the other hand, Virat Kohli‘s lack of form could be attributed to the fact that he may have been trying to connect the ball much straighter with his bat. Just like de Villiers, Kohli has an unusual bat angle that gives him that immense power and timing. The fact that his form has deserted him of late can be attributed to the fact that he had perhaps tried to go by the usual techniques batsmen had tried to adopt till the 1980s.

Australia’s revival in the past year has also been predominantly due to being able to successfully rely on natural stroke-players who had trained their minds not to throw their wickets at the same time. David Warner, previously considered only in shorter form is now Aussies natural choice as a Test opener; Steven Smith has become a regular in their Test team; in other words, they have gone back to the formula of scoring quick runs that had worked wonders for them a decade earlier.

Perhaps the time has come to accept that even unconventional stroke players can be equally, or in some case, more successful even in the longest format. Batsmen have changed their approach to handling quality bowling using improvisation (Sachin Tendulkar at Bloemfontein, anyone?), and a combination Of strokeplay and improvisation has turned out to be as effective as orthodox technique.

(Sayantan Sen is in IT industry, a cricketer himself during his younger days and a cricket lover who is always awed by the fast changing dynamics of this game.)

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