Published: Dec 29, 2014, 03:00 AM (IST)
Edited: Dec 28, 2014, 01:33 PM (IST)
India arrived in Australia with a cloud of pessimism hanging over the potency of their bowling attack. The scepticism has been reinforced three Tests into the series. Ankur Dhawan delves into the impuissance of the apparent spearhead of the bowling unit — that is, Ishant Sharma’s impact on Indian cricket, his perceptible liking for fast and bouncy pitches in Australia, his growth as a fast bowler (if any), and the returns(if any) on this hazardous investment.
Cricket is a mere shadow of the game it used to be. Certain fundamentals, however, remain unchanged. For example, consider the old chestnut that bowlers win Test matches. A corollary of this self-evident maxim is that fast bowlers win Test matches in countries like England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.
India have won just four of their last 27 Tests on these alien shores. That is a reflection of the dearth of fast bowling resources in a country with its fair share of scarcities. Indian cricket’s heaviest investment in this period of murkiness, Ishant Sharma, has incidentally featured in all four of these wins.
Ishant had made his debut against Pakistan at home in 2007 but emerged as a force to reckon with on India’s infamous tour of Australia in 2007-08. A discernible pattern has been associated with the enigmatic fast bowler since: the paradoxical pacer has constantly oscillated between a general state of mediocrity and an occasional spark of brilliance that has allowed him to remain somehow relevant. Born under a lucky star, Ishant has been as fickle as Mumbai’s famed winter.
It is hard to unravel the mystery of his continual selection considering that Ishant averages a dubiously high 37 over a staggering 58 Tests (excluding the three in the ongoing series). Over the last seven Tests, though, the wicket count. has been healthy. Confounding conventional logic, Ishant has achieved success in conditions that are palpably less suited to his style of bowling. The idiocy of perception is highlighted in that fact. Ishant was pinned down as a quintessential hit-the-deck bowler tailor-made for the fast and bouncy tracks of Australia and South Africa even before he played a Test. He was being prepared for Australia while India were en route to a famous series win in England. Ishant was quick to corroborate the belief in Perth soon after. He only grabbed half a pint of wickets but struck a chord with his colleagues, selectors and the public. That became the reigning urban legend: Ishant is six feet four inches tall, Ishant generates awkward bounce of a relatively fuller length, Ishant bowls an in-swinger that cuts batsmen into half and makes great players look like puny dwarfs.
The legend would hold except perhaps for a little rancour that has rankled Indian cricket fans for seven years now: Ishant produces his magic only sporadically, and even at his magical best his wicket column wouldn’t seduce you. So much so that his record in conditions he was born to bowl in is as unflattering as Chris Martin’s batting average. The bulk of his wickets over the last seven Test matches have come in New Zealand and England. A fair chunk of those courtesy opposition batsmen who failed to notice fielders guarding the boundary line while injudiciously trying to hook him into the stands.
Also is it an archetypical case of too little and too late? Before this rare period of moderate consistency, Ishant had featured in two full tours in Australia — a country that ideally suited his bowling style. The fallacy of that statement lies in the fact that ‘unlucky Ishant’ had a measly eleven wickets to his credit at an atrocious average of 73.54 at an equally embarrassing strike rate of 123. If the two tours are considered in isolation, on the assumption that he should have evolved by the time India toured Australia in 2011, the numbers are shocking. In 2007-08, Ishant accounted for six wickets in three Test matches at an average of 59.6 and a strike rate that puts the modern day ODI batsman to shame — that of 101. The picture only gets bleaker as he had given half the world the heebie-jeebies by the time India concluded their 2011-12 Test tour Down Under. This time Ishant had regressed further, averaging an appalling 90.2, picking up a wicket every 25 overs with a strike rate of an outrageously successful T20I batsman — that of 150.6.
But Ishant was backed by his admirers and selectors who have been arrogant about their investment and refused to accept that the repository of their unflappable faith was clearly a false alarm. Fours years on, Ishant has plateaued in his anaemia averaging 55 in the five innings in Australia so far at a strike rate of 90. Ishant was a babe in the woods thrown into the deep end, after a sizeable sample size of 10 profitless Tests in Australia and seven years of international cricket he has barely created a ripple in the shallows.
(Ankur Dhawan is a reporter with CricketCountry. Heavily influenced by dystopian novels, he naturally has about 59 conspiracy theories for every moment in the game of cricket. On finding a direct link between his head and the tip of his fingers, he also writes about it)
