Where are the Test bowlers?

Where are the Test bowlers?

By: Harsha Bhogle

Friday November 16, 2007

Word is that India’s selectors were pleasantly surprised at how prepared Anil Kumble was for his first selection committee meeting. So it’s time now to assign virtue to normal behaviour. Captains must be prepared if they want to get the team they want and the news for everybody is that if this is a surprise there will be more coming from Kumble.

Kumble wanted the meeting held earlier so that he could fly back to Bangalore and play for Karnataka.

You will see similar commitment from him and dignity too. And he will demand all this from his team. That is not too much to ask for that promise must come with the acceptance of the test cap. Indeed Kumble will not ask for anything new because this is not particle physics. He will ask for bravery, for a hundred percent and for aggression, each of those he will provide in abundance himself.

So then, will he make a good captain? We don’t know.

In fact nobody knows, Kumble doesn’t either. People with great qualities aren’t necessarily good at seeding such qualities in everyone else. Kumble has a brilliant CV, and he is a fine man, but that is at best a starting point. We’ll wait and see. Students with the best CVs don't always make the best managers.

The portents are good, now other skills will be needed.

There were a couple of good things though that came out of Kumble’s first selection committee meeting. And a couple of disquieting things. India have picked three new ball bowlers out of the three that were, realistically, available. I guess the pecking order at the moment is Zaheer Khan, RP Singh and Sreesanth. But it is a pretty tiny list. Who is India's no. 4 seamer?

And, since we must ask embarrassing questions, who is no. 5?

Irfan Pathan might give the impression of a renaissance and more than anyone else I wish that were true. He is bowling well in one-day cricket but you can be a good one-day bowler without really threatening to take wickets all the time. The in-swing surfaces occasionally but his best ball is the slow cutter and that is not the best weapon in a test match. Realistically at the moment, he can play only as a fifth bowler but his captain and his selectors need to be convinced that he is a test no. 7 in all conditions. A couple of relaxed games for Baroda and batting at no. 5 will do him no harm. He will probably make the trip to Australia but it will, on current evidence, be not by right but by elimination.

Which makes us wonder if all the recent investment in new ball bowlers has borne fruit. Ashish Nehra isn’t anywhere in sight, neither sadly is Balaji. VRV Singh turned out to be an expensive buy and you can never be sure about Munaf Patel. He would seem to be the right kind of bowler for Australian conditions but you never know which Munaf Patel turns up! No one is going to pick Ishant Sharma in a hurry, though he looked impressive in a couple of spells in the Challenger, and I fear the door is shut on Ranadeb Bose for the moment. If a mutual fund portfolio manager had made these picks he would be knocking on doors for a job.

So if a selector has been assigned to watch Ajit Agarkar you know why!!

Murali Kartik comes back, likeable and temperamental, but 31-year-old with eight tests in eight years. He is a far better cricketer than that but his return tells you a thing or two about the next best left arm spinner in India which, I suspect, is Pragyan Ojha.

Kartik is probably India's best bad wicket bowler though he has often admitted that he is happier bowling on good pitches!

So what were the good things that came out of the meeting? The best, and the most important, is that players not in the playing eleven will be released to play Ranji Trophy cricket. I actually believe the format followed in places like England is right where only the playing eleven remains at the ground once the game has started and the best local fielders are drafted in as substitutes. If for example, Kartik doesn’t get a game at Delhi, he is much better off playing for Railways than getting a tour of the new Kotla. Oh, and by the way, if a player believes he might lose out on his match fees, he is probably the wrong man anyway!

The chairman of selectors won’t henceforth present himself for an interrogation either. In any case there isn’t much to be gained from it and it will hopefully lead to lesser analysis of the side and lesser reading between the lines which, of course, is the real problem.