Indian cricket team head coach Rahul Dravid has finally addressed the one-dimensional Top 5. Why is one dimensional? None of India’s top 5 including Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Shreyas Iyer bowl going into World Cup. It forces India to rely on specialists. But why don’t they develop bowling skills like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly or Virender Sehwag did? Dravid has blamed it on the five-fielder rule ahead of the IND vs AUS series opener in Mohali.
The one-dimensional nature of the Top 5 has forced India to heavily rely on players who can do both like Axar Patel, Washington Sundar or Shardul Thakur.
“I think it could be because of the rule change. Suddenly you have gone from four fielders inside the ring to five fielders inside the ring. I think that has drastically changed the ability of part-time bowler to be able to bowl in the middle phase,” Rahul Dravid said in defence of his team in which none among Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shreyas Iyer or Suryakumar Yadav bowl.
Why don’t India’s Top 5 bowl?
It’s not that India’s Top 5 have not tried. Virat Kohli has bowled in international and domestic. Rohit Sharma even has a hat-trick in IPL. Suryakumar Yadav did bowl in domestic cricket. But since being called for suspected action in IPL, he has never bowled again.
Before Surya, Shikhar Dhawan bowled off-spin on and off. But he was also called for chucking in domestic cricket and stopped bowling altogether. A glance at some numbers from the past will help us dig deeper as to what changed.
- Sachin Tendulkar: 201 international wickets
- Sourav Ganguly: 132
- Yuvraj Singh: 148
- Virender Sehwag: 136
- Suresh Raina: 62
“If you remember and mention all these names (Sachin, Sourav, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Raina) bowling in this phase, a lot of these guys started when there used to be only four fielders in the ring. “In that kind of situation (five fielders outside the ring), you could lose a lot of part-time bowlers and not only us, a lot of teams did that. If you will notice, the number of part-time bowlers have gone down in other teams as well.
“It’s not only the Indian team,” Dravid wanted to remind one and all who cared to listen. The two new balls from both ends, which effectively means one white Kookaburra is just 25 overs old, has also contributed to this decline.
“Partly, it is because of two new balls, you have got five fielders in the ring in the middle overs. It’s not that they are not bowling in the nets, lot of bowlers do try, they bowl in the nets. But if you don’t get opportunities to bowl in the middle then it became very difficult to develop your skill,” Rahul Dravid said.
Defensive mindset
He also attributed to the defensive mindsets of captains and coaches, who don’t want to punt on a part-timer.
“And more and more captains and coaches are wary of the rules and so they will always look to play a genuine bowler in the mix because of the two new balls and five fielders in the ring.”
So what could be the solution? It is about finding more all-rounders and that has been the current team management’s endeavour.
“Also try to find genuine all-rounders in the team and the goal is really to try and find sort of genuine all-rounders. This is something we are working on.
“It’s not that we don’t work on that, we constantly work on it and we are constantly working on some of our bowlers to bat well as well. Certainly (whenever rules changed), lot of part-time bowlers have been reduced.”
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