[ad_1]
It’s a difficult thing to do but for a moment, leave aside what the batters must be thinking after the manic Day 1 of the India vs South Africa second Test at Newlands in Cape Town. Think about the fans. Everyone will have a story to tell. It was one of those “where were you when…” days in Test cricket. Where were you when South Africa were bowled out for 55 – their lowest Test score since readmission to international cricket in 1991? Where were you when Mohammed Siraj became the first Indian pacer to complete a five-wicket haul in the first session of a Test match? Where were you when 23 wickets – the most in South Africa – fell on the first day of a Test match? Where were you when India went from 153/4 to 153 all out losing six wickets – the most any team in any format has lost at the same score in international cricket – in 11 balls?
Ravi Shastri felt a “dump” would have been enough to miss the last six wickets of the Indian innings. Sachin Tendulkar was in disbelief seeing South Africa not only bat again on Day 1 but also lose three wickets in the second innings in between his way back home.
As entertaining as it may sound — Be honest, bowlers dominating proceedings is always more exciting. Seeing the stumps fly is always more adrenaline-rushing than the ball being whacked — the 23 wickets that fell on Wednesday in Newlands gave rise to two unavoidable questions
1) Where is Test match batting heading?
2) Did the pitch have the right balance between bat and ball?
There should be a third question too. What would have happened if the same thing transpired on an Indian pitch?
Drawing similarities between say an Ahmedabad turner and a Newlands unpredictable strip is not the best way forward to debate on Test pitches. Both are extremes and both should be looked at with a prism of doubt. The problem arises when turn is looked at with the corner of an eye while pace and steep bounce are considered tough Test match cricket. That’s as classist and unfair as it gets. Unpredictable awkward bounce or excessive lateral movement is as dangerous as low bounce or sharp square turn.
With the (unimportant) third question settled, now let’s come back to the original two questions. Did 23 wickets fall because of the pitch? No. Have modern-day batters forgotten how to bat in Test cricket? No.
Then? The answer to this is never straightforward. When two sides get all out on the same day of the Test match and three more wickets tumble in one of their second innings, it cannot be because of the pitch alone, neither can it be due to poor application of the batters. It’s a combination of both. But like in most scenarios, there is always a dominating contributor and in this case, it was the pitch.
There were obvious instances like the one David Bedingham got from Siraj or how it was impossible for Ravindra Jadeja to control the awkwardly bouncing delivery from Lungi Ngidi or when Yashasvi Jaiswal, despite getting in line of the ball and offering a straight bat, couldn’t keep it from tricking back onto his stumps.
But let’s talk about the dismissals where it seemed like the pitch had no role in it but it actually did. Take the first dismissal of Aiden Markram into consideration. Siraj accessed the conditions pretty early. He knew with the unusually steep bounce on offer, Markram would not be able to play the cover drive on the up. After pushing him on the backfoot with a few away-going deliveries pitched on a good length, he bowled one on driving length. But because of the bounce, it was almost impossible for Markram to plant his front foot and drive. He was stuck on his crease and the ball swung to take the outside edge.
Remember, how Dean Elgar got out in the first innings? He chopped one back onto his stumps. What a poor shot, isn’t it? Not exactly. In this case, it was a combination of good tactics from India and the nature of the pitch. Siraj was working on a leg-side trap against Elgar while Bumrah had kept him guessing with the odd yorker. So steep was the bounce, that Elgar’s entire weight was always on the backfoot. When Siraj threw one wide, his hands went for the shot but his feet didn’t move. The same Elgar was creaming those deliveries through the off-side in Centurion because it didn’t have this much bounce.
A good indicator of too much bounce on a pitch is how many LBW and bowled dismissals are taking place. Out of the 23 wickets, only two were bowled and that too because either the ball was dragged onto the stumps or the high bat angle made the ball trickle onto it. Getting an LBW seemed impossible. Teams were reluctant to go for DRS even when the batters were hit below the knee roll not too far away from the crease.
“I’ve never seen the pitch that quick on day one,” said Ashwell Prince, South Africa’s batting consultant, who played 11 of his 66 Test matches, as well as most of his domestic career, at Newlands and is currently coach of Western Province, based at the ground.
“As a batsman you don’t mind pace in the wicket if the bounce is consistent but the bounce was a little bit inconsistent. You expect a bit of seam movement on day one but seam movement with inconsistent bounce is a different situation. Sometimes it happens that a great bowling line-up bowls out a team cheaply but if both batting line-ups can’t bat there’s something wrong.”
Prince said the conditions had taken South Africa by surprise, prompting them to bat in bright sunshine.
“There was a bit of grass on the pitch but the tendency at Newlands is for it to take spin later on so it made sense to bat. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen how the pitch would play.”
Siraj, who picked up 6/15 in the first innings, said he trusted the pitch to do the hard task for him. “On these wickets, where the ball is doing so much, often bowlers tend to think, ‘let me try and bowl an outswinger darting from leg to off or get one to bend back from an angle but one should just stick to one line. If you hit areas, wickets will come automatically. If you try many things, you can get confused,” he said.
Does that mean the pitch justifies India losing six wickets for no runs? Of course not but again, it played a part. KL Rahul’s dismissal may seem like a careless waft outside off stump but in reality, it was a percentage shot and one any top batter would attempt in such a scenario. Rahul did all the right things there. He got into position, got his hands high and tried to go up and over instead of keeping it down. But despite all that height – Rahul is a tall man – he failed to match the bounce of the ball. It rose more than his expectation and instead of the middle of the bat, caught the outside edge.
One can debate about the quality of India’s lower order but the one Bumrah got from Ngidi would have got any top-order batter out. The bounce was unreal. Taking nothing away from Ngidi but before he bowled the triple-wicket maiden starting the mayhem, he had leaked 30 runs in his six overs. He lacked rhythm, bowled at least two boundary balls every over and never looked like getting a wicket. The seventh over that he bowled was no doubt his best but if that Newlands pitch was not by his side, the story could well have been different.
A Test pitch should not give ammunition to bowlers. Despite not being in rhythm, bowlers know they are one magical delivery away from getting a wicket. Barring Rabada, this has been the story of pretty much all the other South African bowlers in this series. They bowled boundary balls, failed to build pressure but have somehow produced unplayable deliveries resulting in wickets.
Another problem with such pitches is that a batter is never settled. Virat Kohli was batting like a dream for 46. If there was an award for the most attractive 40 in Test cricket, he sure would have been a candidate. But out of nowhere, Rabada got one to bite off the surface coupled with bounce and kiss his outside edge.
The popular belief is that the pitches like these get easier to bat as the Test match progresses but the question here is how long do we wait for that to happen? Two innings and 23 wickets is surely not the answer.
[ad_2]
Source link