THE SPECTACULAR TWO-DAY SHOW

A test that ended in two days. A heavily talked about pitch. Spinners taking 28 wickets out of the 30 that fell. The 3rd test match of the India-England series at the Motera had it all. It was a bowling paradise, and as one watched the match wickets kept falling like dominoes. The analysis follows:

Out of the 28 wickets taken by the spinners, 15 wickets were to straight balls, and 13 wickets fell to deliveries that turned well. The Chennai pitch was different in this respect. Most of the balls turned a lot. But at the Motera, the combination of the pink ball and the pitch accounted for this uncertainty. This represents the batsman’s conundrum. When the batsman can’t judge whether the ball is going to turn or not, how will he play it? The following table perfectly represents the varied nature of the fallen wickets. Now, as a batsman, what would be the strategy? 

The way to counter the situation would be to either go right to the pitch of the ball or to play it as late as possible, so that the behaviour of the ball would be nullified or the batsman will have some time to know what it will do. So, in accordance, the right move would be to step down as much as possible and play or stay deep in the crease and wait for the ball to come to you. Here is where both the teams made a mistake. The batsmen of both teams just came on the front foot and tried to defend the ball out. This strategy was risky as the ball was behaving unpredictably. Also, as evidenced by the second innings of the Indian team, a bit of attacking might have also worked. When the bowler is bowling consistently on a good line and length and the pitch is also assisting him, if you defend constantly and maybe get beat a few times, the pressure piles up on you. But if you try to attack him a bit, maybe step down and hit on over his head, you’re forcing the bowler out of his rhythm and making him think something new, therefore you would be able hang in there and survive longer. I personally feel that the step down tactic would have been better in this match than the sweep shot strategy. Since the ball is not turning for about half the time, the step down would be a safer shot to play than the sweep. If the sweep is played, it brings LBW and being bowled into the picture. Although getting stumped is a risk while playing the step down, in this case it would have been a better option compared to the sweep.

The batsmen in this match did some slight mistakes while getting out to the straight balls. The bat was a bit late in coming down, or there was a slight bat-pad gap. Since they were playing for the turn, these mistakes were committed. Also, they could have made one small change in the defence which is shown below:

There are two slight variations while playing the front foot defence: One is ”bat beside the pad” and the other is “bat in front of the pad”. Note that there is no bat-pad gap in both of these, they are just small variations of the stroke.

Bat beside the pad is preferred when there is lot of turn and bounce and you don’t push the bat out to prevent edges. Generally the bat will be slightly more in front when the ball is coming on normally. In this match, the batsmen were keeping the bat close to the pad while playing the front foot defense. My thinking is that if they had brought the bat down a bit quicker and played with the bat a little more in front, without the bat-pad gap, it would have prevented the LBWs and Bowleds to the straight balls. Even if the ball turned, the ball was turning heavily in this match. So the chance of the ball edging the bat would also be ruled out.

There was one main difference between the Indian bowlers and the English bowlers. The Indian bowlers were very good in their line and length and their consistency was extraordinary, especially Axar Patel. Though the English bowlers bowled great balls too, but they were not regularly bowling on the correct spots and gave away loose balls sometimes. This released the pressure on the batsmen, and that made a big difference. But, one thing has to be said, the bowlers in both sides performed brilliantly in the match, whatever the pitch may be.

Finally, coming to the done-to-death topic, the pitch. The comparison between the difficulty of seaming pitches and spinning pitches is somewhat valid, but the fact is that the ball is more in play on a spinning pitch. More balls are left alone on a seaming pitch due to the swing and bounce whereas on a spinning pitch the ball is spinning considerably and there is a necessity to play the ball as the line and length of a spinner is such that it makes the batsman play the ball. In the end, it was an awesome test match between two superb teams, and will be remembered memorably.