Yet another Test by spin on the cards

Rohit Mahajan

Tribune news service

Nagpur, November 24

At nets today, the South Africans uprooted the stumps from their usual position and planted them around four feet back, and thus moved the batsman’s position backward too. This left a deep rough in front of the batsman. Then they sought the brightest young spinners of the Nagpur region and asked them to bowl in the rough.

Thus, several teen spinners of Nagpur beat and dismissed South Africa’s top batsmen today. “I got Morkel out,” said a tall off-spinner, and another added: “I beat AB de Villiers.” But then came the lad who declared: “I got Faf du Plessis twice!”

Yet, the lads aren’t elated, for they know what the South Africans were trying. “They wanted to practice on the rough wicket, so our getting them out wasn’t a big deal,” said an off-spinner.

At one point, 10 young spinners were queuing up to bowl to the South Africans. There were two left-arm spinners and two leg-spinners — the rest were all off-spinners.

The high number of the off-spinners signified the fear the South Africans hold of Ravichandran Ashwin, India’s lead spinner.

Spin Test?

And so here we go again: The discourse, inevitably, turns to the pitch. That’s been a recurring theme of this Test series, and it’s become tiresome — you make a resolution to avoid yet another analysis of the pitch, and then realise that the pitch is the only thing everyone is talking about.

There have been only four days of cricket in the Test series so far, the first Test ending in three days and the second being washed out after the first. One full Test over five days can have more than 450 overs. In this series, only 332 overs have been bowled so far. But that has been enough to destroy the notion that South Africa would be the favourites to win this Test series. After they beat India in the T20I and ODI series, they were installed as the favourites for the Test series as well. That view has been hastily withdrawn and forgotten — largely because their batsmen have displayed unbelievable ineptitude against India’s spinners. (And we might add that the Indian batsmen have been strangely frail against spin, too.)

Among South Africa’s several problems against spin, one has been the most conspicuous — they’ve failed to read the ball out of the bowler’s hand.

As Virat Kohli pointed out today, India’s top spinner Ashwin has stuck to the basics. He’s avoided the “mystery” tricks like the carrom ball or the doosra. Yet, the South Africans have been mystified by his bowling, and also by Ravindra Jadeja and Amit Mishra.

“It was probably the lack of turning balls that got us out,” South Africa captain Hashim Amla said today. “As a batter, when you see a ball turn, it does make you aware that the ball is turning… But when you leave one and it doesn’t turn, you don’t look too good.” No, it’s worse — if you’re a top-order batsman and get out in that manner, you look terrible. Both Amla and du Plessis suffered this fate in Mohali.

Amla said he and his batsmen were working hard to make sure that they “play the ball as you see it and not play a ball that you imagine”.

Will they manage to play the ball as they see it rather than as they imagine it?

Which all-rounder?

Can Punjab’s Gurkeerat Mann get to play in this game? That possibility does exist.

In theory, said Kohli, he prefers to have one allrounder in the XI. “Where pitches are seamer-friendly, you can have a set combination with the seamer all-rounder fitting in,” he said.

In Bengaluru, Ishant Sharma was the main pacer, and Kohli opted for both the seam and spin allrounders — Stuart Binny and Ravindra Jadeja. Here, with the importance of pace diminished by the dusty and dry wicket, Binny could be superfluous to India’s needs. Will Kohli replace him with a paceman (Umesh Yadav) or a spinner (Mann)?

For South Africa, the writing is on the wall if they are to win the series — they must win here and then in Delhi to take the series. They’ve got to win in Nagpur without Dale Steyn — Amla’s words nearly confirmed that Steyn won’t play here because of his groin injury.

South Africa had flown a huge, towering fast bowler as a back-up to Steyn —Marchant de Lange was at it at the nets today, bowling his quick ones. But towards the end of the day, he too started bowling off-spinners to his batsmen to help them with a bit more spin. That was an odd sight. This also suggested how far things have changed since the last match of the One-day series which South Africa won — now, South Africa have been caught in an obsessive cycle of spin.

Hope it’s not like the last time here: Kohli

The last time the Indian team came to play a Test in Nagpur, they were in a deep hole, trailing England 1-2. They needed to win here to save the series. So they ordered a wicket that would turn square. They played only one fast bowler, Ishant Sharma, and loaded the team with spinners - R Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha, Piyush Chawla and Ravindra Jadeja. Ojha shared the new ball with Ishant as England batted first. But it was a terrible wicket - it was so slow, shot-making was impossible. England made 330 and India put up 326. On the first day, only 199 runs were made in 97 overs; on the second day, 218 runs were made in 90 overs. The third day was a pain - Dhoni and Kohli batted most of the day, but India added just 210 in 89.1 overs. Then India waited for the wicket to crack and the ball to turn square - but nothing happened. It became easier to bat on, and England made 352/4 in 154 overs.  “It ended up being a very boring Test match,” Kohli said today. “There was no sort of result possibilities, nothing happening in the wicket and as cricketers it is very difficult to motivate yourself when the wicket plays like that.”

The story goes that the curator, Praveen Hingnikar, was tearful and deeply remorseful for inadvertently creating a pitch that caused the dull draw, and the first series defeat to England after 1984.