India’s troubles against Afghans

Rohit Mahajan 

London, June 23

The scare India got against Afghanistan yesterday can be ascribed to a couple of reasons: One, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli didn’t get the runs they’re accustomed to getting; two, the Indian batting was rattled by the spin the Afghan spinners were getting on a moist wicket.

Thirty-two Indian batsmen have contributed 35,628 runs to Team India in ODI cricket in the last six years — of this number, well over half (18,079 runs) have been contributed by just three: Kohli (7,033), Rohit (6.265) and Shikhar Dhawan (5,411). In other words, if these three are to fail, India could well be half the team in batting.

Dhawan is out of the World Cup due to injury; Rohit got 1 run and Kohli 67 against Afghanistan yesterday. The others didn’t make up the deficit. India got an underwhelming 224 in 50 overs against the weakest team in the tournament.

Afghanistan’s spin

But Afghanistan had one strength, one power they had yesterday that they did not possess in the previous games — they got to bowl first in the morning under blazing sun, which was drying the moisture off the pitch. The rain over the previous few days, and the overnight dew made the ball grip the surface when Afghanistan bowled.

Off-spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman opened the bowling and ended up with stunning figures of 1/26 off 10 overs — incredibly enough, he conceded only one boundary. The second off-spinner, Mohammad Nabi, conceded only 33 in his 9 overs, and got rid of KL Rahul and Kohli. Leg-spinner Rashid Khan was slightly expensive, conceding 38 off 10 overs, picking up MS Dhoni, stumped. Rahman Shah, leg-spinner, picked up 1/22 off his 5. So, in 34 overs, Afghanistan’s spinners conceded only six fours, no sixers, giving away only 119 runs.

Later, Kohli said that he realised midway through the game that the pitch was not quite the batting beauty he expected it to be when he elected to bat first. “At the halfway stage, we had our doubts in our minds, but we also had self-belief in the change rooms,” he said. “As soon as I went in, I understood the pace of the pitch. Cross-batted shots aren’t on, and a lot of horizontal bat shots cost us on this pitch. You can’t take the game away from the opposition. You have to knock the ball around, and with three quality wrist-spinners, it was always difficult,” he added.

India’s struggle

So it was, but shouldn’t the Indian batsmen be more adept against spin bowling? Shouldn’t they have been more confident in trying to seek the runs against Nabi and Rashid and Co.? Well, yes, but the fact is that the top Indian batsmen rarely play domestic cricket where they could get some lessons on run-scoring against the spinning ball. They play a lot of T20 cricket, where the wickets are flat and it’s easy to swing the bat through the line of the ball, for there’s little or no deviation off the pitch. By the time India batted, the moisture was gone, the ball was thus not grabbing the pitch, and batting was easier.

Afghan skipper Gulbadin Naib later said that the team found the conditions to their liking for the first time in the tournament. “It’s really good surface, especially for the spinners… Mujeeb, Rashid, also Rahmat Shah, Nabi bowled really well,” Naib said. “Today I think the wicket is very good for the first half for the spinners, and the second half, the second inning is quite good for the batting.”

All this turned the contest on its head — the modestly-strongly Afghanistan nearly toppled hot favourites India.