By: Drcricket7 Staff
India’s lack of application against the Sri Lankan spinners in the Galle Test match has once again raised the question if the current generation of cricketers have forgotten the art of playing a quality spin bowling attack.
There are elements in the fraternity, who firmly believe that the Indian pitches don’t assist spinners anymore. It has led to a huge dearth of quality spinners in the country. And, the logic given is that this in turn is depriving the domestic batsmen to play against the superior spinners.
As if, it’s intrinsic to prepare the spinning tracks at home all the time. For the record, India have always struggled to counter spin during the Murali Muralitharan days in Sri Lanka. In fact, India’s inability to dominate spinners in Lanka has also hampered their chances of a win a series for a very long time.
Of course, India had some reputed Test batsmen, who were masters of the game when it came to handling top quality spinner. Still, they struggled in Sri Lanka and around that time the Indian domestic cricket harbored the spin tracks.
Thereafter, a series of Test defeats in Australia and South Africa led to a thinking that the Indian domestic cricket needs quicker pitches. The BCCI sub-committee sent out directives to ensure sporting tracks for every domestic games without any interference from the domestic captain.
Now, if India do badly in Sri Lanka, will BCCI instruct the curators to prepare turning tracks at home? In this state of confusion, there is no harm if India play to their strength when they host South Africa in October this year.
But one Test match defeat or a series loss shouldn’t change the whole culture of playing domestic cricket on the sporting pitches, which took really long time to initiate. India may have lost the 1st Test, but can do well in rest of the two Test matches in Colombo.
The second match of the series at the P Sara Oval is even poised. India did reasonably well with the bat and putting ample pressure on the host, who are desperate to celebrate Kumar Sangakkara’s last hurrah in Test cricket with a win. India’s top two spinners — Ravichandran Ashwin and Amit Mishra — are doing just fine with the ball. The only thing to change: Stop blaming the system when the chips are down!
