India's bowling conundrum

A demoralizing and humiliating 4-0 whitewash, India's first such loss overseas since their 3-0 loss to Australia in 1999. The team which had made a huge headway over the past couple of years collectively came down crashing against a team which was much more organized. The Indian bowling has always been a cause for concern. 

The bowling attack sans Zaheer has always struggled and this series was another example for the same. The failure of the batsmen did not help their cause either.

The spinners are struggling; the fast men are not consistent enough. Everyone knew that if India had to stay at the top of the rankings they need to develop a good bowling attack. India has failed to do the same and it showed in the current series. 

The Indian bowling unit was only able to dismiss England under 300 only once but their English counterparts achieved the same 7 times out of 8. This showed a huge gulf between the two sides. The Indian team came to this series with Zaheer, Praveen, Ishant, Munaf and Harbajan. The lineup looked decent on paper but when Zaheer pulled out on the first morning of the Lords test all hell broke loose.

The Indian bowling was clueless, hardly consistent and except for couple of good performances completely lacked penetration. The future looks bleak and it does not seem like India will remain anywhere close to the top of the rankings in the near future. India needs to develop bowlers if they need to have any chance of turning this around. 

The starting point would be to pull the young bowlers out of IPL and champions trophy. India needs to identify some fine prospects from domestic cricket and send them on A tours and also possibly allow them to play in the county cricket to improve their skills.

The change should start at the senior level. Sachin, Dravid and Laxman should set an example by missing the IPL or Champions trophy to prepare for series ahead. Zaheer should follow suite in the bowling department. Zaheer has been so injury prone that if he needs to be fit for international series he needs to manage his workload better. This will set an example for the bowlers like Varun Aaron, Deepak Chahar, and Umesh Yadav etc. to concentrate on international cricket and work hard on fitness. These are the future of Indian cricket and should be shown the proper way to succeed.

It’s time for BCCI to put the welfare of the Indian cricket ahead of money making leagues. If some changes do not happen in the coming months, we may have well seen the end of the golden period in Indian cricket. It will be sad to see India falling back to the middle of the table after such a glorious couple of years at the top. I just hope some sense prevails and something is done to improve the standards and develop youngsters for the future.

Article by: Giridharan Subramanian