Spin Kills, Where’s The Thrill?

In under a year, we’ve seen India lose multiple home Tests. If the series loss against New Zealand served as an eye-opener, the second West Indies Test going to the 5th day and the first South Africa Test ending in a loss have rubbed further salt into an already growing wound.

India seldom loses Tests at home. In fact, over the last decade and a half, it was so uncommon that it was akin to Bangalore being traffic-free. While we lost a home series under MS Dhoni to England, Virat Kohli’s era of captaincy saw unreal dominance, and even under Rohit, we were mostly okay, barring a couple of mishaps.

That was all until Gautam Gambhir took over, and we were whitewashed at home by New Zealand. The timing of it all seems too convenient, and people will go up in arms to bring Gautam Gambhir down. In all fairness, selection has been brave, but stupid at times, and the whole batting order shuffle, all-rounder priority and other shenanigans have been baffling to say the least.

Even with all of this, India had it coming for a while. It wasn’t a one-night stand or a drunken mistake, but rather a gradual and complete emotional breakdown with that one ex who we kept going back to, hoping for things to be different this time. They were called the “rank turner”.

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Rank turner was a lovely person, but their love had conditions. It required:

• Indian batters to be good players of spin
• Indian spinners to be better than the opposition’s spinners
• Most importantly, the ball to be bowled slightly quicker by spinners to produce anomalies or “pleasant surprises”, if you may

Even so, I hardly think this pitch was as much a “rank turner” as it was just not “well prepared” or “well maintained”?

Because how often do you see the second ball of the first over of the first innings stay criminally low and carry to the keeper on multiple bounces, and the following ball jump from a good length to shoulder height?!

But you know what? I’ll even leave the pitch out of the equation for this one, despite it being an important contributor in the relationship with losses (crazy how one ex creeps their way into the next phase of life when the trauma goes unresolved).

The fact of the matter still remains that India batted poorly. Some poor shot selection, coupled with a lack of patience and terrible application, had us gasping for breath while being choked by the Chokers themselves!

It undoubtedly is one of the toughest eras for batters to bat against spin in India. A major factor in this has been the anomalous behaviour of Indian pitches, as well as the faster-paced spin deliveries that have emerged in the post-COVID era.

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Yet, there also seems to be a shift in the behaviour of the pitches as well as the skill gap between spinners from both sides. Ravi Ashwin has retired. The other Indian spinners are young; they will learn. But Ravindra Jadeja’s still here; he even got wickets. But he will not vary the pace of his delivery. He will not learn from an opposition spinner like Simon Harmer.

Harmer looped it beautifully. Going about his work like a true artist. High-arm action, subtle changes across deliveries, but a very noticeable pace variation. Bowling loopy lollipops at sub 80kph speeds from time to time, enticing batters into false shots or vastly early defensive prods, with the bat eventually yearning for the touch of the leather that was late to arrive.

It isn’t a fluke that Harmer produced what he did in that first Test. There’s a reason he has over 1000 First-class wickets. He knew full well what he was up to. He also recognised early in the first innings that the slower delivery turned big & sharply too, and that the Indians were impatient and amateur in their approach for the most part against spin.

These are some of the degrees of spin Harmer achieved on Day 2. Only his top 5. Imagine how many more he spun this way.

And to me, this was what additionally stood out and eventually seemed to be the difference between the two teams. Of course, India did not bat all that well, and Bavuma-Bosch put on an incredible partnership. But Simon Harmer single-handedly varied his pace and got slower-paced deliveries to do an incredible job at playing with the Indian batters’ minds and techniques. Thereby making every other delivery from every other bowler a lot more potent.