Can India handle pace bowlers?

For the last many years India is struggling to stamp its authority in overseas conditions. India has won a few matches and series overseas but has never been consistent. Even on flat sub continental tracks, at times India has missed the bowling fire power to take 20 wickets. Actually, India has been missing a genuine quick bowler who can give you wickets on his own and trouble the batsmen with his pace.

It is not as if India has never had good bowlers. India has had a few good swing bowlers in their ranks but rarely a one who can be termed as genuine quick and can run through sides and this is the problem that has got unsolved as we go down in another overseas test match at Manchester.  

The issue with the swing bowlers who are low on pace, like the Indians have always had is that once the ball becomes older then more often than not their swing will not be utilized until the next new ball unlike a quick bowler who can extract some reverse swing at a healthy pace to become lethal even on flat tracks when the ball gets older. If reverse swing is also not happening, he can test the batsmen with quick short stuff and it is a fact that no batsman in the world, irrespective of his stature and ranking, does not like  to be tested with quick short stuff. The wickets of Gary Balance and Moeen Ali in the first innings of the fourth test and the England second innings collapse at Lords against the short ball are prime examples of what pace can do.

Just think of a kid who was born in mid eighties in India and started following cricket in early nineties would have seen Jawagal Srinath as quickest in India and Wasim Akram , Waqar Younis, Allen Donald and a few others bowling quicker for the erst of the world. As the kid grew older in late nineties and twenties and started understanding cricket, he saw the emergence of new quickies such as Shoaib Akhtar, Brett Lee and Dale Steyn for the rest of the world. Now this kid started questioning if India can produce genuine quick bowlers?

With the advent of IPL, one thought that the question was answered in the form of Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav, two of the quickest bowlers India has right now. But sadly, India has not found a way to utilize these two bowlers and the team management has not been able to find a combination which has place for both especially in test matches to show the world that India can produce fast bowlers. Agreed that these two may be a bit erratic at times but these are attacking bowlers.

Ask a captain for his choice over a bowler’s figure of 0 for 150 or 3 for 150 in a test innings and you will get the answer if the captain is thinking for winning the test match. But may be the Indian captain, coach and the team management think differently and believe that they require those bowlers who can give steady overs in a test match may be without taking wickets than a bloke who can bowl quick, can take wickets but can be a bit costly.

 In an interview  Shaoib Akhtar explained how Wasim Akram , the then captain of Pakistan, had told him to go out and bowl as quick as he can. The same advice was given to Akram and Waqar by Imran Khan which helped them becoming the legends they are today and one feels this is how the Shoaib Akhtars, Brett Lees and Dale Styens are discovered.

What it also shows is the defensive mindset of a captain who believes in stopping the flow of runs by spreading the field than by taking wickets and somehow the same thing is reflected in his team selections which shows that the team management does not have confidence in picking up two genuine fast bowlers and may be this is the reason that bolwers like Ihant and Munaf gave up on their pace after starting up at good speeds.

Throughout his growing days, that kid kept on thinking that given the batting legends India has produced had there been no division of India, India would have had the best cricket team in the world with the fast bowlers like Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shoaib Akhtar etc coming from the other side.  But now with this thinking, the hypothetical situation of this world beating Indian team is shattered because we might not have even selected these quick legends.  

So the question which comes up in front of all the cricket lovers who have grown up seeing the Indian medium pacers against the quickies from the rest of the world, BCCI and team India is that can we handle pace bowlers?

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