Indian cricket – Is a disaster looming?

Well, the joyous moments are seemingly over. Team India, under the superb leadership of Dhoni, had displayed wonderful winning performances during the last 8-9 months. They had successfully helped this cricket mad country to overcome the blot of match fixing. But then, against all the inflated hopes of millions of fans, our recent pathetic performances in South Africa have come as a big shock.

It is really not a big deal when a team loses a couple of ODIs. But the real challenge lies ahead. Honestly, I simply do not believe that our bowling squad (Zaheer Khan included) will ever be able to take 20 wickets in any of the upcoming tests. Period. I understand many of my friends will term this as being pessimistic. But the bitter bowling dilemma is clearly visible. Now let us try to find out the ground reality.

In the last few months, team India’s fighting spirit was on its peak, but then what has happened now? Perhaps, it is the lack of consistency. On a positive note, we have the best leadership and a tremendously improved fielding side. However, what we are lacking is an immaculate plan for developing pacers. BCCI should generate a passion for bowling as well. Our growth in all forms of the game has been tremendous. But this appears to be high time to overcome our ever present bowling woes and to take concrete initiatives as we try to defend the world cup title.

Whenever one or two decent fast bowlers are found, the media creates a lot of hype. But the youngsters fail to deliver consistently. It is really pinching that we might miss an opportunity to become world champs due to a poor bowling attack. Can’t we find a few good bowlers out of 1.2 billion people? Despite having nationwide cricket madness and decent infrastructure, why are we lagging behind in terms of bowling? We have the world’s richest sports control board!

The spirit of billions of fans supporting the game has perhaps not proved enough for the administrators to develop an effective mechanism to sort out the problems!

Recently, someone had given a very crude but relevant argument that in comparison to our batsmen, no Indian bowler has ever come close in terms of earnings. Unless there is an additional incentive, no parent or coach will prefer to waste time and energy in developing a fast bowler, which requires a lot of sweat and toil – day in day out. Apart from keeping a tight schedule for the daily net practice, a fast bowler has to take care of his fitness. Injuries are an integral part of the game, but a pacer has to be extra cautious.

Also, not only does a pacer have to develop the killing instinct, but there remains an additional responsibility to ensure that the economy rate remains under control. To achieve these demanding requirements, a hell lot of a hard work, determination, and commitment are required. Unfortunately, being a hot country, the physique and built required to become a world class pacer is lacking.

But I personally feel that the biggest and burning most problem is clear lack of availability of bouncy pitches in India. In fact, owing to secure their own vested interests, the administrators have never given a serious consideration of actually making fast tracks. Most of the time, the curators are instructed to prepare dust bowls, suitable for our spinners. But have we developed good spinners either?

So far so good, but after undergoing a lot of experimentation of trying a whole bunch of spinners, we simply do not have a single reliable spinner like Anil Kumble! Also, this remains a hard core fact that the spinners are effective only in the sub continent. Also, with the exposure the foreigners get while playing spin bowling in the IPL, the secret behind a spinning ball has lost its sheen. Even the new techniques like doosra or carom ball or delayed ball have failed to spread magic. After Kumble, the charm of spin is fading in India. But the problems are deeper.

The way our capable batsmen are proving inconsistent time and again, it is certainly not a good omen! Without hurting the feelings, I just intend to repeat a pretty old saying that there is a very thin line between the self esteem and over confidence. Hope our star batsmen will be able to read the message between the lines, loud and clear.

Incidentally, football is still the most popular game in the world in terms of revenue and viewership. The younger generation of this country has recently displayed their wisdom in opting for a change, for example, Delhi elections. Cricket is still their preference but no one should take this for granted. The time is running out fast and so is the patience of millions. Indian cricket is in trouble. This is high time to act fast for all concerned.