It's a tale of tails

It’s been a long, long time since man has evolved from monkeys (apes, to be precise) but even now, men are compared to monkeys very often (Indians and Aussies know better!). Let’s take a look at two pictures – one of a monkey and the other of a human (excuse me for my lack of scientific precision, if there be any, because that is not something you should expect from a sports writer). What is the basic difference that strikes your eyes? Yes, you guessed it right – the tail! Unlike monkeys, the tail has been reduced to vestigial flints in humans, commonly known as coccyx. Wondering what all this has to do with sports? Well, cricket has a tail! No, not what you are thinking about! To be a bit more precise, every batting side has a tail! Yes, I’m talking about tailenders – the bowlers who bat lower down the order.

So where does the tail start and where does it end? And what about its length? Well, the tail is said to start once either of the last recognized batting pair is dismissed. And it continues till the last player in the line-up. The tail doesn’t have a fixed length, it depends on the team line-up. Often the first tailender comes at 6 down or 5 down, i.e., he may bat at No.8 or No.7. Many teams which prefer to field 3 bowlers, have their first tailender coming at No.9.

There was a time in the 1990s when it was an untold custom for a team to play with 5 specialist bowlers. And why not? If you have the names of Courtney Walsh, Joel Garner, Dennis Lillee in the ranks, you will definitely be inclined to field a ‘long’ tail. However, once these greats had retired, there became a dearth of genuine fast bowlers as it is now, and the number of swing bowlers emerged. The likes of Waqar Younis and Wasin Akram touched new heights, so did spinners like Shane Warne and Muttiah Muralitharan. But with the decline of genuine pacers, the tail also started shortening. A bowling team could no longer terrify a batsman with continuous bouncers coming at over 150 km/h thanks to some stringent new rules which began to penalize the second bouncers in an over in One Day Internationals. In a situation such as this, you cannot blame a captain if he feels the need to strengthen his batting line-up at the expense of the tail.

Statisticians claim that it was Australia who first came up with the new trend of using 4 specialist bowlers instead of 5 – 3 pacers and a spinner. Soon, the new trend spread rapidly like a wild fire and an era emerged in the 21st century where a team generally fielded 4 specialist bowlers. The job of the fifth bowler was entrusted to an all-rounder and if not, then two or more part-timers shared the duty. This trend is followed even now by top teams like South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and Australia.

However, the advent of T20s gave a surprising twist to the tale of cricket. No sooner had the shortest format of the game gone viral, than there emerged a certain yearning for all-rounders (preferably, spinning all-rounders) among teams. A team packed with two or more all-rounders started believing that they had an edge over others. These all-rounders had to be incorporated into the team at the expense of tailenders, whose number was now reduced to 3! Occasionally, you’ll find a team fielding only 2 specialist bowlers so that their batting runs deep till No.9. Yes you are bound to feel the anxiety if you are a bowler, but the saddest part is something else. More often than not, the tailenders are expected to pull off a match by scoring some quick runs, no matter how badly their ‘enlarged’ batting order fails. That is why, a particular Ashish Nehra is criticized for swinging his bat at anything and everything in spite of being a fine bowler as he is. Let’s be honest here. Do you really expect your tail to fire? Is it justified enough to expect Nehra to do a Miandad every time he walks out to bat? Isn’t it over-demanding to expect Ishant Sharma to survive deadly bouncers from the likes of Dale Steyn?

Ask these questions to your mind, not your heart and you’ll get the answers. The finest example of a bowler losing his ways because of batting pressure is perhaps, Irfan Pathan. A young lad with decent pace and swing was suddenly asked to play the role of an opener just because he could manage a few runs at No.8! Isn’t it something that defies logic? And look at the consequences. Pathan lost his bowling prowess, failed to bat properly and was scraped out of the team for practically no fault of his!

Yes, that is the plight of tailenders in today’s world. Really disturbing, isn’t it?