The curious case of fast bowlers in India

Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad

Again there was a period where India again lacked quality fast bowlers until the likes of Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad burst on to the scene. Javagal Srinath was the second Indian pace bowler after Kapil Dev to take 200 Test wickets. During India’s tour of South Africa in 1996, he clocked a speed of 156 km/h (97 mph) and he also clocked 93mph at the 1999 World Cup. He is the leading wicket taker for India in the World Cups (1992, 1996, 1999 & 2003) with 44 wickets. Venkatesh Prasad could not emulate the success of Srinath, but these two combined were a potent force, which has won India many matches.

Zaheer Khan

Coming to the modern era, Zaheer Khan has been the only bowler who has played over 78 test matches and has scalped over 271 wickets and comes second best to Kapil Dev, albeit only in terms of the number of matches played and wickets taken. He is the only fast bowler who has found success after the retirement of Srinath.

Irfan Pathan

However, India has not been able to find a bowler who can replace Zaheer. Yes, Zaheer is still raring to go, but age is not on his side and can at best continue for one or two years. Irfan Pathan was the man for the job when he made his sensational debut in the Border Gavaskar trophy in Australia. He did carry on for a brief period, but he was pressurized to improve his batting (by promoting him to no.3 in some crucial situations) and had a lot of injuries, after which he was never the same.

Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav

In the current scenario, Ishant Sharma is the only bowler who comes close to spear heading the Indian fast bowling attack, but is consistently plagued with injuries and poor form. If one looks beyond Ishant, we can find Umesh Yadav, who shows a lot of promise but again fitness has been a concern. To make an impact, a fast bowler must play as many matches as possible, for this, he needs to be fit. One of the primary concerns of fast bowlers is that they often get injured. Sometimes, they rush their comebacks without full recovery and rehabilitation. This leads to further injuries which can be detrimental to the career of a fast bowler. Also some fast bowlers change their game plan after coming back from injuries, like Munaf Patel, who was bowling consistently in the 140kmph range, but reduced his pace to 125 – 130kmph so that he could avoid injuries and be consistent with his line and length.

This also forces us to think whether we need to have a mentor for young bowlers, preferably a retired fast bowler with international experience. But didn’t Dennis Lillee work with the MRF pace foundation for nurturing fast bowlers from a young age? The MRF Pace Foundation has produced fast bowlers like Javagal Srinath, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel, Venkatesh Prasad, Rudra Pratap Singh, Zaheer Khan and Shanthakumaran Sreesanth. Among these, Irfan Pathan, Munaf Patel and Rudra Pratap Singh did wonderfully well when they first made it to the Indian team and then again, injury, loss of form took away the edge that they had and are struggling to make a comeback to the Indian team.

This suggests that a bowler needs guidance even after having played on the biggest stage. This can be done by establishing fast bowling academies (akin to the NCA) focused exclusively on the group of around 10 fast bowlers who play for India on a regular basis. Camps can be held during the break between series, where they can be coached on how to remain fit, keep the injuries to a minimum and enhance their area of specialty, i.e. a bowler who bowls above 140kmph needs encouragement to push his pace further and add an element of swing to his bowling, a bowler who is good at swinging the ball but with limited pace needs to be encouraged to enhance this ability of his and also to add some tricks in his repertoire so that he can perform even better.

Hope the BCCI takes some immediate actions to stop this dearth of fast bowlers in India.