The Friday Column

Playing spin, and selfish batsmen

Rahul Bhatia

August 27, 2004

Perhaps numbers never do reveal the full story, but they tell a large part of it. Every Friday, The Numbers Game will take a look at statistics from the present and the past, busting myths and revealing hidden truths:

Putting a different spin on things
India have been accused of many things, but one aspect of their game that had not been questioned was their ability to play spin. So it was surprising to hear John Wright say that the team did not handle spin well. Well, it turns out that he was half right. Since August 2003, during the second half of the game, India have tended to struggle against spin, and even that's putting it mildly: spinners' averages have come down by half, they pick up twice as many wickets, and as the season has progressed, India's unease against spin has been more pronounced, as they played out overs for fewer and fewer runs.

Sanjay Manjrekar recently suggested that when India played on fast tracks abroad for a while before coming home, the batsmen inevitably struggled against slower bowlers. Manjrekar's theory has credence: for most of the last season, India played on quick wickets and flat ones, but rarely on the kind of turners found in Sri Lanka and the one in Amsterdam. Almost immediately, the Indians struggled, and the spinners had a chance to turn the tables. Strike rates dropped remarkably, and so did averages. But to wipe out an entire history of playing spin well, based on the results of a few matches on worn-out tracks, is not only harsh, but just as unreasonable as taking India's scores in the five-game Pakistan series (299) and using them as a sample to "prove" their batting superiority over everyone else.

Even then, it's easy to see why John Wright suggested the team could not cope with spin. Could it be the frustration of watching his team failing to chase small totals in their last two games, and losing 13 wickets to the spinners? To put things in perspective, it's this: of the 43 wickets India lost to spin since August 1 last year, 30% have fallen in the last two games.

Speaking of average scores, guess where playing in Sri Lanka stands in India's list of favorites since 2001? It's at No. 3, and if you don't count New Zealand, where the pitches were, quite frankly, awful (India averaged 150 there), India's average score of 201 is lower only in West Indies, where they manage 190 a game.

Batting for yourself
Earlier this week, Matthew Hayden fired a salvo at Indian batsmen, claiming they put personal ambition over the team goal. This remark caused a bit of consternation, considering that India's batsmen scored fairly quickly. But a closer look at the strike rates of batsmen revealed something entirely new: the way Australian batsmen play one-dayers.

As the strike rates show, Hayden and Adam Gilchrist keep the aggression going all the way. Even Ricky Ponting scores his first 70 at nearly a run a ball, before launching into the bowling as a hundred is on the horizon. It's not an approach followed by the Indians, who start slowly, but as they approach a hundred, tend to speed up. Perhaps what Hayden meant was that Indians tend to take their time playing themselves in, before accelerating towards the end.

Rahul Bhatia is on the staff of Wisden Cricinfo. He'll be playing The Numbers Game while S Rajesh is away.

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