What’s it with left-arm pacers and wickets in the first/second over of a match? What is it indeed?
David Willey has 65 wickets in his first over in all T20s, followed by Shaheen Afridi (62), Mohammad Amir (55) and Trent Boult (50). The last-named also has the most first-over wickets (33) in the IPL. Mitchell Starc (26), the towering Australian, is second only to James Anderson (29) for the most wickets in their first over of a Test and heads the list when it comes to ODIs, also with 26 strikes. Guess what all these individuals serve up.
Now, throw Arshdeep Singh into the mix. The Indian left-arm swing exponent’s dismissal of Devon Conway in the first T20I in Nagpur on Wednesday was a record 28th time he had taken a wicket for the county in the first two overs of an innings. Just a few days previously, he had dismissed Henry Nicholls in the first over of the final ODI in Indore. In a way, it was a comeback to 50-over internationals for the 26-year-old, who had taken five wickets in the three-match series against South Africa in November-December, only to sit out the first two ODIs against New Zealand.
Arshdeep is perhaps the most standout example of not getting enough game time in the last year and half, coinciding with Gautam Gambhir’s ascension as India’s head coach. India’s highest wicket-taker in T20Is has featured in a little over 60% of the matches under the Suryakumar Yadav-Gambhir dispensation; he has also figured in just under 45% of all ODIs in the same era, which is hard to imagine given that he is far and away India’s most competent and consistent white-ball pacer after Jasprit Bumrah.
It’s no secret that Arshdeep is at his most dangerous when he is operating with the new ball, both to left-handers and right because he has the admirable ability to swing the ball away from the former and into the latter. He has age on his side, hasn’t played a whole lot of first-class cricket (just 22 matches since his debut for Punjab six years ago) and hasn’t had a long history of injuries, therefore he doesn’t need ‘preserving’ and ‘managing’ like, say, a Bumrah or a Hardik Pandya. Arshdeep is at that stage of his cricketing journey where the more he plays, the better he will get. And yet, for no obvious discernible reason, he watched from the sidelines as New Zealand piled on the runs in the first two games – not enough to prevent India from scoring a four-wicket in Vadodara despite piling up 300 in match one, but muscular enough to make India’s 284 in the next outing in Rajkot look positively miniscule.
India’s most dangerous bowler in those two matches, and in the decider in Indore, was Mohammed Siraj, on the comeback trail after having been left out of the South Africa series. In 27 overs, he conceded only 124 runs, outstanding considering that New Zealand’s scoring rate in the three fixtures were 6.00, 6.02 and 6.74 respectively. Maybe there was a case for resting Siraj for the South Africa ODIs because he had played in all four home Tests, against West Indies and the Proteas, and he showed that he is still the obvious lieutenant to Bumrah in the longer white-ball format.
Siraj’s comrades in arms in the first two of those three faceoffs against New Zealand were Harshit Rana and Prasidh Krishna. In a lot of ways, they are very similar types of bowlers, bustling and of the hit-the-deck variety where Siraj is a more rounded prospect and Arshdeep offers so many different nuances apart from just swing with the new ball. For one thing, his angle, left-arm over. For another, his propensity to nail yorkers at the death and to mix up his pace superbly. Arshdeep has an ODI economy of 5.38 to go with 25 wickets in 15 games, so why would one play two almost identical bowlers in Rana (who can hit the ball a long way, as he showed during his maiden half-century in Indore) and Prasidh and pass up the opportunity to unleash a potential match-winner?
The Arshdeep situation is just one of many instances where India’s team selection has been confusing, if not questionable. Even in the Virat Kohli-Ravi Shastri management age when India didn’t repeat a Test XI for nearly 35 games, one could see a certain logic in the way the duo went about things, even if one didn’t necessarily agree with the methodology. With Gambhir, alongside Shubman Gill in Tests and ODIs since June, and with Suryakumar in T20Is from July 2024 onwards, it’s hard to see a great deal of method in what can be construed as madness. Cricket, more than any other sporting endeavour, is a game of numbers and it is sheerly on numbers and results that players, teams and coaching staff are judged. It can’t be any other way. It’s fanciful to want to entertain and play a thrilling brand of positive cricket – aka ‘Bazball’ – and expect to be absolved of blame when, in espousing the mantra of all-out aggression, defeat comes with the certainty and regularity of night following day. Or is it the other way round? Whether one likes it or not, cricketers and coaches will be estimated on the back of what outcomes they facilitate.
In football, for instance, creative midfielders and sturdy, uncompromising defenders attract nearly, but not quite, the same admiration and respect as the poachers, the born goalscorers who, through habit and experience, have mastered the knack of being in the right place at the right time. Many of these midfielders won’t necessarily be the most prolific scorers, several of these defenders will primarily get on the scoresheet when they deliver from set-pieces, but they are still considered in the top echelons because such is the nature of the sport.
Cricketers don’t enjoy the same luxury. For them, to put it bluntly, it is perform or perish. And performances come in tangible shapes – runs scored, fifties and hundreds stacked up, wickets taken, five-wicket hauls and 10-wicket bags and, in the 20-over landscape, economy rate. Likewise, coaches are ranked on the basis of what their outfits achieve in terms of victories and silverware. In his year and a half in charge, Gambhir has had reasonable trysts with both these necessities, but he has also courted a fair amount of failure, some of which the pundits have attributed to a lack of consistency when it comes to team selection.
Under Gambhir, India’s Test series wins have come at home – against Bangladesh in his very first outing in September 2024 and against West Indies in October, both 2-0 sweeps. Ultimate success in limited-overs competitions are headlined by unbeaten runs in the desert sands of the Emirates in the 50-over Champions Trophy and the T20 Asia Cup, in March and September 2025 respectively. But around these sparkling triumphs are a litany of defeats too – 1-3 in a five-Test series in Australia (India’s first series loss down under since 2014-15) but most damagingly, a 0-3 drubbing against New Zealand at home in October-November 2024 and a 0-2 pounding at the hands of South Africa last November.
There is no immediate threat to Gambhir, but the former opener will be well aware of the scrutiny he will be under.
| Photo Credit:
K.R. Deepak
The defeat to New Zealand was India’s home series loss in a dozen years, their first ever capitulation in their own backyard to the Kiwis, and the first time they had lost all matches in a series of more than two Tests. South Africa’s 2-0 sweep was their first series victory in India in a quarter of a century. India were once the unconquerables on their own patch, the aura of invincibility built over time through bossing of familiar conditions and the confidence and knowledge that their opponents had to play at better than their best repeatedly to best them. Now, India are hesitant and diffident and timid and fearful, especially on designer tracks laid out in the mistaken notion that India’s batters continue to be masters against the turning ball when reality and the slew of defeats clearly suggests otherwise.
As if all these firsts weren’t debilitating enough came a 1-2 loss to New Zealand in the ODI series that concluded on Sunday, also the first time the Kiwis had pulled the rug from their hosts’ feat on Indian soil. Viewed in isolation, the result shouldn’t be such a massive downer – contextually, the series had little meaning, and India rested Bumrah, Pandya and Axar Patel with an eye and a half on the defence of their T20 World Cup crown, which will begin in Mumbai on February 7 against United States. But India still had a gun batting line-up – former skippers Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, new captain Gill, his returning deputy Shreyas Iyer and K.L. Rahul, who stepped up to mastermind a 2-1 victory over South Africa late last year when Gill was out nursing a neck injury.
One would think this batting group would comfortably shade whatever total the Kiwis posted, but despite Kohli’s sustained brilliance, that wasn’t the case. India didn’t help their cause by not necessarily putting out the most prudent XI, nor was Kuldeep Yadav, the middle-overs wicket-taker, going off the boil the best development. Working one’s way around realistic possibilities of loss of form is where true mettle lies; India were sadly found wanting and while the players must and will cop the lion’s share of the blame, the backroom staff under Gambhir can’t hope to get away scot-free. If bouquets are accepted gratefully in success, brickbats in failures are inevitable and must be taken in the same spirit.
There is, it’s almost certain, no immediate threat to Gambhir the head coach, but the spunky former opener will be well aware of the scrutiny he will be under, perhaps more than even the players themselves, at the home T20 World Cup. Should India fail to make an impression (read: at least reach the final), public memory isn’t so short that it will be readily written off as a one-off. Gambhir needs his wards to rise to the challenge and the occasion, as much for his sake as their own. But he can also facilitate that process, alongside Sitanshu Kotak and Morne Morkel and Ryan ten Doeschate and T. Dileep, through clarity of thought and meticulousness in planning – characteristics that helped Rohit and Rahul Dravid forge a winning combination.
