Is it all about Speed?

Indian cricket team and genuine fast bowler are two phrases that very rarely appear in the same sentence, if at all. With the recent emergence of a few fast bowlers who could constantly bowl in the 140s, most people started to believe this was finally going to change for good. But unfortunately that hasn’t been the case, not so far at least. That raises a very important question – what good is speed without application? Is it any good to bowl juicy half-volleys at driving length outside off stump even if you are bowling at 155 kmph.

The current fast bowling scene of Indian cricket looks bleak. It has never in the last 10 years been so toothless and ineffective. The absence of a quality spinner like Kumble or even Harbhajan makes it worse. The Indian fast bowlers off late have been wayward at best. The likes of Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav are obsessed with speed and nothing else. You cannot entrust them with bowling all six balls of an over in one particular area and they are the only options we got in terms of bowling deliveries over 140.

The performance of these out and out quick Indian bowlers should once and for all silence the ones blaming the coaches for slowing down other Indian fast bowlers in the past (recall Munaf Patel and many others from not so long ago). The truth is if they continued bowling the speeds they did when they first broke into the national team, they would have disappeared after a series or two, not to say they lasted forever, still Munaf was a part of the World Cup winning squad in 2011.

Then there are not-so-fast but still quick enough options like Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami. Some commentator or author remarked that you know you don’t have a good bowling attack if Ishant Sharma is a part of it. Ironically enough he is the leading fast bowler of this Indian team. Ian Chappell while commentating on Day 4 of 2^nd India vs. Australia test said – “That’s the problem with Ishant Sharma. His best is very good, his worst is very poor. There is nothing in between and both can happen sometimes even in one over” (paraphrased, since I do not recall his exact words). Mohammad Shami looks like a good bowler once every series. Unfortunately for India, they cannot afford such once in a blue moon performances.

The only bright spot to be seen among the current crop of quick bowlers in India is the young and promising Bhuvaneshwar Kumar who many would not even consider a fast bowler because even part-timers from Australia (like Mitchell Marsh) bowl quicker than him. In his short career so far he has shown a genuine ability to swing the ball both ways on almost all kinds of pitches and tremendous control to go with that. He is an old school swing bowler who relies on application more than anything, including speed. Though the Indian Captain MS Dhoni has been hesitant to bowl him in the later overs in ODI games, he has come good a handful of times he has actually bowled in the slog overs, bowling some good yorkers and constantly targeting the block hole, in effect showing amazing control over the cricket ball.

In conclusion, it seems highly unlikely that we will see anytime soon an Indian fast bowling attack bowl the way they did in England in the summer of 2007 led by Zaheer Khan and backed so well by Anil Kumble, a bowler who wore his heart on his sleeves. On an unrelated note, Ravi Shastri and Wasim Akram on a cricket show once described Kumble as a spin bowler with the heart and mind of a fast bowler who would tear through the opposition. 

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