Few things bring as much sadistic pleasure in cricket as batsmen first getting bamboozled by a spinner then getting turned over by them. Sure, fast bowlers can bruise and intimidate but great spinners humiliate, and that can be a whole lot more painful to a batsman’s pride than mere body blows.
On that basis there must have been much for the Marquis de Sade to enjoy in Australia’s recent humiliation at the hands of Sri Lanka’s spinners. To say that Schadenfreude was widespread is an understatement though any guffawing from England was probably muted, them being the next ones up for trial by spin when they tour Bangladesh and India this winter.
Predictably, the Aussies’ failings on Sri Lanka’s sluggish, turning pitches has caused an outbreak of browbeating and analysis back home, with suggested cures ranging from sending regular U15 tours to Asia (sensible), to cricketers eating more carrots (barmy). Nobody has yet studied the diet of those batsmen who tend to play spin well but they must have something special to thrive where others flounder, even if it is only the ability to pick length quicker.
Take Brian Lara against Sri Lanka in November 2001, when Muttiah Muralitharan was running through most sides with predictable regularity. Lara made 688 runs in three Tests, treating Muralitharan with disdain in the process. Daren Ganga, one of West Indies’s openers on that tour said he’d never seen better “live” batting than he saw from Lara that series.
Already a phenomenal talent and improviser against spin, Lara also put in the preparatory yards that tour after being stung by mounting criticism in the Caribbean that he was a prima donna. As a result, he watched hours of Murali bowling on video, something today’s players do as a matter of course, and faced as many Murali wannabes in the nets as his coaches could round up. But perhaps most pertinently, he watched footage of Graham Thorpe’s hundred against Murali in Colombo six months earlier.
Thorpe, a fellow left-hander, had set his mind to playing back and as late as possible in England’s final Test in Colombo during the 2000/01 tour. Prior to that, the forward press beloved of head coach Duncan Fletcher had enjoyed only modest success at keeping a marauding Murali at bay. But this time Thorpe waited for Murali’s big-spinning off-break to turn before he committed to any shot. It bamboozled the spinner who tried bowling round the wicket only to find that Thorpe still had the gall to cut him backwards of square.
Lara then did something similar (this was before Murali had developed a doosra) with the added indignity that he also whipped him through the on-side, against the spin, whenever he overpitched. Lara said afterwards that if he could survive for 45 minutes against Murali the spinner became disheartened and bowled bad balls. If true, few of his team mates were able to cash in on this psychology – West Indies lost all three Tests despite Lara’s masterclass.
Fortunately, Thorpe will be helping England to prepare for their winter of spin. Before that innings against Murali in Colombo, Thorpe prepared by roughing up the net pitches on a spinner’s length so that they would turn and not just out of the footholes. He will probably do the same for Joe Root and Co with the added challenge of making them bat without pads.
The drill has logic. The big difference between Thorpe’s time and now is that the DRS prevents batsmen who liked to use their pads to smother the spinning ball from doing so for fear of being lbw.
Making batsmen dispense with pads during practice, or by making them use one of those half-width bats, forces them to watch the spinning ball more carefully. It also promotes better and more precise use of the feet to get into the best position to hit the ball, which should then transfer to the middle where not only hungry spinners await the unwary but DRS as well.
England won the Test series in India the last time they toured there in 2012/13, but that has happened just three times in 46 years, so it is a rare event. There were two outstanding innings against spin on that trip by England batsmen, both of them in Mumbai on what India’s captain, MS Dhoni, aptly described at the time as a “rank turner”. The greater of the two, in both scope and runs, was played by Kevin Pietersen, the other by Alastair Cook, England’s captain then as now.
Pietersen’s 187 has claims to be the greatest innings played by an England batsman in Asia. It is certainly his finest innings, a flawless gem as dazzling as the Koh-i-noor.
While Cook’s hundred was a masterpiece of watchful accumulation and getting right to the pitch of the ball, Pietersen attacked India’s spinners on a surface that made such adventure hazardous, at least for everyone else. Indeed, on the third day of the match 17 batsmen from India and England struggled along to make 221 runs between them. By contrast Pietersen made 124 runs from his own bat.
Shot selection is paramount in such conditions and Pietersen, inspired, even by his own lofty standards, did not appear to make a single wrong decision. I can recall, even now, when Pragyan Ojha, India’s left-arm spinner went over the wicket – a defensive move that more or less conceded that the bowler had run out of ideas – only for Pietersen to sashay down the pitch and wand him over extra cover for six.
It was a stroke of controlled beauty – body position retained and not overhit, two factors crucial when attacking spin on a turning pitch.
It is doubtful anyone, let alone an England player, will match that innings in a hurry. But Cook returns to India with his own happy memories of a series win and a fine tour from his own batting point of view: 562 runs in four Tests at 80.
If he can replicate much of that form and Joe Root, plus one or two of the others, can combine to fill the Pietersen role, England can at least compete if the pitches turn. Their problem, in the absence of spinners as good as Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar, is who will take their wickets for them when it turns square?
But that is another discussion entirely.
This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday August 26 2016
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