Laxman is right… India don’t have back-up spinners

Biswajit Jha

There was a time when India was known to produce some of the finest spinners of the cherry. They not only wreaked havoc on the crumbling pitches of India, they also anchored some famous victories for the country on the unresponsive pitches of the foreign shores. The competition for a place in the national team was so stiff that spinners as talented as former Delhi and Haryana left-armer Rajinder Goyal and Mumbaikar Padmakar Shivalkar had to cool their heels for their entire career, despite having collected record number of wickets in the domestic circuit. Even the very talented and wily Dilip Doshi, who despite setting the English country circuit on fire even before his Test debut, had to wait a long time before he realized his goal of playing for India at the age of 32, only after the fiery Bishan Singh Bedi decided to hang his boots. The competition for a spinner’s slot in the Indian team remained tough even in the nineties as Hyderabad off-spinner Kanwaljit Singh and Bengal left-arm spinner Utpal Chatterjee, who were tremendous performers over the years, hardly got any chance to play for the country with V Raju and Anil Kumble ruling the roost. Now look at the present scenario…India don’t have any bowler other than Harbhajan Singh, who is an automatic choice in the playing XI. Amit Mishra and Pragyan Ojha are the two best spinners in the current lot, who can be chosen in case Harbhajan gets injured. Apart from them, there is not a single spinner who is even close to getting a national call or what we call are ‘knocking at the door’ of Team India.In the 2009-10 Ranji season that ended recently, spinners - Iqbal Abdulla and Piyush Chawla - are sixth in the list of highest wicket-takers with just 32 wickets each. The statistics clearly point out the pitiable predicament of back-up tweakers in the ‘land of spinners’. It’s an irony that these days we have more back-up fast bowlers and less number of spinners, but there was a time when we used to struggle to find out a single genuine pacer who would share the new ball with Kapil Dev. It’s not surprising that senior India batsman VVS Laxman expressed severe concern over the lack of quality back-up spinners in India. Laxman said that apart from those who have already made their India debut, the spin cupboard is bare in domestic cricket, which is a worry for the team. "The Indian cricket team is struggling to find some quality spinners, apart from the guys who are playing. You will find that there is no bench strength as far as spinners are concerned. So definitely the quality of domestic cricket has come down in terms of the bowling department," Laxman said in a video show `Opening Up`. "I am really not happy with the bowlers I am seeing. I think the quality of bowlers, especially the spinners, will definitely be a worrying factor for the Indian team," he said.Laxman is cent percent correct in his observations about the bench strength of Indian spinners. There is hardly anyone in the domestic circuit, who can break into the national team in the near future. Padmakar Shivalkar is also worried over the lack of quality spinners in the ‘home of spinners’. “Well, you have to remember, when we played, we did not have any such academies. Bedi did not go through any academy; neither did Prasanna nor I. We had our seniors to guide us. The experience we acquired by playing with them and against them was tremendous. I don`t think the youngsters nowadays get that invaluable experience. The seniors are not available in domestic cricket at all.” “The trend”, he went on to say, “Of learning bowling has also changed. Earlier everybody learnt to toss the ball up and buy wickets, but now they are content with containing the batsman, leaving it to him to make a mistake and get out. That instinct, that desire to get batsmen out is missing. When you`re bowling, you have to have the confidence to get the batsman out, never mind what the captain and other players think.” The question is… do the tweakers of modern India or for that matter any of the spinners around the world, in the face of T20 cricket, have that luxury of flighting the ball and waiting for the batsman to make a mistake any more, like those enjoyed by their predecessors like Shivalkar or Bedi or Prasanna?