Changing face of Indian cricket

Indian cricket has had some outstanding spinners over a period of time since it commenced playing Test Cricket. Some greats whose name crops up at first instance are Vinoo Mankad , Ghulam Ahmed , Subhash Gupte , Bishan Bedi and Erapalli.Prasanna .But now, following our domestic cricket closely as a commentator, one feels there is a change of trend. A whole new breed of fast bowlers has emerged and the quality of spinners has gone down .This is something never seen before. There was a time in Test Cricket when Sunil Gavaskar bowled with the new ball for India and the new ball was deliberately turned rough to assist the spinners.

There have been a whole lot of seamers who have shone with the ball this season both at international and domestic level. Young Ishant Sharma from Delhi has led the new crop of fast bowlers, clocking the fastest, bowled by an Indian ever in international cricket and also has been the most impressive bowler in Australia; really the find of the tour .Then you have RP Singh , Zaheer Khan , Praveen Kumar, Sreesanth , Munaf Patel and Irfan Pathan all playing for India.

In the Duleep Trophy final played between North Zone and South Zone at Mumbai recently, VRV Singh was the star performer for North Zone picking 10 wickets in the match. He also got eight wickets in a Duleep game against East Zone at Rajkot in a crucial encounter. Having watched him closely over the years, one feels that this strong young man from Chandigarh has worked really hard on his bowling and is keen to make a strong statement at the international level.

Siddharth Trivedi, another bowler from West Zone really impressed one and all, picking six wickets in the first innings in the Duleep Trophy final. Trivedi kept a nagging line around the off stump and has the ability to move the ball both ways. Not only VRV Singh and Trivedi but there are a handful of other seamers who have performed exceptionally well for their state teams in Ranji Trophy. S.Thyagi from UP was outstanding picking 41 wickets from eight matches and looks to be a bowler with a lot of promise and potential . V.Malik and Thakur did well for their state team Himachal Pradesh . Makda , Jobanputra , Pankaj Singh , Ranadab Bose, Tin.Yohannan were other very impressive bowlers for their respective state teams. This really shows the emergence of so many seamers which has never been seen before and is a rare sight in Indian domestic cricket.

A lot of the wickets in India have also been re-laid and the thinking behind is to produce good sporting tracks and also help our batsmen get used to the pace and bounce when they tour countries like South Africa and Australia. Foreign curators have been hired for the purpose and it has started yielding results. A prime example was the wicket at Mumbai for the all important Duleep Trophy final where 10 wickets fell on the first day, 10n on the second, 13 on the third day and the match was over before lunch on the fourth day with no player from either team able to reach the three-figure mark. The seamers really dominated the proceedings. Here the curator and the BCCI should also be applauded for their efforts as these are the kind of wickets that are needed to improve the standard of domestic cricket rather than have dead sleeping beauties.

In comparison to the seamers, there have been very few spinners in domestic cricket hogging the limelight. Yusuf Pathan was the highest wicket taker in Ranji Trophy among the spinners, bagging 26 wickets in seven Ranji Trophy matches this season .Yusuf is not a big turner of the ball, bowls at a fast pace, does not give much air. Ask any cricketer who played cricket 30 years back and they will not rate him very high as a spinner. Not many quality spinners can be seen and compared to the spinners, the seam bowlers have performed much better at domestic level this year. The times have changed and this is the changing face of Indian cricket.