Basil
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India need bruiser like Mitchell Johnson to inject fear in batsmen
These days most batsmen around the world don’t quite identify with fear – at least not if they are playing India. Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami are fine bowlers – they stick to a plan, they use the old ball intelligently most times, they can even swing the ball and on their day, they can be deadly.
Ishant already has 15 wickets in the series, Shami has been unlucky (catches have been dropped off his bowling) and Zaheer just seemed to be getting started in the second innings at Wellington. But the moment Brendon McCullum (it was the NZ skipper’s slowest 50 in Test cricket) and BJ Watling decided to stonewall for time – India’s attack started looking ordinary. Contrast the scene to the one that took place in Centurion on Saturday as Australia cruised to 281-run win over South Africa. Michael Clarke only needed to throw the ball to Mitchell Johnson and he knew something would happen.
Johnson is Clarke’s enforcer, a bruiser who is bowling at 150 clicks in every match and showing that he isn’t afraid to hit the batsmen. The Australia skipper doesn’t give him very long spells, but he does give him the license to go all out without any thought of self-preservation.
It has yielded results for Johnson – who has 49 wickets in his last six Tests and also made the rest of the Australian pace attack look exceptionally lethal. Against Johnson, no one wants to take any risk, they just want to survive and that means they play a few more shots against the others. But when a team faces India – there is no fear factor.
At Wellington, Zaheer and Ishant’s bowling speeds were in the 130 km/h region and even Shami, who is capable of bowling around 140 km/h, settled into a much gentler rhythm. Johnson forces the batsman’s hand, India wait for the batsman to make the mistake and sometimes that wait can be intolerably long.
Early in the day, Dhoni was very proactive with his field. There was a silly mid-on and mid-off in place, three slips to begin with; he then loaded the on-side field making it difficult for McCullum to play shots in his favourite areas but then as the batsmen settled, he seemed to back off. Tactics can only take you so far.
It didn’t help that McCullum was dropped twice – once by Ishant off his own bowling and then again by Virat at silly mid-on. But then sometimes, when everyone else doesn’t work... aggression does. Just as in the batting – Shikhar Dhawan, Mahendra Singh Dhoni are pretty much enforcers in their own right – sooner rather than later they will go after the bowling and that is why the bowlers fear them. India need to find a way to develop Umesh Yadav or Varun Aaron into the kind of bowler Johnson has become – to be the enforcers for the bowling unit.
But they are sadly being allowed to waste away. At some point, with nothing else working at Wellington – India’s bowlers needed to unleash a bouncer barrage at the batsmen... put two fielders out on the boundary and bang them in. Not at 130 clicks but rather at 150 km/h. That forces the hand, that gets the instincts involved; that pulls the batsmen out of their comfort zone.
Batsmen can protect the body with helmets, thigh pads, arm guards, gloves – but they can’t protect the mind; they can stop the body from reacting when something is hurled really fast at them with the intent to hurt and India needs a bowler to exploit that weakness of the mind – just as Johnson, Dale Steyn, Stuart Broad do; just as Jeff Thompson, Michael Holding, Wes Hall, Brett Lee, Fred Trueman once did.
If India truly wants to win abroad regularly, the bruiser is a must or we might just need to keep waiting for months at end. Dhoni’s side are still favourites at Wellington but it could have been so much easier if they had a bowler who could force the pace too.
Courtesy-FirstPost
