Brilliant Analysis By Laxman Sivaramakrishnan: Former Indian cricketer and well-known commentator Laxman Sivaramakrishnan made a very interesting point on day 1 of the ongoing Test match between India and New Zealand.
Just after the lunch, when Shreyas Iyer and Ravindra Jadeja were batting against New Zealand spinner with 160 odd runs on the board at the loss of 4 wickets, Laxman Sivaramakrishnan pointed out the biggest difference between the present Indian batting unit and the batting unit of late 90s and 2000s.
Laxman Sivaramakrishnan said that the Indian team of that era used to bat just once on rank turners, more often than not. That team had the likes of Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Gautam Gambhir and others, who were brilliant against spin bowling.
Emphasising on their quality of batting against spin, Sivaramakrishnan said that the above mentioned batters were able to play counter-attacking cricket and pile up a bug score in the first innings itself, putting a lot of pressure on the visiting team.
Whereas, in the past 5-7 years, Indian batters have failed to make the most out of the fresh wickets in the first innings and batted twice, more often than not. Batting twice is never easy on slow, low and turning pitches in India as the wicket breaks down and offers more unpredictable bounce and turn to the bowlers.
This is a very interesting and valid point by Laxman Sivaramakrishnan because there was a time when Indian batters used to dominate spinners, irrespective of the pitch and conditions. It was an era when spinners across the world used to fear the Indian batters. However, things have changed now and we have seen that Indian batters struggle against spinners, at home and away.
We hope this analysis by Siva triggers a debate and more numbers come out on this comparison.
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