Ian Chappell stirs a hornet’s nest

By Rajadhyax

You can depend on Ian Chappell to stir the proverbial hornet’s nest. In a recent TV interview he minced no words in stating that India would not be able to hold on to their number one position in ICC Test Rankings for long. And he even doubted whether they deserve to be there at all. “I don’t think great teams are built on opening partnerships,” he said. “I think you have got to have two champion bowlers in your line-up, but the (Indian) bowling is really not good enough to see them win consistently all around the world…. I am struggling to find even one champion bowler in that line-up.” Indians are well away from developing a fully rounded team, in his opinion and he also felt that when the Aussies will come all guns blazing to reclaim the number one spot again, things will turn difficult for India. Strong words!

Sanjay Manjrekar, on the other hand, felt India had the bowling resources to take twenty wickets of most teams in the world. Richard Hadlee later joined the argument taking the middle route. Hadlee thought India deserved the number one spot, but also felt that “the big challenge for the Indian team now is to perform outside the sub-continent.” A cross section of cricket commentators and fans are contributing opinions with most taking a middle path. In the heat of the current debate on the issue, it’s hard for me to stay out of the argument.

What everyone needs to understand first is that the ICC rankings depend heavily on performances at home and outside. Test match legends and experts have generated a formula that is applied before marking teams and putting up the rankings. It is a completely performance-based model that gives a team its ranking and hence we all might as well stop talking about whether India deserves to be there or not. They do! By the sheer weight of their performances over the last couple of years in Test cricket, India is at number one right now. We might as well assure Hadlee about India’s performances outside the sub-continent by quoting our wins in West Indies, England and his own New Zealand recently.

The Indian batting looks solid and is also notching up the runs to show that they can turn the potential into actuals. As far as the bowling is concerned we should not be petty and agree with Ian to a certain extent. India does have competent bowlers who can turn deadly only when the conditions – especially the wicket – is supportive to them. They are also good against lesser teams like Bangladesh, but against giants like South Africa and Australia, they could struggle to get twenty wickets in smaller totals. On dead, batting wickets the Indian bowlers look very mediocre against most sides. Inability in cleaning up the tail quickly is another of the Indian problem. And, yes, a champion bowler who can pick wickets in almost all conditions, like Wasim Akram, Shane Warne, Glen McGrath, Murlidharan or Anil Kumble is sourly conspicuous by his absence.

Where we can agree with Ian again is where he says that other teams seem to have waited for the Australians to come down a bit before trying to catch up with them. When the Aussies were at the top, the other teams were woefully short of them. Now that the Aussies are no longer that good, India and South Africa have caught up with them.

We could also add that India needs to improve significantly on the fielding front to retain the top spot for a longer time period. India’s ground fielding has improved significantly over the years but it’s the catching where they are often butter-fingered. Sad thing is that blindly worshipping Indian fans just look at the number of catches held by men like Dravid and Laxman while totally ignoring the string of catches they have dropped. Especially when the player has to dive for a catch, Indians are not bad, they are pathetic. With Yuvraj becoming an average fielder after his injuries, India does not have a single man who could be classified as a great catcher. And it is myopic to expect all catches to be hit exactly to your waist in a Test match. It is even more irritating to find TV commentators defending dropped catches when it’s a little away from the fielder. Unless you take the difficult ones, you cannot remain number one for a long time.

Besides, India should not lose sight of the fact that there are two things still to prove for them. India has still not won a Test series in Australia and also in South Africa. If they claim to be at number one then this sounds a lot like a tennis player gaining the ATP one ranking without ever beating the current number 1 and 2 guys at all. That is weird and takes a bit of the polish off the trophy, isn’t it? So MS Dhoni’s next task should be to plan out a series win down under and another in South Africa.

In sum, India is deservingly at the top spot, but staying there is going to be tough. The fielding and bowling has to improve and there are still two tests to pass.