MANCHESTER: Since Gautam Gambhir took over as head coach, one of the most identifiable trends with this Indian team is the preference for all-rounders over specialist bowlers in their bid to strengthen the bowling depth. They chose to go with Shardul Thakur and Ravindra Jadeja at Leeds before replacing the former with Nitish Kumar Reddy and bringing in Washington Sundar in place of specialist batter, B Sai Sudharsan, in Edgbaston. The trio was then retained at Lord's match but injury to Reddy meant Thakur made it to the playing XI for the ongoing fourth Test here at the Old Trafford Ground. With their batting ability seems to be the deciding factor, most of these all-rounders seemingly remained underutilised with the ball.
The latest on the list is left-hand batter and off-spinner Washington. After not bowling a single over on Day Two, he was handed the ball six overs before the lunch (69th over) on Friday. He sent in three overs before lunch without making much difference but shortly after the break, Washington made the ball to drift away from Ollie Pope to induce an outside edge. He followed it up with another, deceiving Harry Brook — the breakthroughs India were looking for all day.
Into his third match of the series, Washington has always been the last to be introduced by skipper Shubman Gill. He started by bowling 14 overs in the first innings in Birmingham, one more than pacer Prasidh Krishna, giving away 73 runs without any success. The ordinary outing and being last to start bowling meant he got only six overs in the next innings. He scalped the wicket of England skipper Ben Stokes.
In the same contest, Reddy bowled only six overs in the first essay and didn't bowl at all in the next innings. In the first innings of the same game, all England frontline bowlers bowled 19 or more overs with part-timers Joe Root and Harry Brook bowling five overs each. As Gill played a marathon innings of 269, it must have made England bowlers toil bowling more overs than their Indian counterparts. But in the second innings, all of them bowled 14 or more overs except for Stokes and Joe Root, who threw down seven and nine overs respectively.
For Washington and Reddy, the third Test at the Lord's proved no different. The former bowled 10 and 12.1 overs in the two innings with the last one turning out to be his best bowling figures overseas wherein he scalped four wickets. Reddy started the match with 17 overs and claimed two wickets but could bowl only five in the next innings with a solitary wicket. He later was ruled out of the series due to knee injury.
For England in that match, all bowlers except Shoaib Bashir and Root bowled 20 or more overs. Bashir could bowl only 14.5 overs before walking out of the field due to injury while Root ended up with 10.1 overs to his credit. In the next innings, every England bowler bowled over 12 overs except injured Bashir and Root. Through the series Ravindra Jadeja, India's first-choice spinner, has bowled more overs consistently but with little success.
The trend continued in Manchester with Thakur bowling only five overs out of 46 and Washington not being introduced till stumps on Day 2. The Mumbai all-rounder was asked whether he had under bowled in the series so far and he said it's a captain's call. "If we talk about the first match, he (captain Gill) said that there was no chance of bowling. I said okay. Usually, the captain takes the calls. The player doesn't have much of a say. As far as this match (Manchester) is concerned, I think the game has progressed. It could have been two more overs, but there is a lot of time left in the game. There are three days left," he told reporters after Day 2.
Much like every decision made by the captain, the late introduction of Washington on Friday too had its ripple effect. Looking at the impact he was able to make, India delayed taking the second new ball and it did not help that Bumrah, who had bowled about 20 per cent of the overs with six bowlers, had to walk off the field. It meant that Thakur finally got a go with a relatively new ball, but by then both Joe Root and Ben Stokes had gotten comfortable.
Earlier, Thakur had admitted that it's difficult for bowlers to find rhythm if he doesn't get a lot of opportunity with the ball. "It is always difficult to find your rhythm. You don't know how much bowling you will get and when you will get it. But whatever experience you have, you will try to use that experience to bowl," he had said on Thursday.
It might have been just an honest reply from Thakur on being probed about him under bowling in the series but it certainly can be a big issue to ponder on for the team management as their apparent obsession with batting depth has hurting India's chances of claiming 20 wickets in a match