HYDERABAD: When Manchester United used to be good, there was this fear factor about them, especially at Old Trafford. It was said that teams lost matches while standing inside the tunnel before kick-off.
Facing India in a Test in India can be a bit like that. Especially if you hope to draw or win a series. The last visiting team to do that was England in the winter of 2012. Some, like Australia, have lost thrice while South Africa, West Indies, England, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have lost the two times they have played here. Afghanistan's lone Test in India didn't enter a third day. Playing this Indian side in their own backyard is to willingly go inside a washing machine. It can be dizzying, confusing and chaotic.
In some of the other countries, matches can be played in slow motion. Here, that's not always possible. There is a tendency for matches to speed up and once the fast-forward button is pressed, visiting teams hurtle towards a loss. The India vs Australia Test in Delhi in 2023 was a case in point. The tourists were well placed at 2/85 after 18.5 overs. Less than 15 overs later, they were bowled out for 113 as they had lost 8/28 in a little over 70 deliveries. "You have got to find a way to try and put pressure back on the bowlers," Pat Cummins had said after the game. "They are really, really good bowlers, especially in these conditions. Probably just at times, maybe (we) just overplayed it.
"I thought they bowled really well. It's not easy out there. But perhaps some guys went away from their methods." Cummins quite accurately summed up the chore of playing the hosts' bowling in these conditions. When you are facing R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja — two all-time greats in this format — it's a bit like getting treated by two dentists in a single day. One itself can be a bit too much. Imagine two. An artist and a craftsman working the angles, making geometry their friend. Ball after ball. Hour after hour. Session after session. Batters imagine things and they start playing the man rather than just the ball.
The numbers back this up. As a pair, Jadeja and Ashwin have played 39 Tests at home. In these games, they have returned figures of 422 for 8665 at an average of 20.5 while striking at least once every eight overs. You extrapolate that over a day's play and their long unbeaten record makes sense -- teams, on average, get bowled out for 205 in 80 overs.
English pacer, Mark Wood, was being honest in his assessment when he called this series 'a free hit' of sorts because the hosts are expected to win. "We know the challenge (of coming) here," he said during a press conference on Tuesday. "India very rarely loses at home. I think it's almost like a free hit for us where we can come in here and give it a good go."
Imagine that. This is England, a side high on vibes at the moment and even they were forced to take into consideration the hosts' absurd record. "In general, they have got all bases covered," Wood, expected to be a part of the seam attack in the first Test, continued. "Good seam bowlers, good spinners..."
That's the other thing about their record at home. The two Rs, Ashwin and Jadeja, are two future hall of famers. But what has helped them is the fast-bowling carousel in the shape of Umesh Yadav (don't snigger), Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma. In that same period, Yadav (83 wickets in 27 matches while averaging 25.6 and striking every 49 balls), Shami (76 in 21; 22.1 and 42.6) and Sharma (49 in 24; 30.2 and 67.1) were the perfect foil for the two spinners. Ashwin and Jadeja may have invariably picked up wickets in every Test and gone away with the match ball but the sheer dominance could not have been achieved without the pacers quietly hitting the stumps or winning lbw decisions.
Nowhere else was this more prominent than in the 2019 series against South Africa. Kagiso Rabada, Vernon Philander and Anrich Nortje were toothless and went for plenty. Meanwhile, Shami (average of 14.7) and Yadav (12.18) picked up 24 wickets across the three Tests. On wickets where Ashwin and Jadeja found a lot of joy, Shami even picked up a five-wicket haul in Kolkata.
After the match, Rohit Sharma had this to say about Shami. "Shami, we've seen him in these conditions, not just today but previously as well... I still remember our debut together in Kolkata, where the pitch kind of... I wouldn't say (it was) like this but on day four, on day five, it was slightly lower and slower, and he knows how to bowl on those pitches."
The match Rohit was referring to was the nine Shami picked up against West Indies in November 2013. It saw him castling batters six times. It's something the Indian bowlers are champions of in their own turf — breaching the defences and getting them bowled. In fact, the five Indian bowlers mentioned in this piece have had 168 bowled dismissals since the beginning of 2013. Nowhere else is it that high. So, the key has always been hitting the top of off, finding late inward movement and skidding off the surface (for pacers) or keeping the stumps in play (for the spinners).
This combination has contributed to one of the longest unbeaten records in all of competitive cricket. If England are to have any chances of escaping it, they will have to guard their stumps. Otherwise, like other visitors to these shores, they may also lose the battle before a single ball is bowled.