CHENNAI: This weekend, Villa Park, a few miles from Edgbaston, will host Black Sabbath, the rock band who made heavy metal an international obsession. For a decade, that was the sound the Indian management wanted their bowlers to generate.
Not anymore it would seem.
Before the five-match series between India and England began, skipper Shubman Gill said he would pick a bowling unit capable of plotting the fastest route to 20 wickets. Coach Gautam Gambhir had said the same thing.
After the first Test loss at Headingley, both Gill and Gambhir re-emphasised their desire of selecting a bowling unit capable of it. In the first Test, they went without Kuldeep Yadav, a left-arm wristspinner capable of taking the surface out of the equation.
In the second Test, they outdid themselves. In the week leading upto the game at an increasingly warm Edgbaston, the messaging was homogenous. "We are a team which will prioritise picking 20 wickets as soon as possible."
Yet, on Wednesday morning when Gill handed over the team sheet, it didn't resonate with the team's messaging. Jasprit Bumrah? Absent. Yadav? absent. Make it make sense because the bowling unit the visitors named didn't have lots of it. It lacked the two things the visitors had that the hosts lacked.
A supreme fast bowler who will take the new ball in every fantasy Test XI this side of the century. And the best wrist-spinner in the game currently. Without these two potent threats, India's bowlers, through no fault of theirs, may be doing a thankless job over the course of the Test. Prasidh Krishna, Mohammed Siraj, Akash Deep, Ravindra Jadeja, Washington Sundar, and Nitish Reddy will be the six bowlers tasked with the ask of picking 20 wickets.
Or, in other words, pacer who wouldn't be playing if all of them were fit, regular pacer, reserve pacer, spinning all-rounder who picks a wicket every 17 overs in England, reserve spinning all-rounder and reserve to Shardul Thakur. Even if it was a selection designed to maximise batting depth, they did it by removing the batter the management identified as the No. 3 (Sai Sudharsan) before the series began. They promoted the No. 6 (Karun Nair) to be the new No. 3, a position he has batted fewer than 20 times in a career spanning over 10 years. Again, make it make sense.
A young captain is allowed to make mistakes. All captains are allowed to make mistakes, especially some one who's skippering the team for just the second time. Former Arsenal coach, Arsene Wenger, famously remarked that you pay for the education of young players with points. But the sin is not even believing in your own words. After making it clear that the stated aim was to bowl out the opposition cheaply, you don't say: "we were very tempted to play him (Yadav), but, you know, looking at the last match, we wanted to add a bit of depth in the batting, and that's what we have done," at the toss.
If, after aggregating 830 runs across two innings, you want more 'batting depth', the thinking can only be muddled from the very top. Either that or after a decade of prioritising wickets, India are after a cultural reset, one where playing safe would be the mantra over being brave. As soon as the team sheet dropped, former players had to do a double take. On Sky, Nasser Hussain called it a 'panic' move. Ravi Shastri used the word 'baffling'. Other commentators used similar words to describe the XI.
On X, Tom Moody said 'the fixation on all-rounders who are there to offer depth with bat and ball has never worked. Specialists are always going to offer more over a Test'.
In 2021, even after India were bowled out for 78 at Headingley, then captain Virat Kohli maintained that he wouldn't consider having an insurance policy to guard against blowouts. "If you don't have the ability or the resources of taking 20 wickets going into a Test, then you are only playing for two results. That's not how we play." Throughout that away series and right through Kohli's reign as skipper, he walked the talk.
Gambhir has shown an inclination to sacrifice pure wicket-takers for a few extra runs. If Gill and Gambhir truly believe in what they preach, it's time for them to show it in action. For words are just random letters assembled together if there is no evidence to back it up.
