Fast Bowlers for India

How do fast bowlers develop? A very good answer to this question has been - by bowling. Wasim Akram is on record explaining that when he was 19 years old he would bowl for hours, for this is supposed to be the best way to fine tune the body for fast bowling. Even though theories about developing fast bowlers have changed over the years, it remains a fact that the greatest fast bowlers - Trueman, Akram, Marshall and others, bowled an enormous number of overs in first class cricket. This helped them bowl long sustained spells. Zaheer Khan, currently India's best fast bowler saw his career take a turn for the better after a season of County Cricket in England with Worcestershire in 2006. He bowled 618 overs in 16 games over 3 months. A sustained work load which I think had plenty to do with improvement in his bowling. A lot is made of bowling in "English Conditions", but i think the real issue is the amount of cricket one gets to play in the English season. County Cricket has been a finishing school for generations of West Indian, Pakistani and South African and English cricketers, and i think this is because of this concentrated amount of cricket over a season. It is often argued that the Australians play only 10 first class games per side per season, but what people forget, is almost all the top Australian players, from Terry Alderman (Gloucestershire, Kent) to Doug Bollinger (Worcestershire) also played County Cricket, which meant that they did a lot of bowling in first class games.
India's fast bowling bench has stagnated of late. Harsha Bhogle has argued that it would have helped if Ishant Sharma and S Sreesanth had travelled to England on the India A tour. I am not convinced, for this would have have involved playing plenty of limited overs cricket and only the stray first class game. First Class Cricket is the place to develop the basics - to become better at what one does. ODI and T20 cricket is not. This is a normative assertion to be sure, but consider this reason in its support. In a First Class game, the only option that a bowler (and fielding captain) has is to dismiss the batting side. That is the only way to win first class games. In ODI's and in more so in T20, a bowler can bowl to contain. When a bowler stops looking for wickets, he may as well be replaced by a machine. Let's look at the bowling workloads of fast bowlers coming into international cricket in various countries. I first consider all fast bowlers who have taken at least 250 Test wickets. There are 23 such bowlers. It is followed by a table of the top Indian wicket takers in Tests amongst fast bowlers (minimum 25 wickets)

If you look at the current India fast bowling bench - Ashish Nehra, Ishant Sharma, S Sreesanth, Munaf Patel and RP Singh (im excluding Irfan Pathan and L Balaji for now), what stands out is how little they have bowled in comparison with say Malcolm Marshall or Imran Khan or even todays premier fast bowler - Dale Steyn. Steyn has bowled 2597 overs in 81 games in First Class Cricket since his debut in 2003-04. This includes spells where he's been out due to injury, and also includes the time since he became the South Africa spearhead, and hence missed out on some first class cricket. Ashish Nehra made his Test debut in 1999 and in 11 years has bowled less than Steyn has in 6. Of course Nehra has played lots of ODI cricket, but that is a hindrance, not an aid to developing into a top class fast bowler.

Take the example of Zaheer Khan. Of his 2247 overs of First Class bowling, 618 came in one season in England in 2006 for Worcestershire. Zaheer is now in his 11th season as a first class cricketer, yet, over 1/4th of all the bowling he did in First Class Cricket came in one season - 3 months in 2006. They made him a better bowler.

If we really want to know why we dont have fast bowlers, it's because our fast bowlers play too much limited overs cricket, and more importantly, too little first class cricket. It's not their fault, for the Ranji Trophy allows only 8 games per player if your side doesn't reach the final. It's even worse now, because the current generation of upcoming fast bowlers spend half the cricket season training with T20 sides, getting trained to bowl 4 over spells against batsmen who don't care about getting out. It is no surprise that the selectors are desperate enough to select Abhimanyu Mithun and R Vinay Kumar after their first season for Karnataka.

We are repeatedly treated to discussion about how T20 is going to help India unearth new talent. Name one new talent unearthed by T20. All the top T20 players who are not India players were already established Ranji Trophy talents. Any discussion about the specifics of T20 (such as the fact that bowlers bowl 4 overs) invites another airy fairy response about how T20 is developing "different" talents. Of course, there is no elaboration on what these different talents might be.

Consider this. With India's best batting and bowling talent fed into T20 franchises for half the season, it follows that for half the season, India's upcoming fast bowlers train without ever bowling a full spell (between 6-10 overs). If you are wondering why Ishant Sharma has become such a poor bowler, consider the fact that he has played more T20 games than first class games. It's not his fault that he has become ordinary - he hasn't been preparing to bowl proper spells - to work out how to dismiss batsmen who are trying to defend their wicket.

The fact is, there is too much money in T20 and the BCCI is unlikely to continue to change this policy of letting the T20 franchises use India's best upcoming talent. What's more, in anticipation of this, T20 and ODIs are becoming more popular even at the age group level.

India don't have a rich and thriving fast bowling bench because India's fast bowlers don't bowl enough in first class cricket. There is no substitute for this. Bowling 2 overs at Mathew Hayden in an IPL game is no substitute for bowling at an ordinary Ranji Trophy batsman on a flat wicket for a solid hour in a Ranji Trophy game.

I expect India to become a mid-table side in a few years time if this type of preparation continues. The only way out is to play more first class cricket.