The Curse of the Strokemaker

With India’s lopsided reliance on batting, there has been enough chatter (a lot of it from me actually!) about how our bowling has issues to address, and how easily we fall flat on flat pitches. However, there are some batting hiccups as well that mostly hide behind larger-than-life performances by one of our top order batsmen, problems that are only exposed when there is a major collapse. The latter happens less often than it used to because of the heavy-duty skill-level that our batters bring to the table. But there is that one issue that surfaces every time our top order fails - The curse of the strokemaker.

We love our batsmen for the explosive hitting that they can resort to, and bail us out of any possible situation. What is somewhat lost in the mix is the superb art of busy batting - The version of batting displayed and mastered by the likes of Michael Bevan. These are batsmen who score at pretty much run-a-ball without hitting many boundaries, tire and frustrate the fielding side and yet have averages in the vicinity of 50! Supposedly bland, but this breed of batsmen is particularly useful because they do all the three critical things required after a collapse – they stop the bleeding by preserving their wicket, keep the scoreboard ticking at a very healthy clip and build platforms for massive scores despite the early disadvantages. What is more amazing is that they do all this without taking too many risks, without hitting too many boundaries and in short, pretty much play a boring brand of Cricket.

Our Indian version of rebuilding an inning seems to be a three step process - digging a hole in the middle overs, burying ourselves deep into it and finally digging out with some manic hitting in the death overs. Often, our batters drop the anchor after an early collapse and do two out of the three critical things – they stop the bleeding, and set up a platform for a final slog with wickets in hand. However, more often than not, they fail to keep the scoreboard ticking at a healthy clip during the consolidation period. And the day the final onslaught (or taking on the lone opposition spinner) fails, we fall woefully short of a competitive total and/or the victory.

Dhoni and Raina have shown glimpses of Bevan-ish Cricket on and off, but we might benefit by putting in a conscious effort to develop this (dark) side of our Batting, where we can consistently bat for the 25 middle overs, not lose more than a wicket or two and yet produce 140 runs. What this would also help with is creating less pressure on the likes of Yusuf to score at unreal rates, and buy us some insurance against late collapses.

We love the sailing sixes, bellowing Ravi Shastri and the random western music blasting out of our PA systems, because they all make for great highlights. And boy, we love our highlights so much, that we are diligently working to erase the line between the match and highlights! Today if one of our middle order batters produces a 58-ball-50 with a single boundary, my fellow-spectators are more likely to yell “Kya sula raha hai yaar!!” at the TV rather than sitting back to appreciate the serene saunter to victory.

As viewers, should we not appreciate the reliable need-of-the-hour grindings just as much as the unreliably-and-hastily-achieved objectives?

It feels like another case of misplaced perceptions, where consistent can sometimes seem boring, and volatile firepower can seem glamorous. We need a couple of batsmen who believe in rotating the strike six times an over just as much as hitting it into the stratosphere or the next state. In our quest to be undisputed World Champions, it is just another box that needs to be checked.

So, the question is,

Can boring be the new sexy?