Atreyo Mukhopadhyay in Hyderabad
One innings is in no way a sample size to come to a conclusion about the efficacy or inefficiency of a bowling unit, at whichever level of cricket. It will therefore be foolhardy and nonsensical to say on the basis of their performance in the first Test in Hyderabad that this English spin attack is perhaps the weakest from a leading team to have toured India in recent times.
Beg your pardon then for being trigger-happy and saying that this indeed seems to be the case. That’s because they came, they saw and got thrashed.
On a pitch where India’s spinners extracted turn in the first session of the Test, their England counterparts looked clueless about where to land the ball. When they got turn, they were too short. The high number of boundaries square of the wicket bore evidence to that. And when they pitched it up, there was hardly any turn. They could not find the length to plant doubts in the minds of the batters.
It’s not the fault of the trio of Jack Leach, Rehan Ahmed and Tom Hartley. Captain Ben Stokes and the English team management should take the blame for unleashing them in conditions they are alien to, against batters known to feast on low-quality spin bowling.
Leach is the most established of the three. His return of 124 wickets in 35 Tests (before Hyderabad) is impressive in a pace-oriented attack. But his most memorable performance at this level is perhaps the one not out with the bat in a last-wicket partnership of 76 with Stokes, which won England an unforgettable Test against Australia in Leeds in 2019.
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The left-arm spinner is a holding bowler, not the lead spinner in a Test team whose principal duty is to take wickets. He has performed decently in the role assigned to him, but that does not make him the spearhead in conditions he is not versed with. That he failed to exploit the assistance the pitch offered shows he was asked to do a job he is not familiar with.
The less said of Hartley and Rehan, the better. Again, the team management is responsible for throwing them to the deep end of the pool when they are not quite ready for the challenge. Hartley is playing his first Test and Rehan his second. The inexperience and inability to make most of favourable conditions showed. It was no surprise that both received a fair amount of spanking.
The way skipper Stokes handled his spin resources also left a lot to be desired. Hardly anyone got a long spell, which most spinners need, to settle into a rhythm. Most of them, most of the time, got four-five overs before being taken off.
The biggest example was Joe Root. By far the most threatening of the English spinners, he got more than one-fourth of the overs his team bowled on Day 2. Yet, he hardly bowled five overs on the trot. Not without reason is it said that a spinner is as good as his captain is.
Australia also came to India last year with two raw spinners in Todd Murphy and Matthew Kuhnemann. But they had a wily Nathan Lyon leading the pack. Under his guidance, both newcomers returned impressive figures. By and large, they restricted India and even won a Test in Indore. There is vast gap between what they produced and what England spinners have thus far.
Perhaps a better ploy for England would be falling back on their quicker bowlers. They can be a handful if the ball grips the surface and they may get reverse swing. Unless, of course, they decide that the uncapped Shoaib Bashir is the miracle man once he arrives in India after sorting out visa issues.