Gary Lineker led the cheer on social media. “Fabulous victory for @englandcricket. Hartley-warming stuff,” posted the England football legend on X (Twitter).
Tom Hartley who? You could have been jolly well forgiven for asking this question three days ago, when the left-arm spinner was bowling freebies and Yashasvi Jaiswal & Co had been taking him to the cleaners. From there to a match-winning 7/62 on the fourth day of the first Test in Hyderabad, the debutant should be allowed time for the whole thing to sink in. Then again, the Indian team has a habit of turning unknown spinners from visiting sides into instant stars.
Huge credit to the 24-year-old Hartley for setting aside his first innings travails and coming back so strong. Even bigger credit to his captain Ben Stokes for keeping faith in the youngster. But a callow spinner running through India’s batting in home conditions showed Rohit Sharma’s warriors in bad light.
Mind, this wasn’t a case in isolation. The myth that the current generation of Indian batters are good players of spin has long been busted. Yet again, Hartley laid bare the tattered fabric of Indian batting against spin on turners. In the process, he, along with Ollie Pope, secured England one of their finest-ever Test wins, at par with Headingley in 1981.
Midway into the first session on Day Four, Sunil Gavaskar, on air, mentioned Galle in 2015. His co-commentator Ravi Shastri, then the India coach, rewound to the game that India lost after taking a 192-run first innings lead. Dinesh Chandimal played the innings of his life (162 not out) and then, Rangana Herath (7/48) worked his magic. India, at least, had the consolation of falling prey to a spinner who finished his Test career with 433 wickets.
In Hyderabad, where India took a 190-run first innings lead, the surrender was against a spin unit that had a debutant, a one-Test wonder in Rehan Ahmed, a part-timer in Joe Root and the experienced Jack Leach, who virtually bowled on one leg after jarring his knee in the field on the first day.
This, however, has been a recurring theme. Remember Steve O’Keefe, the Australian left-arm spinner who ransacked the Indian batting in the first Test at Pune in 2017. O’Keefe returned with a 12-wicket match haul, as the hosts lost the game by 333 runs.
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Cut to Southampton in 2018, and Moeen Ali’s off-spin proved to be India’s nemesis. The visitors took a 27-run first innings lead. Then, chasing 245 for victory on a not-so-treacherous surface, India were bundled out for 184 in their second innings. Moeen’s figures in that game were 5/63 and 4/71.
Last year, it was Matthew Kuhnemann’s turn to grab the headlines at Indore. The left-arm spinner, belatedly drafted into the Australian squad, spun a web around the Indian batters and set up a nine-wicket win for his team with a fifer in the first innings. The great lion Nathan Lyon mesmerised the Indian batting in the second essay, returning with 8/64.
The fact of the matter is Indian batters no longer remain the benchmark for playing spin on turners, something that former India opener Aakash Chopra addressed after the Indore Test against Australia last year. “The play against spin has become extremely bad. If our performance against spin is going to be like this, our situation is going to be bad. One thing is certain that if the opposition team is not able to play spin, we also don’t play spin well,” he had said on his YouTube channel.
Many reasons can be attributed to the decline, and carrying the ‘bad habits’ of white-ball cricket to Test arena is certainly one of them. Shubman Gill’s dismissal in the second innings on Sunday was a case in point. Hartley tossed one up on off stump. Instead of smothering the spin, India’s No. 3 batter played it with hard hands to Pope at silly-point.
Instantly it crossed one’s mind, did the selectors act in haste by moving on from Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane? We will know at the end of the series. For now, it’s Bazball 1 India 0.
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