The one wicket that most helped India win the 2020-21 series in Australia was that of Steve Smith. The best Test batsman of his generation, Smith has scored multiple hundreds against India, and could yet again be the defining wicket in the World Test Championship final.
Does India have a plan? Can Rahul Dravid do a Ravi Shastri, and Paras Mhambrey a Bharat Arun? Can Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, or R Ashwin stop Smith at The Oval?
How did Shastri do it in 2021? How did Ajinkya Rahane implement the plan at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG)? “Operation Smith” is a key chapter in India’s journey to the WTC final, and it is perhaps worth recounting how it was all planned back then.
It was early June 2020, and life as we knew it had come to a standstill. Covid-19 had taken over our lives and with each passing day, the rising death toll plunged the country into further doom and gloom. For the first time in decades, there was no live sport on television and the cricket world was counting down to the day when Test cricket would finally resume in the UK, with the England–West Indies series set to begin on 8 July.
Amid all this uncertainty, a phone call was made. Arun, India’s bowling coach then, was having dinner and watching television with not much to do when his cell phone beeped. It was Shastri, his buddy, at the other end, and Arun wasn’t surprised. The two are best friends, and go as far back as 1979–80 when, as teenagers, they attended a BCCI camp.
“It started out as a routine call,” said Arun, looking back. “And after exchanging a few pleasantries, Ravi said, ‘Bard (that’s what Shastri calls Arun), yeh Steve Smith ne humein bahut sataya hai this Steve Smith has troubled us a lot]. Kuch to karna padega [We need to do something.’”
Shastri was referring to the Australia tour pencilled in for the end of the year. “To be honest, I was a little surprised,” said Arun, as he narrated what happened. “We did not know if the tour would happen in the first place. So what was he thinking and what was he wanting to discuss? That’s when Ravi mentioned the plan for the first time.
ALso Read: Rohit Sharma’s Tryst with Leadership Immortality
“He said from Don Bradman down, if one goes back in history and sees how things have unfolded in Australia, bowlers who aimed deliveries at the batsmen’s ribcage had always enjoyed a fair degree of success. He gave me the example of Neil Wagner in 2019, and said that when Wagner was mixing it up with short deliveries aimed at the ribcage and following it up with slower ones, Smith looked uncomfortable.
“There was a fair degree of excitement in Ravi’s voice, and he had clearly thought about it at length before calling me. He was so convinced that I didn’t express my initial apprehensions about the plan. Ravi is one of the finest thinkers on the game and having known him for as long as I have, I knew he must have found something.”
Arun, however, was still far from convinced. “My initial thought was how can we not attack a new batsman outside the off stump, forcing an edge with the pace attack we had,” he said. “A leg-theory bowling plan sounded negative, and I said as much to Ravi. We even had an argument. To his credit, he understood where I was coming from, but was pretty insistent.”
Shastri told Arun to spend more time thinking about the plan before rejecting it. He cited his own career – which included a Test hundred in the Caribbean – as an example. “Ravi said to me the West Indian fast bowlers were the best of that era because they always targeted the batsman’s body,” said Arun.
From his respect for Shastri, Arun went to the team’s performance analyst, Hari Prasad Mohan. Hari, a decent pacer during his playing days who also played age-group cricket for Tamil Nadu, had all the graphs and pie charts ready, and promptly mailed them to the bowling coach. “I needed to know where Smith had scored all his runs, for that was the only way we could verify the plan,” said Arun.
What they found surprised them both. “Hari came back to us with all the details we had asked for, and that’s when the penny dropped,” recalled Arun. “Ravi, I have to say, was spot-on. Seventy per cent of Smith’s runs had come on the off side, mainly through cuts, drives and glides to third man. But if you bowl to him with a packed off-side field, you inevitably leave a lot of gaps on the on-side. With a 6-3 field, one can have a fine leg, a mid-wicket and a mid-on, and that means lots of gaps for the batsman to use.
“Smith, who loves hitting boundaries at the start of an innings and has great hands, will always use these scoring opportunities to put pressure on the opposition. Take his off-side out is what Ravi said to me when I shared the findings. We will not give him a single easy run. Have five fielders on the leg side and limit his scoring opportunities. We will also bowl him some slower balls at the start because he wasn’t comfortable against such bowling while facing Neil Wagner. That’s how the plan was hatched.”
It is one thing to make a plan and a very different thing to get the bowlers to buy into it and implement it. And the coaches, who had discussed the plan with Virat Kohli soon after they reached Australia, had decided not to try it in the white-ball games. The plan was finally shared with the rest of the bowling unit after the team reached Adelaide for the pink-ball Test. “It was to our advantage that we had three bowlers, who could bowl the line we were speaking about,” said Arun. “While Jasprit [Bumrah] could bring the ball in, Shami can bowl very straight and Umesh [Yadav] too can bowl wicket-to-wicket lines.”
When the evidence was placed before the three senior fast bowlers and Ashwin, it did not take them much time to buy into it. R Sridhar, the fielding coach, also weighed in and helped identify the exact positions on the leg side where the ball was likely to travel to when the fast bowlers were bowling. That’s how the last part of “Operation Smith” was conceived. When the Indians walked out to bowl at the Adelaide Oval, they knew full well what they had to do against the world’s premier Test batsman.
“We were clear about one thing,” said Arun. “Even if Smith scored a hundred, we would make sure he played 200-plus balls to do, and did not get a single easy run. Even in Sydney, where he got a 100, he had to bat 206 balls to get to his century.”
In the first innings in Adelaide, Ashwin got Smith with a beauty which left him a shade outside the off stump at the very last second, forcing him to play at it. Rahane at slip did the rest. It was a terrific delivery, and even the best in the world had no answer. Smith had not settled in, and the Indians were right on the money from ball one. And in the second innings, with India capitulating for 36, Smith had very little to do when he walked out to close the game for his team.
“At the MCG, on what was a good batting wicket, we stuck to our plan,” said Arun. “Ashwin bowled the middle-and-leg line to him, and Smith edged to leg slip where Pujara took a nice low catch. The plan was working.”
Very few remembered the last time Smith had failed in the first innings of two consecutive Test matches. By the time of the all-important second innings at the MCG, Smith had started to feel the pressure. Runs had dried up, and the Indians were working to a well thought-out plan. And with the plan working, they felt confident against Australia’s premier batsman. Smith needed to score big for the team after having conceded a mammoth 131-run first innings lead.
Yet again, Rahane put five men on the leg side the moment Smith came out to bat. With no loose balls on offer, he was under pressure from ball one. And to his dismay, he was bowled down the leg side off Bumrah for just eight, handing India the momentum, which eventually resulted in them winning the contest by a resounding eight-wicket margin.
“How many times have you seen Smith getting bowled down the leg side?” asked Arun. Each time a bowler bowled to him on the leg stump with little protection on offer, he got bat on ball at the very last second, and converted such balls into scoring opportunities on the leg side. Not so at the MCG, with the leg trap doing the trick for Bumrah. While we will never know if it was the five fielders weighing on his mind, what the wicket did was put enormous pressure on the Australian middle order to eventually set up an outstanding Indian win.
“In Melbourne, the dressing rooms are in the basement, and I was standing next to the Australian dressing room when Steve Smith was walking back,” said Arun. “Just as he entered the room, I could hear him shout ‘F… F…. F…’ in frustration. He was very upset at the way he got out, and was cursing himself. I had a smile on my face, for we had successfully got under his skin. Our plan had worked, and we had reined in the world’s best batsman, who had scored lots of runs against us in the past.”
WATCH VIDEO: Australia train at Oval as Pat Cummins-led side gears up for WTC Final vs India