After the World Test Championship (WTC) final at The Oval, Rahul Dravid, India’s head coach, said that it wasn’t a 469-run pitch, and that India conceded far too many runs in the last session on day one, something which allowed Australia to take control. According to him, the bowlers were too wide, and as a result, Travis Head and Steve Smith cashed in.
“We knew what lines and lengths to bowl,” said Dravid after the game. “Our lengths weren’t bad, but we probably bowled too wide. Gave room to Head.
There was too a small rap on the knuckles for the batters, as he added: “Some of the shots we played, maybe we could’ve been more careful.”
It is not the first time that a team had a bad bowling day. Nor is it going to be the last. In sport, you will have bad days more often than not. The question is how do you come back from them and turn things around? Also, how do you not repeat the same mistakes when you next play a big final?
This is exactly what I had asked Bharat Arun, the former India bowling coach, after India’s miraculous win down under in 2020-21. And Arun’s words, as basic as they may sound, make great sense.
“There is no rocket science in this,” he said. “In fact, it is very important to keep things simple. You might think from outside that we are doing a lot of very complex things. The truth is, we are not. Rather, at every level, our attempt is to keep things simple. You must remember you are dealing with a bunch of 25 to 26-year-old men, so there is no need to complicate things beyond a point. It could very well be that one of your bowlers has a bad day. It will happen more often than not in sport.
“Take the Brisbane Test in 2021. In the second innings, Australia got off to a very good start and Shardul [Thakur] wasn’t having the best day at the Gabba. We did not tell him anything in the break, except to say that he needed to do what he did best. For years, he has moved the ball away from the right-handers and that’s something that comes naturally to him. That’s all he needed to do. If, after that, he got hit, we were perfectly fine with it. There will be days when a good batting team will get stuck into you. But when that happens, you can’t move away from your core strength.
“You need to keep doing what you know best, and back your own strengths. When a bowler is at the top of his mark, he should have clarity of thought about what he wants to do. That’s part one. Then he needs to execute his thoughts. If he does so, we are happy. If you have someone like Virat [Kohli] or Smith batting, they will hit you even when you execute your thoughts to perfection. That’s fine. Accept it, and bowl the next ball. Shardul did so in Brisbane, and we all know what happened thereafter.”
After a 10-second pause, Arun added: “It is important I tell you what we do with the bowlers at the end of a not-so-good day in office. Frankly, we sit them down and watch the videos with them, while asking them three questions. First, we ask them what they were trying to do, and if the execution was right. It is sport, and it can very well happen that you think something and yet you aren’t able to execute it.
“Second, we ask them if they thought their execution was right, but the batsmen had a great day. And third, we check if they were consistently trying to execute what they felt was the right ball to bowl, and if they had the right field for what they were trying to do. By the end of the session, and most times we keep things brief, the bowler knows what has gone wrong and is ready to get things right the next day.”
Telling words with profound impact, and something the present crop of Indian bowlers will need to keep in mind as they seek to rebuild after the WTC reverse.