Closed for close catchers

Batsmen get punked in the subcontinent. Big time. England, for example, spent the best part of two days watching India pile on the runs but when it was their turn, the ball began keeping low, it started turning. It caused problems even when it did nothing and went straight.

India's total of 455 seemed like a garish example of excess. Picture a solid gold super car. So why get stingy with the close catchers? Ajinkya Rahane at slip was a constant. So was a short leg. Occasionally there was a gully or a leg slip. The rest were protecting singles and boundaries.

Consider the five wickets that India took in Visakhapatnam. Alastair Cook was conned by Mohammed Shami. The proud seam of a brand new SG ball was pointing towards the left of the keeper. It should have moved away. It did not. It came in off the pitch and broke the off stump in two. England's captain would be within his rights to find the nearest coaching manual and yell, "you filthy little liar." Haseeb Hameed was run-out. Ben Duckett wrapped himself up with a neat little bow for R Ashwin. Joe Root played a bad shot. And Moeen Ali was done in by less spin than he expected.

All but one of those bear the mark of batsmen making mistakes and they happened because India did not give away easy runs. Only 14 balls out of Ashwin's 13 overs were scored off. If that's put down to his experience and ranking as the World's No. 1 bowler, what explains Jayant Yadav allowing England to profit from only seven of his balls in seven overs? He is a Test debutant.

Tactics, perhaps? The men India had saving singles were alert, and well placed. The bowlers were accurate enough to make the job a bit easier. And without the rotation of strike, the pressure on a batsman can seem starker than it is. Even to someone batting past a half-century, as it turned out.

Root's down-the-track mow into the leg side that ended up caught off a leading edge looked quite awful. But India allowed him only nine runs in 33 balls since his mix-up with Hameed led England off course. There were other close calls as well, including an offbreak that breached his bat-pad gap.

India sensed something. They brought mid-on up, and had Umesh Yadav, a good athlete and a fine catcher, about 20 yards from the mid-off boundary. Upon seeing the miscue, he backtracked smoothly to his left and did the needful.

Ashwin, the bowler, punched the air and let out a roar. He doesn't usually celebrate like that - unless it was the culmination of a plan. "It's a very very different pitch to what we saw in Rajkot. It's not one of those easy-paced wickets," he said at the post-match press conference. "He [Root] jabbed at one, one went through the gate. and he nicked one, almost, to short leg. So we were expecting a shot like that, and that's why we put the mid-on."

It wasn't the first time Root had been starved out either. Misbah-ul-Haq had done him the same way at Lord's earlier this summer.

Still, where was the harm to have a few more men catching? At least, it would show the batsman who was on top. Yes, but what if Virat Kohli thought it might show something else as well? Gaps, which could be exploited to release the pressure he wanted built. Runs which would mean his spinners cannot get their rhythm right. And a momentum shift with England having a considerably long batting line-up. So, instead, he forced the opposition to take sizeable risks for singles and twos.

The ploy isn't foolproof. It may not have yielded such dramatic results either had a few of the visiting batsmen shown a bit more patience. But there was a certain merit to it. Close-in fielders are most useful when the pitch is turning alarmingly and affording extra bounce. In such cases, a captain can't quite decide where inside and outside edges would go so he has to cover his bases. Things haven't quite reached that stage yet in Visakhapatnam. Ashwin was beating right-handers with drift more often than he did with turn. Besides, isn't cricket notorious for fielders being put into places after edges fly through them? Not much of that happened here. Natural variation and the ball keeping low were the major problems and by tying a batsman down at one end, India made them play on England's mind and seem considerably larger.