Indian Catching-6: The Skipper's Catch-22

Dearth of dependable catchers engenders a dilemma for the Indian Test skipper with more rookie bowlers bowling for India now than ever before. The skipper would like to spend more time with them at mid-off / mid-on and talk them into bowling to his plan. This is all the more imperative in a team with no senior pace bowler in the side.

But for skipper Dravid that results in removing the only trustworthy catcher from the slip cordon. So the skipper often helplessly leaves VRV, Sreesanth and Patel to their own methods. That partly explains the blow-hot-blow-cold performances of Munaf Patel, Vikram Singh and S Sresanth.

This dilemma virtually disappears in the shorter time frame of one dayers as the bowlers' spells get shorter and they generally pull it off by themselves as per predetermined strategies. Even so the 3rd one dayer versus Pakistan this year comes to mind, a match where Sreesanth saw three catches go down off his bowling in first 15 overs.

Going to the larger picture we have another Catch-22. I would not be surprised if this catching lacuna is as much reason behind the Indian team management's decision to abstain from playing two specialist spinners in Tests as worries about Harbhajan's form or lack of batsmen in the side that are part-time seamers.

That nightmarish 3rd Test versus England may have left a scar, one that refuses to heal even in the refreshingly picturesque isles at the other end of the globe. "What use are two spinners when you have no one to reap their harvest at point blank?" may be the question chasing the team management on the eve of every Test, which is truly a less-than-positive frame of mind.

I am sure the present scenario looks bleaker than it should and the young brigade will put their hands up soon. [I say that with great hope and...well, little else but faith in Yuvraj and Kaif.] They better do that, for it is a rare time in Indian cricket that even the presence of Kumble at the gully lends a reassuring touch of solidity from the reliable past to an unwieldy present. To think Kumble was considered a goods train in that past....

This series of posts may have be disappointing in one aspect: after so much of writing we could still not offer a road map to redemption, as that is beyond our rational jurisdiction. It is not a principal skill like bowling or batting we are talking about. Catching is a secondary skill, at least yet so in Tests. The solution cannot therefore start from the routine 'look for other options'.

It is an area which does not have sufficient records to quantify its importance. There is a reason to it: those stats would necessarily have to be damning in nature. For example, in order to understand the importance of catches we would then find out the total 'leakage' that a player has conceded in his career in terms of runs scored by batsmen dropped by him.

The pool of India's first class cricketers are mostly names, rather than faces, to general viewers and the Challenger trophy (another ODI format contest, a very brief one) is amongst the few peeps we have at them. From evidences it may not be too erroneous to assume that India do not have too many youngsters out there that can be expected to field a lot better than Yuvraj, Kaif or Raina.

Maybe the present crop of cricketers play far too much of the one day stuff compared to first class matches and are simply not 'brought up' on the extremely specialised fielding skills demanded by Test cricket. And that is a sad thing.

The current post should have effectively ended the ongoing series of posts but in life and cricket (in that order) the no-ball comes back to haunt at the end of the over, pinching you by going for a four. That seventh and last delivery, one that aptly raises an issue that has hurt India the most in recent times, comes next as the (relief-laden) concluding post.

[Next: Wicket Keeping]