Quote:
Originally Posted by benchmark00
3.0 Bowling:
3.1 Overview
Overall, the bowlers biggest shortcomings were their inability to bowl in partnerships. They regularly released pressure, through either poor bowling or poor placement of fields, allowing the batsmen to regularly rotate strike and making the task of building pressure far more difficult.
Either a severe lack of planning went into bowling to the Australians, or the bowlers lacked skill in executing the plans.
3.2 Bowlers Analysis
Zaheer Khan – Khan was the most damaging of the Indian bowlers from go to woe. Lacking match practice played a part in him not being able to bowl longer spells, but he also didn't have much to play with in terms of field placements. Often came on and produced something with the old ball.
Ishant Sharma – The word 'unlucky' is thrown around a lot, and it is not a word that should be thrown around when spoken about Ishant Sharma's test series. It may look as though Sharma was unlucky because he had probably more plays and misses than other bowlers, however he's a victim of his own poor length, opting to try and blunt batsmen's play by pitching it too short instead of preparing to be driven in order to draw the edge through swing or later seam movement.
Although I can't see it happening due to obvious reasons, Sharma would be well served by having a conversation with Peter Siddle, who reaped the benefits of pitching the ball up and letting the ball swing.
Umesh Yadav – Yadav failed to give his captain what he was really crying out for – control. The Nostrils may be sharp through the air, however he needs to learn how to bowl a consistent and telling spell of bowling, building up pressure. That is what bowling in partnerships is all about. Instead of coming on and releasing pressure by dropping in one poor ball an over, Yadav needs to focus on a channel and look get wickets by good bowling, instead of bad shots. He undoubtedly has something about him, however he is useless if he lets the opposition spiral out of control. Mitchell Johnson suffers from the same short comings.
Ravi Ashwin – For mine, Ashwin used his suduku delivery (the ball that goes the other way) too often, blunting it's potency. Undoubtedly the Australian's were aided by Michael Hussey's tips on how to play Ashwin (born from Hussey's time with Ashwin for the Super Kings in the IPL) were beneficial to the team, however Ashwin still needed to hold some of his cards closer to his chest.
Like Zaheer, Ashwin was a victim of bowling to terrible field settings and plans. What baffled me was when Ashwin found himself bowling around the wicket to right handers with a leg slip in place, taking out several of the major modes of dismissals.
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It's interesting with the bowling; it's universally agreed that they were absolutely rubbish as a whole, but when you break it down none of them were terrible individually at all. Zaheer was short of fitness and bowled some really toothless spells at times but he also bowled some not too short of world class and he was actually very effective across the whole series; Yadav lacked control but bowled some beauties, trouble the batsmen and actually took wickets throughout; Sharma was innocuous but did offer India control which they could've built pressure with; and Ashwin while not brilliant was really pretty good for a touring offie.
They really were absolutely awful as a whole though - far worse than the sum of the parts - which again brings us back to how awful Dhoni's captaincy was. I think the bowlers bowled well enough, certainly at times, to at least build some pressure in patches but Dhoni's field settings ensured there were always easy runs practically anywhere and his bowling changes were uninspired at best. Sehwag was just as bad in his field sets (probably worse tbh) but he did show a bit more initiative in his bowling changes and plans and he did get a bit of a rough deal by having a captain on the flattest road in the country after they were 3-0 down already.