Spin, a headache for India

Pakistan aim series victory while India hope to share the spoils

Pakistan skipper Mohammad Hafeez struggled to conceal a chuckle while answering the nature of the pitch at the Sardar Patel Gujarat stadium, venue of India’s second T20 match against Pakistan on Friday.

“It’s different from Bangalore, where the pacers got swing and some lateral movement. Here, it looks much slower,” said Hafeez on Thursday, and his joy was quite understandable considering he has the services of Saeed Ajmal and Shahid Afridi in the match that India need to win to square the series.

Ajmal is the top wicket-taker in international T20s with 71 wickets from 49 matches at 15.73, and his economy rate is an impressive 6.15. While Afridi has 63 wickets from 57 T20Is at 20.3 with an economy rate of 6.23, firmly putting him in the top 10 wicket-takers in the shortest format.

In contrast, Indians have in their line-up R Ashwin, Piyush Chawla, Yuvraj Singh and Ravindra Jadeja, the last two being more part-time than regular. It says something about India’s frontline spinners that Yuvraj emerged man of the series against England, ahead of Ashwin and Chawla. It could be the biggest worry for the Indian think tank in the series against Pakistan, the less than average outings of the main spinners.

Ashwin, Chawla and Jadeja have had brilliant time in the Indian Premier League, especially the Tamil Nadu offie. He’s central to Chennai Super Kings strategy, often coming to bowl in the initial overs and he has seldom disappointed MS Dhoni.

So it was quite natural for Dhoni to trust Ashwin to do the same job in India colours, but so far his 17 outings have fetched him 13 wickets at 38.61, and he concedes 7.51 runs per over. Still, Ashwin bowled reasonably well in the initial overs against England, but his problem started once he came for the second spell, a time when generally batsmen are in overdrive.

Ashwin barely managed to contain the Englishmen at that stage in Pune and Mumbai, whereas Ajmal hardly offered any freedom for the Indians in the middle overs in Bangalore. His desire to experiment may have fetched him rewards in the IPL, but the same may not come out well against international sides. The variety he has – carom ball and the leg-breaks – were completely ineffective against the Englishmen, who used their feet to telling effect to upset Ashwin’s rhythm. His poor outing in the two T20s against England was reason enough for the team management to drop him from the eleven in the first T20 against Pakistan.

That was only the second T20 he missed since his debut in 2010 against Zimbabwe, and the other occasion he didn’t figure in the eleven was the meaningless match against England in the World T20.

Dhoni tried to defend Ashwin’s omission. "Once we had three seamers, we wanted to give Jadeja a chance, and once the field has opened up in the last two games Ashwin has also gone for runs, (though) he has bowled beautifully in the first six overs."

The Jharkhand man also pointed out the influx of right-handers in the Pak line-up as a reason to drop Ashwin. "They have lots of right-hand batsmen, and if we needed an off-spinner, we had Rohit and Suresh. If we needed an option of a left-arm spinner in case Yuvi had a bad day, we wouldn't have any option in the XI if Jadeja was left out,” Dhoni said.

That may sound good logic, but the fact remains, as Dhoni said while defending the offie, that Ashwin hasn’t been able to block runs from his end, hurting the team’s cause.

Hafeez later said that he was surprised to see India leave Ashwin out of the final eleven, but that, now, seems more a tongue-in-cheek remark.

That opinion could become a bit more blunt, unless Ashwin finds his range at Motera.