India conceded over 500 runs in an overseas Test after nearly a decade ©Getty
This was the kind of day Manchester rarely offers, the kind poets might imagine but locals rarely trust: powder-blue skies, a beaming sun, birdsong in the breeze. Days like this are rare here. Days like this, where India are pounded for 500-plus in an overseas Test, have become rarer still.
But it happened again. Ten years on from the last such mauling, the ghosts have returned. Not since Sydney 2015 had India conceded as many in an innings in an away Test. That was before the pace-bowling revolution, before they had depth, fitness, and the ability to keep pressure simmering across sessions.
That Sydney Test featured a 24-year-old Bhuvneshwar Kumar, undercooked after an ankle injury, struggling in his lone appearance of the series. By the end of the game, his pace was down, he found no swing, and bowled with the keeper up. Anshul Kamboj has endured a parallel arc after being jetted to Manchester and handed a debut three days later.
Kamboj has, across two days of toil, returned just one wicket while averaging 125.34 kph on his first full day on the field. His inclusion had come not just with strong endorsements from MS Dhoni and R Ashwin, but with a solid first-class record – 79 wickets at 22.88 – and a sharp showing against the England Lions. But the seamless step up that Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj once made, like they’d always been equipped for Test cricket, has eluded him for now.
The dip in pace caught even Morne Morkel off guard. For, Kamboj consistently bowled above 135 in domestic cricket and seemed sharp in the nets too. “He’s definitely fully fit. If he wasn’t fully fit, he wouldn’t be playing,” India’s bowling coach confirmed on Friday (July 25). “You know, if you look, I wish I could give you that answer [about Kamboj’s speeds], because I would have told him then how to bowl quicker, but, you know, he arrived here, he bowled well in the nets. In the India ‘A’ game, he was definitely quicker, and, you know, some of the games back home, yeah, it was definitely higher pace.”
The problem, though, runs deeper. Between Kamboj and Shardul Thakur, the third and fourth seamers, India got 29 overs of scattergun effort, neither tight nor threatening. As a result, the burden once again fell on Bumrah and Siraj, who have already sent down 28 and 26 overs respectively. The lack of support has not only affected the balance of the attack but also strained the core, with both bowlers visibly dropping in pace.
On Day 3, Bumrah managed just one ball above 140 kph. Compare that to Headingley and Lord’s, where high-pace deliveries made up nearly 40% and 27% of his spells respectively. The over-reliance leading to fatigue also resulted in a rare loss of discipline with the new ball on Day 2.
“That’s something that we’re definitely also trying to get our heads around,” Morkel said of the falling speeds. “You know, on a surface where it gets a little bit flatter, you need that little bit of energy behind the ball. And I think, you know, that’s definitely one of the factors for us so far in our bowling innings is just getting that little bit of extra zip off the wicket to create the opportunities for caught behind or an LBW. But yeah, I mean, you know, to look at the workloads of guys like Siraj and those sort of guys, they’ve had heavy workloads.
“You know, Anshul, that’s his first Test match so far. And, you know, it’s important for us that we wanted to grow and develop a nice fast bowling unit. So not too much to judge on that. But yeah, I think, you know, it is also a heavier sort of outfield. But in terms of commitment and effort that the guys have put in, I don’t think we can fault that. It’s just that, you need that little bit of energy on the ball, on good surfaces where the ball at times is not doing as much.”
Kamboj isn’t the only one culpable. He comes highly recommended, is clearly a skilled bowler and has passed checks at various levels leading to his selection. And this soft start to his India career can be understood; these things happen. But his selection will inevitably invite scrutiny. The team management took a conscious call: flew him in mid-series, capped him ahead of an existing squad member in Prasidh Krishna, and handed him the new ball on debut.
It wasn’t just a leap of faith, it was a statement. And it didn’t land.
Morkel said Kamboj was expected to find a consistent channel on the off-stump and bowl long spells, neither of which he managed. His ineffectiveness, coupled with Shubman Gill’s evident lack of trust in Shardul Thakur – which Morkel later attributed to the match situation forcing the captain to fall back on his two strike bowlers – meant India were, for all practical purposes, operating with a two-man pace attack.
It was a freakish coincidence that a similar setup worked at Edgbaston, where Akash Deep and Siraj took 17 of the 20 wickets between them. But it’s far from a repeatable strategy, and yet, it’s one this management group, under Gautam Gambhir, has doubled down on: in Australia, and now here. Batting depth is the priority and security for the transitioning top-order is priority. But the cost is a bowling lineup that has been rendered ineffective.
India picked Washington Sundar as their all-rounder, but he was introduced only in the 69th over – and picked up two wickets in his first six overs. The attack had cried out for a more incisive edge, but the left-arm wrist spinner Kuldeep Yadav continued to miss out.
“I think it’s finding when he comes in, how we can find balance and how we can get that batting line-up to be a little bit longer and stronger,” Morkel said. “We’ve seen in the past that we’ve lost wickets in clumps. Kuldeep is world class and he’s bowling really well at the moment, so we’re trying our best to find ways for him to get in. But unfortunately, with that, just to balance with batting throws it out a little bit.”
Morkel admitted that Kuldeep’s omission came down to India wanting a batting cushion – but also acknowledged the inverse: that another genuine strike bowler could ease the pressure on the batters by reducing the runs needed.
“I do think at the end of the day you need runs on the board, and for us obviously giving that a little bit of extra batting protection, wanting to get totals of 400+,” he said. “You need it against England, especially the way they play, their brand of cricket.
“But to be honest, the wicket so far has been dry and it’s actually spun a little bit. So that brings Washington into the game. It brings Jaddu [Jadeja] into the game. So Kuldeep, we are trying to find a way for him, but it is just more that consistent runs from our top six that we want so that we can bring a guy like Kuldeep in.
“There’s always an option of going in with quicks and picking your six best batters,” Morkel said. “All those discussions we have had or we do discuss. But I think so far in this match, the last two Test matches, the guys who have played have done a good job in terms of spin bowling. We were ever so close to winning that Test match at Lord’s. We had a great Test match at Edgbaston. So I think so far we’ve played good cricket, barring yesterday’s bowling performance.”
India’s attack, then, is not merely a reflection of available resources. It’s the result of a deeper philosophical trade-off: batting depth over bowling incisiveness. It’s a blueprint that delivered at Edgbaston, nearly clicked at Lord’s, but has also left them with just two wins from eight away Tests under this regime, both built on freakishly brilliant individual bowling efforts. For that ratio to avoid slipping to two from nine, India will now have to hope that the batting cushion they’ve banked on somehow holds, for an unlikely win, or at the very least, to salvage a draw.
But then again, there aren’t too many sunny days in Manchester.
© Cricbuzz
