Lack of red-ball games behind the struggles of Prasidh Krishna and others?

Lack of Test matches the reason behind Prasidh Krishna and others average performance?

What the Headingley Test drove home emphatically was that you don’t win a match without having a bowling attack capable of taking 20 wickets. India may have dominated vast tracts of the opening four days, and scored five centuries across two innings, but ultimately, the lack of support for Jasprit Bumrah cost them a match they had no business losing.

England’s strategy during the run chase was crystal clear. See off Bumrah, who had taken five wickets in the first innings, and, to a lesser extent, Mohammed Siraj, and feast on the rest. Once Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley survived an intense first-hour examination from India’s new-ball duo, the visitors never once looked like they would win, despite the target being an imposing 371.

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Prasidh Krishna’s 35 overs in the match fetched him five wickets, but also cost a whopping 220 runs – an economy rate that would be problematic in ODIs, leave alone Tests. Shardul Thakur snagged wickets off two of the worst balls bowled in the game but was otherwise quite innocuous. Ravindra Jadeja struck once in 47 overs. Siraj, for all his aggression and endeavour, has taken 28 wickets at 37.50 in the last 12 months.

Why then were India’s bowlers so poor? Part of the answer might come from Malcolm Gladwell and his book, Outliers, where he states that you need 10,000 hours of focussed practice to become the master of any art/craft/science/sport. The new generation of Indian bowlers simply aren’t playing enough red-ball cricket.

Prasidh is now 29 and made his first-class debut nearly a decade ago. The Headingley Test was just his 25th red-ball game. In the opposite camp, Josh Tongue, only 27, was playing his 57th. Arshdeep Singh, now 26, is likely to play at Edgbaston, but has just 21 first-class matches behind him. Neither he nor Prasidh has bowled even 4,000 balls in red-ball cricket.

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To put those numbers into perspective, consider two men who had limited Test careers with India. Tinu Yohannan (three Test caps) bowled 9,404 balls in a 10-year first-class career, while Praveen Kumar (six caps) sent the red ball across the 22 yards 14,158 times. If both, fringe players at best, exhibited far greater control than Prasidh, it was no accident.

For the generation now in their 40s and 50s, Kapil Dev was once the benchmark for bowling consistency, both in terms of fitness and accuracy. In one home series alone, against West Indies in 1983, Kapil bowled 1,223 balls. He was world-class because he put in the hours. The current generation, many of whom conveniently go down with injuries during the first-class season and miraculously recover in time for the IPL, will continue to struggle without putting in those hard yards.