Are Indian bowlers improving in their performances outside Asia?

Are the bowlers growing?

Ishant alone has played four more ODIs than the trio of Hastings, Richardson and Faulkner combined.

The learning curve is always cited, every time bowlers go haywire in a one-day game for India. This is underlined in the current context, where both the team director, as well as the captain have spoken of taking the learnings out of the losses and have promised to come back stronger in subsequent tours. What they miss though is that learning and coming back stronger is all good when said for the first time – but when repeatedly the same bowlers who have learned and unlearned over and over again, commit the same mistakes, it becomes borderline frustrating.

Of the bowlers used in the last five years, Jadeja, Ashwin, Shami, Umesh, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant, and Mohit Sharma have made frequent appearances, and have done the bulk of the bowling for India. Considering that they have been the bowling core ever since the likes of Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra, Harbhajan Singh and Munaf Patel faded away, it will be interesting to plot their learning curve. Are they learning through repeat visits?

	ENG tour – 2011				ENG tour - 2014
Bowler	M	W	Avg	ER	M	W	Avg	ER
Jadeja	3	4	38.50	6.69	4	7	24.57	4.77
Ashwin	5	6	25.16	5.39	4	7	24.85	4.44
Shami	-	-	-	-	4	8	19.00	4.67
Umesh	-	-	-	-	1	1	46.00	7.66
Bhuvi	-	-	-	-	4	5	26.80	4.32
Mohit	-	-	-	-	2	0	-	3.88
Ishant	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

	AUS tour – 2011				AUS tour - 2015				AUS tour - 2016
Bowler	M	W	Avg	ER	M	W	Avg	ER	M	W	Avg	ER
Jadeja	8	3	109.00	5.30	2	0	-	6.30	4	3	70.33	5.55
Ashwin	7	7	43.42	4.82	1	1	54.00	6.00	2	2	64.00	6.73
Shami	-	-	-	-	4	2	49.00	4.62	-	-	-	-
Umesh	6	5	59.80	6.22	2	2	48.50	6.06	4	6	43.83	6.60
Bhuvi	-	-	-	-	2	1	62.00	5.23	2	0	-	6.52
Mohit	-	-	-	-	1	2	18.00	3.60	-	-	-	-
Ishant	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	3	7	27.14	6.33

	SAF tour – 2013				NZ tour - 2014
Bowler	M	W	Avg	ER	M	W	Avg	ER
Jadeja	3	1	139.00	5.79	5	4	60.25	5.23
Ashwin	3	1	169.00	6.03	5	1	227.00	5.15
Shami	3	9	20.55	6.60	5	11	28.72	7.18
Umesh	2	1	102.00	6.80	-	-	-	-
Bhuvi	-	-	-	-	5	4	59.75	5.43
Mohit	1	0	-	8.20	-	-	-	-
Ishant	2	4	19.50	4.58	2	2	59.00	7.86

While the numbers suggest that trips to England have reaped benefits, what stands out though is the fact that India’s lead spinners are struggling outside Asia. The very bowlers who pick truckloads of wickets on spin-assisting subcontinental tracks, are unable to get the batsmen out, This is important when seen in conjunction with how the captain of the Indian team operates. Till the new rules kicked in, the middle overs used to be an important phase of play for spinners to operate in. Picking wickets was the key, and for batsmen, preserving them was. Due to Ashwin and Jadeja’s lack of efficacy, more often than not, the brunt of settled batsmen exploding was borne by the fast bowlers bowling in the death – resulting in high totals like in South Africa (2013).

If India are to regain their one-day mojo away from home, it is important to think long term and discover bowling options, at least three of them that can consistently perform away from home. In the current scenario, that seems a long gone conclusion, as the lead spinners are ineffective and the fast bowlers are expensive. What India badly needs right now, is a fit Mohammed Shami and an incisive new ball bowler.

The verdict: Indian bowlers have blown hot & cold since the World Cup was won in 2011. In the five years, there’ve been more misses than hits and that’s all there’s to it.