The Problem With The Indian Batting

The main problem that the Indian batsmen face is that each batsman – of late at least – is known for getting out in one particular manner. There is a certain pattern about the dismissals of the batsmen. This can be dangerous as not just the Australians, but all the other teams around the world will figure out strategies that can exploit these weaknesses.

Yuvraj Singh has been dismissed more than once caught behind to the inside edge. That can only happen if the batsman is playing away from his body. Every coach is bound to have brought home to every batsman the importance of playing close to the body. Yuvraj has been breaking this norm far too often.

The problem with playing away from his body is that it occasionally pays off. This comes as a problem as if the batsman gets a boundary playing away from the body, the player gains a lot of credit for the boundary. But the point that the batsman played it away from the body is ignored. This results in him venturing to do so more. And often, he loses his wicket due to this experiment.

Another problem many of the Indian batsmen are facing is regarding the movement of the feet. So regularly, we have seen the Indian batsmen, particularly Dravid and Uthappa getting out due to either lack of foot movement, exaggeration of foot movement or simply incorrect foot movement.

When he entered the international scene, and a little before that, many reckoned that his tendency to get committed on the front foot could prove fatal for him. He seems to have adjusted to that very well. Meanwhile, there is one another flaw which is causing some problems for him. Very often, Robin gets his front leg too far across the stumps and therefore becomes a candidate for the LBW. It also hampers the distribution of his body weight.

This distribution also seems to be a major problem for Dravid. This has been exposed explicitly over the past few months. Dravid tends to get his head too far across. This results in him bending over the ball and completely losing his balance. This is probably because he brings his foot too far across the stumps. Subsequently, he tries to remedy this by straightening his front knee. He tends to lean over the ball with his feet unable to move, therefore falling pray to LBWs.

This flaw is exploited further by the Australian bowlers as two of their medium pacers – Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Bracken – are southpaws. Usually, left arm fast bowlers get the natural angle away from the right handed batsmen from over the wicket and get the ball to seam back into the pads. Therefore, moving the front pad across the line of the ball is but an opportunity for the bowler to pick up a LBW. As if to emphasise the left handers’ angle, the Indian batsmen also sometimes tend to play away from the body – Dravid in particular – and get the inside edge onto the stumps.

Its all very dangerous and if a webpage with hardly any visits has noticed it, I don’t see why the Australians will not.-BS