We are yet to discover the answers to the million-dollar question that suggests ‘Would ever we able to find a fast bowler for our team. So far, Indian bowlers have failed to match the calibers of the great Australia or Pakistan or West Indies fast Legends. India is a batting nation; we have always been blessed with the wealth of batting talent and continue to be so. How many Bowling legends can we boast of? We have never really had a genuine pace bowler in our ranks to terrorize the opposition, though we have very good swing and seam bowlers, I cannot recall an Indian faster who can be put amongst the ‘Legends’. With no disregard to the likes of Manoj Prabhakar, a cagy mover of cricket ball and Javagal Srinath, a wholehearted war-horse, one cannot give them an honor of ‘Great’. From past few good years, Zaheer Khan has been a revelation to the team but to label him with ‘Great’ would be
Traditionally, India has been regarded as a reservoir of spinners. All Cricket followers would know the times when India’s spinning arsenal was dreaded by the opposition. The likes of B.S.Chandrashekhar, Prasanna, Bedi and Venkatraghavan would have the opposition batsmen in a spin. Much like what the English seamers did to the Indian batsmen in the recent drubbing we got in the test series. Then we had to wait till the 90s’ for Anil Kumble to arrive on the scene and spin his way to greatness. Potentially, the next great spinner we have is Harbhajan Singh. But in Kumble’s absence he has been tested to the extreme and the off-spinner has failed to deal with the expectations so far. May be it is just a bad patch for him; a pretty long one, Only time would tell how the ‘turbanator’ comes back.
The present state of our team in England is disheartening to say the least. However, it does allow us to dig deep and ask serious questions which, we tend to ignore when we are doing well. The only way to develop good bowlers is by looking at the way domestic cricket is structured in India. Playing Twenty20 cricket won’t help India’s bowling woes. You cannot learn anything by playing that format. A bowler will learn only by bowling for an extended period. IPL is not at all a good idea. They need to ensure that the structure is strong there for cricketers to develop.
There is some buzz around Varun Aaron, who is tipped to be bowling around 90 miles per hour. I cannot comment on whether he would have made a difference because I have never seen him bowl. There is no point in bowling quick if you are not accurate and then bowling all over the shop, so I will reserve my opinion on that until I actually see him perform. If Pakistan can spot raw pacers from the streets and Sri Lanka can unearth mystery spinners from nowhere, surely a country with a population of more than 1.2 billion and insane love for the game can do much better.
