India’s woes in away series – Is there a way out???

Going by historical cricketing records, India has always been a team which faced problems playing away from home, and have never had much of away series success, to really boast off. However with victories in the last four away series, as well as our routing of the Aussies & the Windies at home, gave the cricket crazy nation’s fans hope of India registering their 1st ever bilateral series win over the South Africans. But after what has surfaced in the 1st 2 ODIs, we must say Team India flattered to deceive, as we got to see a mere rewind of what it has been all these years, the star-studded Indian batting line-up not mentally prepared to take on raw pace and face chin music. In the bowling department too, excessive reliance on spinners to take wickets in turning tracks back home, has led to a severe dearth of quality pace bowlers in the country, who could exploit the seaming conditions, on tracks where the spinners get rendered ineffective.
  So how does India possibly come out of such a situation, and resolve its away series woes. Firstly I feel, the entire problem hovers around lack of a quality pace attack, and a batting department that can handle pace and bounce, on seaming bowler-friendly tracks. I feel the pitches used in the country are partly to blame for it as is the domestic league, the IPL. As far as the pitches are concerned, India needs to sport good cricketing surfaces, and not flat wickets, which serve as a batsmen’s paradise. Such changes need to be incorporated at the domestic level (Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy) itself, and in the IPL. The problem today is, fast bowlers in India, find no recognition, since they are always plundered for runs on slow turning flat pitches, and are pin-pointed as villains. Just try recalling the number of fast bowlers to have represented India in the last decade, and has been a regular in the in the starting line-up. Not one that I can recall off, the closest being Zaheer Khan. On the contrary quality spinners like Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Ravi Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have become sporting idols for many. So what happens as a result, is the cricket enthusiast as a kid, only ends up idolizing spinners and the batsmen in the team, who they look up to as true Team India heroes. The pacemen are looked upon as mere villains, match after match. Hence almost everybody wants to be the next opening batsmen, or quality spinner or both. This concept seeps in right from school level matches, which again are placed on flat tracks. So that explains our sorry state of bowling affairs.
  Meanwhile due to predominance of spinners and turning tracks, most captains turn to their spinners to bowl the lions’ share of the overs. Hence the batsmen get more used to playing the turning ball than the bouncers. Also these days IPL and Domestic cricket has seen introduction of spinners to open the bowling, and doing quite effectively. Hence the batsmen, are more concerned about working the ball away, than face a lethal new ball that flies past them. Their mindset is to start dispatching the ball to the boundary from ball 1, than seeing their eye in against the brand new cherry. In away series too, Indian batsmen either try to attack from ball 1 when they shouldn’t be or get over-defensive in their stance, thereby contributing to their own downfall. What Team India presently needs is prevalence of more seamer-friendly wickets in the country. Also the Pace Foundations and other Cricket Academies need to instill more confidence in pace bowlers so as to encourage them to take up pace bowling as a career option and not shifting to spin-bowling or the batting department, in their quest to become heroes. Until then, India’s away series woes will only continue to aggravate.