Why can't India produce enough quality fast bowlers while Pakistan is a conveyor belt of producing fast bowlers?

India has had a number of quality bowlers but none of them could match up with the sheer pace and accuracy of bowlers around the world and ironically neither with our neighbors. India and Pakistan matches in many aspects same race, similar people, matching culture, and an equal enthusiasm for Cricket but still Pakistan has produced the likes of Imran, Waqar, Shoaib, Wasim and the list goes and on.
The most successful fast bowlers India has produced are Kapil Dev with 432 wickets in a career spanning around 18 years and Javangal Srinath who got 236 wickets to his name in an 11 year career but these figures are just no match to the fast bowlers of Pakistan with Imran getting 362 wickets, Waqar Younis getting 373 wickets, Wasim Akram 414 wickets. These Pakistani bowlers were real match winners. But this didn’t start only with them, there were some bowlers like Sarfaraz who is known as the founder of reverse swing and also Asif Masood who also generated some good pace.
If we see in the last quarter of the century India has not produced even a single fast bowler but Pakistan has had numerous in there battalion. Now what exactly is fast bowling.. A bowler is considered fast if he continuously bowls at a pace around 80+mph if not in the ‘s. Apart from Srinath and Kapil here are some of the other names that come to mind from Indian fraternity, Prabhakar (medium pacer) Chetan Sharma (although very skilled but still medium pacer) Sandhu, Venkatesh Prasad, Sunil Ankola, Abbey Kruvilla, Dave Johnson, Bhupinder Singh, Debashesh Mohanty, Tinu Youhanan, Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan, Ashish Nehra, Balaji etc. of these only Sunil Ankola, Tinu Youhanan and Agarkar had good raw pace and would touch 140-145 Kmph range where as Zaheer and Irfan both had the potential to bowl fast but have slowed down with time, although still quite young.
Though India has the esteemed MRF pace academy where Dennis Lillie himself trains young and budding bowlers but still India is unable to get quality bowling attack. Munaf Patel was one of the guys who started his career as a genuine fast bowler with praises from the likes of the great Rahul Dravid but one injury and some change in bowling action brought his speed down to as low as 120 kmph.
There are some theories doing the rounds as to why India produces only medium pacers and Pakistan churns out quality fast bowler. Rahul Bhattacharya has put them nicely in his book “Pundits from Pakistan” where he talks about some aspects about fast bowling. These are physique suitable for fast bowling, aggression or the mental strength of a bowler, will to bowl fast, stamina and the desire, and also a grooming for being a fast bowler.
One needs a great physique to bowl really fast; big broad shoulders, long legs and long arms. If we look at the physique of the likes of Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Asif, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram they all qualify with the attributes of a fast bowler. Although being tall and big helps, but is not necessarily the only reason for being a fast bowler. Lets not forget that Abbey Kuruvilla, Venkatesh Prasad and Debashish Mohanty were all tall and had the build of fast bowlers but could only bowl medium pace.
The next factor is aggression, how do you become aggressive and cut an intimidating picture in the field. Certainly many factors contribute to that and so far there has not been any conclusive research or psycho analysis done on fast bowlers’ mentality and origins of their aggressive behavior and nature, but Pakistani fast bowlers have pointed to one factor when speaking about Indian fast bowlers aggressiveness or lack of it. It is suggested that the reason why Pakistan produces aggressive, intimidating fast bowlers and India does not, is that Pakistanis consume lot of red meat, where as most Indians don’t. Proteins can be acquired from other sources as well, but it is said that red meat gives you a certain kind of aggressiveness and that is why bowlers like Waqar and Shoaib can skittle out wickets on the basis of their presence. Once again a glance around the cricketing world gives some credence to this theory, most, traditionally, fast bowler producing countries are all red meat eating countries like Australia, South Africa and West Indies. Two of the recently aggressive Indian bowlers are both Muslims, presuming red meat eating, Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan.
Going by this, India has almost 150 million Muslims and many other ethnicities that eat red meat, Sikhs and Christians included, yet they have not produced fast bowlers, the only genuine fast bowler actually came from South India, generally a vegetarian region, although he did have the physique. Speaking about aggressive behavior and intent, what about Greg Chappel (a vegetarian), Saurav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag and Anil Kumble, although not fast bowlers but they have aggression aplenty.
The answer probably lies in the cricketing culture and system, but wait a minute system and Pakistan cricket cannot be together in one sentence?? But the system and culture has nothing to do with Pakistan cricket administration, it is more to do with the cricketing culture on the streets.
Reverse swing and “doosra” were something that was invented and practiced predominantly in Pakistan. Along with this came a very important third element, that is “tape ball cricket”. Pakistan is a country where a majority of population lives in poverty or near poverty, and where there are hardly any playgrounds available for kids in urban centers. So the aspiring and budding cricketers had to come up with an easier and cheaper way of satisfying their cricketing hunger and be entertained. And so, tape cricket was born. It is a very simple concept, take a tennis ball and mask scotch tape around it to give it more weight and make it bounce similar to real cricket ball. This makes it heavy enough to be bowled properly and also this makes it behave similarly to normal cricket ball, where as a normal untapped tennis ball does not. No pads, gloves, helmet, abdominal guard or in some instances even stumps required. Bricks, chairs, empty cartons, impression of stumps on walls, anything will do. What it did was, kids could bowl like their idols in streets without worrying about, equipment which most of them could not afford, vast spaces and injuries and just bowl like Imran, Wasim, Waqar or whoever they fancied. Tape ball is lighter than the real ball so that requires the bowler to exert extra force on it to send it down quickly in the process helping develop, arm, forearm, back, thigh, stomach and shoulder muscles, all essential for bowling fast. It also teaches them how to swing the ball and other variations. By either leaving a small slit on one side of the ball the ball starts to behave on the principle of reverse swing, or by making a seam by wrapping extra tape in the middle, and you have an apparatus as real as you will get to develop bowlers. Because space is cramped and boundaries are smaller and less overs are available, the batsman are there to hit everything out of the ground, so the bowler learns to ball quick yorkers and short balls because that is the only way to escape punishment. This does not happen in India, in India cricket is played with a normal tennis ball on the streets and although it encourages stroke making, fast bowling becomes futile.
So these are some of the factors that make Pakistan a mecca of fast bowlers whereas India is limping behind with some ineffective medium pacers. The lack of fast pace wickets is also another area of concern and India relies heavily on the spinners, who have failed to perform on international pitches. I believe that India should start looking and grooming bowlers with the right aggression and train them to be real quick bowlers to make the country proud.