LARA PRAISE
| Date :21-Oct-2019 |
WEST Indian great Brian Lara is all praise for the current Indian pace battery and says that he is reminded of the West Indies greats of the 80s and 90s when they dominated world cricket. Indeed that is a great tribute to the Indian pace bowling attack which is being hailed all over the cricketing world. These bowlers not only have the speed but also have mastered various nuances of fast bowling, essential for purchasing sumptuous results. There is no denying that current pace asset makes Indian team special. According to Lara the quality that Jasprit Bhumrah, Mohammad Shami, Umesh Yadav, and those presently on the sidelines like Bhuvaneshwar Kumar, bring to the table is simply ‘unbelievable’.
That is one of the greatest strengths of the current Indian cricket team which no doubt has catapulted it to the top of international cricket. In his hey days the legendary Lara was used to playing against a mild pace attack which held no venom while the country was known to produce highest quality of spinners who used to be the mainstay of Indian bowling attack until very recently. In the past pace bowling used to be a mere formality with medium pacers bowling a few overs in the beginning of an innings while the major work used to be carried out by spinners like Erapalli Prasanna, S. Venkatraghvan, Bhagwat Chandrashekhar, Bishen Singh Bedi.
This was because, while these men were very great in their art, there was paucity of genuine fast bowlers. Even now India has several quality spinners with great variety and the selectors can even afford to drop the likes of Kuldeep Yadav, Yujvendra Chahal or even the prolific Ravichandran Ashwin on occasions. Such is the rich bank of spinners even now. Yet over the last few years there is a remarkable change in the pace bowling department with rich crop of pacemen coming up in quick succession.
While the current pace attack is manned by world class frontline bowlers, domestic cricket from where this talent is coming up, is also endowed with rich crop of fast bowlers who keep on raising their claims to upgradation to the national team. In fact there are several instances where very talented pace bowlers could never make it to the national team and had to remain content with playing for their regional teams and some day go into oblivion. As rightly said by Lara the reserve strength is as important as those making the final eleven. That is precisely why the Indian team management can afford to give adequate rest to each player and is not unduly perturbed if there is an injury scare to a frontline bowler as has happened with injured Bumrah or the absence of Bhuvaneshwar Kumar.