BANGALORE: You could not make it up. Eight days into a home series, and it is India’s pace bowlers that have dominated proceedings. Of the 28 Sri Lankan wickets to fall till now, Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma and Umesh Yadav have combined for 21, leaving just seven for the spin duo that sit atop the rankings — Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.
It is not as though Indian pace bowlers haven’t excelled before. As long ago as 1933, the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack raved about India’s new-ball combination for their first Test at Lord’s. “Mahomed Nissar, tall and very big for an Indian, was the fast bowler of the team. He had a nice, easy action and before the shine had gone off the ball, he made it swing and at times break back alarmingly,” it said.
Of Amar Singh, who tragically succumbed to pneumonia when just 29, the writer was even more complimentary: “He could make the ball swerve either way and at times cause it to dip, while his pace off the pitch was often phenomenal. Better bowling than his in the second innings of the Test match has not been seen for a long time and more than one famous old cricketer said afterwards that Amar Singh was the best bowler seen in England since the war.”
That was the legacy, but until Kapil Dev made his debut in Pakistan in 1978, promptly sending down a bouncer or three, the Indian attack was always spin-centric. Kapil, whose record of 431 Test wickets stood for six years until Courtney Walsh surpassed it, took 219 of them on spin-friendly surfaces at home where he averaged a sensational 26.49.
Once he retired, Javagal Srinath took over, but India had to wait until the next generation to enjoy success away from home. Shanthakumaran Sreesanth, who was banned in 2013 for his part in the Indian Premier League spot-fixing scandal, and Zaheer Khan combined to rout South Africa for 84 at The Wanderers in 2006 as India won their first Test in the southern Cape. Less than a year later, Zaheer — incensed by English pranks with jellybeans as he was batting — took a nine-wicket haul at Trent Bridge to give India a series win. In January 2008, at the WACA Ground where they hadn’t lost to opposition other than West Indies since the mid-1980s, Australia picked a four-man pace attack to extend a 16-match winning streak. But it was the Indian trio of Irfan Pathan, RP Singh and Ishant that took 14 wickets in a famous 72-run victory.
In December 2010, when India squared the series in South Africa, it was the skill of Zaheer and the mercurial outswing of Sreesanth that provided the key breakthroughs. Sreesanth’s bouncer that had Jacques Kallis twisting like a marionette on a string before fending to gully epitomised how far India’s pace bowlers had come.
But those performances tended to be exceptions, largely because the back-up for the first-choice bowlers was patchy. In 2006, after that Wanderers win, India went to Durban and lost a Test primarily because Vikram Raj Vir Singh, the third seamer, couldn’t exert any kind of pressure. In the decisive Test at Newlands, a patently unfit Munaf Patel bowled just one over in the second innings as South Africa chased down a tricky target.
For years, India tried to put together a group of pace bowlers that they could rotate based on the conditions. Right now, Virat Kohli, the captain, is spoilt for choice. When South Africa were thrashed 3-0 at home in 2015, Yadav took five for 60 across the two matches he played in. Against New Zealand in 2016, Bhuvneshwar transformed the Kolkata Test with figures of six for 76.
At home to England, whose line-up boasted both Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad, a few months later, Shami was the best pace bowler on either side, taking 10 wickets at 25.2 in three Tests before he got injured. That included the highlight of the series, a ball that swung back in to break Alastair Cook’s off stump in two at Visakhapatnam.
Against Australia in early 2017, a series in which the highly rated Josh Hazlewood took nine wickets, Yadav finished with 17 at 23.41. And in Sri Lanka at the start of this season, Shami took 10 for 177 across the three Tests.
Come South Africa next January, Shami, Bhuvneshwar and Yadav are likely to be the chosen trio, though Ishant — who won India the Lord’s Test of 2014 with 7 for 74 in the final — is a more than handy alternative to have. For a country that once used to open the bowling with the gentle medium pace of Abid Ali, Eknath Solkar and even Sunil Gavaskar, the legendary opening batsman, these are heady days.