There was something new at the India nets on Wednesday. They had commandeered four pitches on the square at the Wankhede Stadium. Two for fast bowling. Two for spin bowling. On each of them, two lines had been drawn, extending perpendicularly outward from the batting crease, one from the base of off stump and another from the base of leg stump. They hadn't been there in Pune.
These lines came in particularly handy when Washington Sundar got down to sweep the ball and Ravindra Jadeja appealed for lbw. Washington kept his front foot where it had been when he played the shot and it did seem fairly adjacent to off stump. Rishabh Pant found them beneficial, too. He could identify balls that weren't in line with the stumps easier and as soon as he saw one, he went on the attack.
India are in an almost unprecedented situation - having to prevent a home series whitewash, which has only happened once before, against South Africa in 1999-2000. And it reflected in the work they have been putting in to prepare for the Mumbai Test. It even showed in the work they had others put in. The Mumbai Cricket Association, reportedly responding to a request from the team management, had trucked in 35 net bowlers. Many of them looked like school children, teenagers.
An offspinner struck Sarfaraz Khan's pad while he was defending on the front foot, but according to umpire Gautam Gambhir, the impact could have been outside the line of off stump. Sarfaraz erased that memory with a full-blooded sweep shot in front of square leg against a left-arm spinner next ball. There was a whole bunch of left-arm spinners, actually. Mitchell Santner couldn't hope for a more heartfelt compliment.
A lot of India's wickets, in Pune in particular, were the result of batters being stuck on the crease. One reason for that might be the level of uncertainty that pitch helped in creating. One ball turned. Another from the same spot went straight on. Others scooted through really low. And with New Zealand making sure they targeted the stumps as often as possible, at times it didn't feel like there were a lot of options for run-making.
"You need to understand when certain balls are turning, certain balls are going straight, it tends to play with your mind," Abhishek Nayar, India's assistant coach, said on Wednesday. "So, at that point, it's really important for a batter to then try and understand how the ball is coming out of the hand, which balls are undercutting [which have an increased chance of skidding through], which balls are overspinning [which are more likely to grip and turn]. I think that's where you need to focus a little harder [on the bowler's release].
"That's the cricketing, technical side of it. But when that tends to happen, a lot of times it's not so much about the batter who's playing it, but it's about the atmosphere outside because sometimes it can be intimidating when you see a ball turning and [another] going straight on. But I think, overall, everyone's equipped [to deal] with that. You've gone through that in your career. When you play domestic cricket, you play on black-soil pitches. You've seen that. But, like I said, sometimes the conditions and the position that you are in, the form that you are in, can get the better of you. But the exact science to it is focusing more on the release points. That's it."
The other thing that batters tend to do on pitches with variable turn is to deny the bowler easy access to good-length areas. Visiting teams turn to the sweep shot to accomplish this. New Zealand, for example, attempted 73 of them in Pune for the cost of three wickets. India typically prefer to combat spin by using their feet, either charging out to the pitch of the ball, or shifting back to exploit the depth of the crease. They played 37 sweeps in Pune, even though they have been encouraged to do so.
Rohit Sharma addressed their reluctance to use the shot in the aftermath of the defeat in the second Test. "That's one thing that we wanted to do as a team, try and play the sweep and reverse sweep because when you do those kinds of things, they have to take one extra man from the front and put it behind, and that allows you to then play straighter and hit those gaps. That is what New Zealand did."
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Devon Conway and Tom Latham, in particular, are excellent sweepers. They spend a great deal of time practicing that shot, which in turn enables them to see the risk associated with it differently. Even in Pune, where the lack of bounce was a significant deterrent to the shot. There was a Test in Delhi where Australia tried to get out of trouble by sweeping at everything but the ball kept scooting under the bat and crashing into the stumps. So going cross-bat doesn't always work, but there is perhaps merit in having it as an option.
India's batters focused on that at training in Mumbai, with Yashasvi Jaiswal in particular taking every opportunity to get down on one knee. He went through virtually every variation of the shot, and its offshoot, the scoop, as well. Virat Kohli attempted to reverse Kuldeep Yadav early into his stint and nailed it. He went conventional against Jadeja who spotted it soon enough to shorten the length and get so much kick off these red-soil pitches that it hit the batter on the chest. There's the other advantage India might gain if their batters are willing to go unconventional. The bowlers will have a better idea of how to deal with it in a match situation (not that they don't already, of course).
Axar Patel saw Washington shaping up for a sweep and looped the ball wider outside off stump. Kuldeep, with his wristspin, was able to get the ball to dip sharply enough that the sweep became problematic. R Ashwin pulled his length back and didn't provide the room to pull off the sweep. That then forced the batters to adopt other means. Stepping out of the crease was a popular choice. The Wankhede pitch will test both teams. It looked dry. It lacked grass. Ajaz Patel said it is definitely going to turn, just a matter of when. But one saving grace might be that here, the batters will be able to trust the bounce.
India began their training on Wednesday with a huge huddle. That's fairly normal, although this one did seem to go on forever. Then they had a smaller huddle and that seemed to go on forever too. It was around this time that the army of net bowlers descended on the pitches, measuring their run-ups with tape. (Jaiswal, a local boy, seemed to recognise a couple of them, he went and hugged them right at the end.) The team management had given the players a small break but they appear to have made the training sessions in Mumbai mandatory and Wednesday's had a feeling of leaving no stone unturned, starting with the lines drawn on the pitch to reflect balls with an increased chance of hitting the stumps, to the effort every batter put in to try and avoid being caught on the crease. India haven't always had to work this hard in a home series but they aren't letting it get them down.
"I think when India lost the [ODI] World Cup in India, that was a low point in Indian cricket for everyone, for the fans, for the players," Nayar said, "In the same breath, a couple of months later, they were [T20I] world champions. So, I always feel sometimes low point in a cricketer's, you know, I forgot the word, but through what a cricketer goes. And then coming back is always a great journey. That's how stories are made. That's how legacies are created.
"So, hopefully, we can be part of creating something as special as that in the future. But the atmosphere is great. Still a lot of jokes and bubbly cricketers in the dressing room. And as you watch, you'll see our sessions filled with fun and nothing's changed. We all understand the sport and we all understand we're going to go out there we're going to win most times, lose some times. And the losing may be emphasised, but we know it's part of the team. So, we just go out smiling and give our best all the time."