Team India bowling coach Bharat Arun is delighted because his boys picked up 60 wickets in three Tests against Sri Lanka. Talking to DNA, Arun said the whole idea of playing five bowlers in Test is to see them taking 20 wickets.
“It comes from the captain, who has always said that we play to win and we need to take those 20 wickets. More so, with Sri Lanka being hot and humid, for four bowlers to do it over a period of five days can be pretty taxing. If we need to win Test matches outside the country and also in India, if you have five bowlers – ideally, it could be four bowlers and a good all-rounder where Stuart Binny fit in that slot beautifully, he did a good job on this tour, he got timely runs and chipped in with crucial wickets through some tight bowling – this is something that we stuck with initially. Even when we lost the first Test, we as a team, especially the captain (Virat Kohli) and the director (Ravi Shastri) were extremely confident about the five-bowler theory. In the end, it proved. Three Test matches, 60 wickets. They tell the story,” he said to DNA.
In all praise for skipper Virat (Kohli), Arun said he has done a wonderful job in reading the situations and handling the bowlers beautifully. “At every given point, we were bowling well in partnerships and that is exactly what has been very good for us. Identifying those bowlers is extremely important, as is making the right bowling changes, setting the field. Maybe there are times when a bowler is not going through a great spell but through imaginative field setting, you can make that bowling effective too. That was part of the strategy and Virat excelled in that,” he said.
Meanwhile, a report in The Indian Express says that India seemed to have a player just when he was needed, and it was rather dramatically apparent in the last Test where the soft spoken and oft-forgotten Cheteshwar Pujara played an innings of great skill and application. “Both count, though sometimes we value the former more. Pujara seems to approach life with the seriousness of an economist and in the first innings on a wonderfully seamer-friendly track at the Sinhalese Sports Club, it was a quality to savour. There were many fine hundreds in the series, the customary one from Ajinkya Rahane and two mighty ones from the impressive Angelo Mathews, but Pujara’s had the greatest influence on the winning of a series,” the report said.
Virat Kohli did a wonderful job in reading the situations and handling the bowlers beautifully: Bharat Arun
Team India bowling coach Bharat Arun is delighted because his boys picked up 60 wickets in three Tests against Sri Lanka. Talking to DNA, Arun said the whole idea of playing five bowlers in Test is to see them taking 20 wickets.
“It comes from the captain, who has always said that we play to win and we need to take those 20 wickets. More so, with Sri Lanka being hot and humid, for four bowlers to do it over a period of five days can be pretty taxing. If we need to win Test matches outside the country and also in India, if you have five bowlers – ideally, it could be four bowlers and a good all-rounder where Stuart Binny fit in that slot beautifully, he did a good job on this tour, he got timely runs and chipped in with crucial wickets through some tight bowling – this is something that we stuck with initially. Even when we lost the first Test, we as a team, especially the captain (Virat Kohli) and the director (Ravi Shastri) were extremely confident about the five-bowler theory. In the end, it proved. Three Test matches, 60 wickets. They tell the story,” he said to DNA.
In all praise for skipper Virat (Kohli), Arun said he has done a wonderful job in reading the situations and handling the bowlers beautifully. “At every given point, we were bowling well in partnerships and that is exactly what has been very good for us. Identifying those bowlers is extremely important, as is making the right bowling changes, setting the field. Maybe there are times when a bowler is not going through a great spell but through imaginative field setting, you can make that bowling effective too. That was part of the strategy and Virat excelled in that,” he said.
Meanwhile, a report in The Indian Express says that India seemed to have a player just when he was needed, and it was rather dramatically apparent in the last Test where the soft spoken and oft-forgotten Cheteshwar Pujara played an innings of great skill and application. “Both count, though sometimes we value the former more. Pujara seems to approach life with the seriousness of an economist and in the first innings on a wonderfully seamer-friendly track at the Sinhalese Sports Club, it was a quality to savour. There were many fine hundreds in the series, the customary one from Ajinkya Rahane and two mighty ones from the impressive Angelo Mathews, but Pujara’s had the greatest influence on the winning of a series,” the report said.
