When you’re about to play a Test match on an Indian pitch, the question to ask the curator isn’t if it will turn but when. Spin, at most venues, is a given.
“Importantly, the batters as well, they have to bat really well on the first few days when batting should be slightly easier, and of course, both teams have got quality sets of fast bowlers. So I guess the challenge for both teams is the combinations we go in with.
“But certainly, we are going to be relying a lot on our seamers to make early inroads in the first couple of days. And I guess that’s what you want from a really good Test wicket, where it’s not just reliant on one of the facets being too important to the game. But I do think spin is going to be important on this pitch in the long run.”
In the short run, on days one and two, it could well be the quicks that both captains look at as attacking weapons, to be unleashed when the conditions give them small windows of help. The new ball usually swings in Kolkata, aided by breeze from the Hooghly, which is only a short distance beyond the uncovered stands at the stadium’s northwest. There could be early moisture in the first sessions, from the pitch perspiring under the covers. Reverse-swing is a possibility, given the practice pitches on the outfield and their roughening effect on the ball.
Now these figures are skewed by three outlier Tests. In 2016, a newly relaid surface offered India and New Zealand both seam movement and uneven bounce. In 2017, the desire to prepare for an imminent South Africa tour led India to prepare a greentop against Sri Lanka, in a Test match beset by wet weather. In 2019, India prepared another seaming pitch for a pink-ball Test against Bangladesh. Across those three Tests, fast bowlers picked up a combined 85 wickets.
“So, yeah, there’s so many battles within the Test match, within this big war. Fast bowlers, you’re talking [Jasprit] Bumrah, [Kagiso] Rabada, [Marco] Jansen, [Mohammed] Siraj. You’ve mentioned the spinners, and then the batting match-ups. It’s certainly a mouthwatering contest, and if you’re a fan of cricket, I know what you’re going to be doing [over the next few days]. So there’s so many exciting battles to look forward to, and you’ve got to earn the right to get to the spin by taking care of the fast bowlers properly.”
Rabada was on that tour, his second Test tour of India, and bowled better than figures of seven wickets at 40.71 would suggest. He bowled testing new-ball spells in all three Tests, but where he only picked up three new-ball wickets (first 30 overs) while drawing 43 false shots (14.3 false shots per wicket), Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav and Ishant Sharma took a combined 19 new-ball wickets from 84 false shots (4.4 false shots per wicket). And India had the good fortune of winning every toss, batting big each time, and declaring late on day two to give themselves two cracks at South Africa’s top order with the ball still new and their quicks still fresh.
It wasn’t all luck, of course. Over the years, India’s fast bowlers have tended to outbowl visiting counterparts in a few key respects including attacking the stumps more, harnessing reverse-swing better, and just having a more intuitive understanding of Indian pitches. They’ve also tended to have better spin-bowling support, which means they get longer breaks between spells, and tend to bowl more often in more favourable situations. In that series, Shami and Umesh were lethal for all these reasons.
This series begins with South Africa looking in better health than in 2019-20 in many respects. One of them is the depth of their pace and spin departments, and the experience Rabada, Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer bring from both past India tours and recent subcontinent tours.
They could be dangerous opponents for that reason, and India will be more than wary, with the bruises from last year’s 3-0 loss to New Zealand still to fully heal. This could be an exceedingly tight series if South Africa’s sails can catch the winds of form and luck. And from their perspective, it couldn’t begin at a better place than Kolkata.
Karthik Krishnaswamy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
