It's a bowler's game

Test cricket is a bowler's game. If you question that, you need only look at the strongest teams of the present or recent past: Australia, featuring McGrath, Gillespie and Warne; South Africa, boasting Donald and Pollock as their spearheads; Pakistan, with Wasim and Waqar in their pomp; back to West Indies with Ambrose and Walsh as the last of a great chain of (fast) bowlers who made those teams dominant.

Several factors make up a successful team but the common element they all share is a high quality bowling attack. This basic truth is a shade too easily forgotten when it comes to assessing why a particular team won or lost or what makes a side strong. Exciting or consistent batsmen tend to attract their fair share of the limelight, captains in charge of winning sides are invariably praised for their tactical acumen (and vice versa when they lose) and any number of individuals are naturally lauded for their exploits. Yet it is the assembly of a quality bowling group that is crucial to success.

If you were to pick a hypothetical team from scratch, the first type of player you would want to select is a champion bowler. To put it bluntly, in a team starting from nothing you would pick McGrath ahead of Tendulkar. It is the nature of Test cricket that bowlers are inherently more valuable to their teams than batsmen. There are typically only four of them compared to six specialist batsmen, so immediately their roles become more critical to the outcome of any game.

It is one of cricket's biggest clichés that "you need 20 wickets to win a match" but it became so because it is true. Two teams featuring a glittering array of batting talent will not achieve anything better than draws if they field mediocre bowlers incapable of bowling the opposition out twice. In contrast, no matter how feeble a batting line-up a team might possess, it will always stand a chance of victory with a powerful bowling attack.

Some people blame Tendulkar for not winning enough matches for India. Short of developing into a genuine all-rounder, what can he do? Tendulkar is principally a batsman, not a bowler. He, as with all batsmen, is responsible for generating totals large enough for the bowlers to defend. Occasionally, a batting line-up will be required to achieve a large fourth-innings target if the bowlers let them down, but successful chases are still rare. By and large the guys with the ball are the match-winners.

Top-class batsmen can elevate good teams to great ones and great ones into even higher echelons by rescuing matches that would otherwise have been lost. Adam Gilchrist has done this with Australia to some extent. But it is rare to find any sort of moderately successful team without a respectable attack. Sri Lanka have risen on the performances of Muralitharan and his support cast. Simply, batsmen cannot sustain a side long enough for it to be consistent without bowling firepower. India away from home, at least prior to the present series, comes to mind here.

An under-rated facet of Test cricket is the importance of bowling in partnerships. Everyone recognises that partnership-building is the key to batting, but it is less true on the bowling front, where the protagonists tend to be viewed more individualistically. In a team game of patience and pressure, this attitude is somewhat misplaced. Successful bowling partnerships, and the pressure they apply, are significant.

In the six Tests played between Australia and South Africa in the season just gone, South Africa used no less than 12 different bowlers, including six different new ball combinations. Now, the pressure the dominant Hayden/Langer opening combination applied to South Africa's attack from the outset was crucial, but from a bowling perspective the inability to find a consistent posse of bowlers able to perform in pairs was decisive, and the whole attack suffered. Cameo performances by Ntini and Adams in South Africa came to nothing without adequate support. In contrast, Australia used only six bowlers through the six Tests, and the pressure they sustained in pairs was telling. The difference was also a reflection of the mentality of the two sides, but at a basic level bowling partnerships were a key difference.

For all the attention rightly afforded elite batsmen and their craft, for me the most intriguing aspect of Test cricket is the capture of wickets. This is primarily because they instantaneously alter the state of the game more than any single shot can. Batsmen require time to exercise an influence; bowlers need only an inspired burst and with that are capable of exerting a greater individual influence over a match.

In years to come, what will be remembered most about the 2001 Australia v India series is Laxman's 281 and his partnership with Dravid in the second Test. But were it not for Harbhajan Singh engineering the Aussie collapses with his 32 wickets, their heroics ultimately would not have altered the course of the series.

Without question, batsmen can lose games. India being bowled out for 102 on the first day effectively demonstrated that. But it is still bowlers who chiefly win them. In the second Test at Port-of-Spain, it was not Tendulkar's hundred nor Laxman's half-centuries that won India the match. It was the efforts of Srinath, Nehra and Khan in twice dismissing West Indies for below 300, particularly Nehra's double-strike in the second innings. Laxman may have been the man of the match, but Nehra was the MVP.

It is seen as a batsman's game and on perceptions, aesthetics and the ability to draw crowds it probably is. It's true that Muralitharan v McGrath does not excite the imagination in the same way as Lara v Tendulkar. Nevertheless, it is the bowlers who really influence it.

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