Kolkata: A Test tour that has come upon us with indecent haste is set to kick off on a tricky Eden Gardens pitch that has left India mulling a few bowling combinations. Two spin-bowling allrounders and a specialist spinner, three spin-bowling allrounders, or two spinners and three seamers? Axar Patel may miss out if India go for the first option, plainly because Ravindra Jadeja is the senior left-arm spinner here with a slightly better batting average. Kuldeep Yadav could be the casualty in the other two combinations.
Shubman Gill wanted to keep the suspense alive till the toss, reasoning that the appearance of the pitch had sown some doubt. “This time of the year, there’s always a conflict whether you would want to go for that extra allrounder or you want to go for an extra spinner,” he said at the press conference here on Thursday. “But once we come tomorrow, see how the wicket looks in the morning, we are going to take a decision. It’s (the eleven) more or less finalised. But I think when we came yesterday, the look of the wicket was a little different. Today it looks a little different.”
Eden’s pitches can be misleading. Barely a few weeks back, Bengal pacers, led by Mohammad Shami, complained that the tracks were too slow for their liking in the Ranji Trophy. Statistically however, non subcontinent teams would love to have Kolkata as the first port of call in India. Since 2010, Eden Gardens has the best fast-bowling average (27.44) and strike rate (47.1), with fast bowlers taking 19.14 wickets per Test here. These are the kind of numbers that would make any pacer raring to bowl at Eden Gardens.
In India and South Africa are sides with the kind of bowling line-ups usually found on paper, where specifications can be tweaked to fancy. With Jasprit Bumrah and Kagiso Rabada rests the high art of fast bowling and its different nuances. And with the element of reverse swing kept alive by a pitch drying out quickly under an autumn sun, the temptation to pick local boy Akash Deep is always there.
Any wear or tear will start to influence the game only in the last two innings. Till then though, it’s more or less given that seamers have to provide the breakthroughs. “In the England series that we played in 2024, the crucial wickets in between were taken by the fast bowlers even though the pitches were spin friendly,” said Gill. “So definitely fast bowlers (would be in action), especially in wickets like these, in these conditions, coming towards the end of the year, you always know in the starting there would be a little moisture.”
There is no doubt spin will come into the picture, expectedly around the third day. And that’s where India must seek the winning edge. Kuldeep can be the ace here, given his habit of bamboozling batters even on seaming surfaces (remember Dharamsala 2024?) But of late India have been obsessing about batting depth, which would make selecting three spin bowling allrounders a very defensive call.
Kuldeep is a stubborn batter, willing to put a price on his wicket. And with Dhruv Jurel set to bat along Rishabh Pant, India’s batting looks solid till No 8. Stretching it to No 9 could be construed as a desperate move, particularly when India need to start on a winning note. Two seamers in Bumrah and Mohammad Siraj, Ravindra Jadeja’s slow left-arm, Washington’s off-break and Kuldeep’s left-arm wrist spin — can India’s bowling get more diversely skilled than this?
South Africa are up against this and more. They last won a Test in India at Nagpur in 2010. Since then India have been formidable, winning six and drawing just one Test in the 2015 and 2019 Test tours. Those were four-match and three-match series though. This is only a two-match rubber, with a three-day turnaround between the Eden and Guwahati Tests. “Coming to India, it’s never easy,” said Temba Bavuma, South Africa’s captain. “We understand the magnitude of the challenge. Some of us in the group… there have been moments of hurt. We know what it’s about. So yes, we look forward to the challenge.”
Central to this belief is the World Test Championship win and the combined skill set of left-arm spinner Keshav Maharaj, off spinner Simon Harmer, and slow left-arm bowler Senuran Muthusamy, all of whom have had significant success against Pakistan and Bangladesh recently. All three are also touring India for the second time, but hopes will be pinned mostly on Maharaj. His bowling average in 2019 was 85.66, and his strike rate 127. Maharaj has come a long way since then though.
Only last month did Maharaj take 7/102—the highest for a South African in Pakistan—in the Rawalpindi win. He is more patient, has a deceptive straighter one, and is not afraid to throw up the ball more often. And he doesn’t have to look beyond the 2023 ODI World Cup match against India at the Eden for some inspiration, where he had castled Gill’s stumps with a ball that drifted in and turned away to beat his leading edge. An encore of that would surely fire up the world champions in what has been the final frontier for some of the greatest Test teams ever.
