Indian spin great Bishan Bedi says Twenty20 is nonsense and it’s preventing Australia’s tweakers from learning the art of slow bowling in long-form cricket.
Australia’s slow-bowling tactics have spun out of control in the first two Tests of their four-Test tour of India. The home side have won both matches by huge margins.
Offspinner Nathan Lyon (3-215 and 1-29) was dropped after the Chennai Test and Xavier Doherty (3-131) and debutant Glenn Maxwell (4-127) fared little better in Hyderabad in India’s first innings of 503.
Left-arm slow bowler Doherty’s first wicket came in his 43rd over and offspinner Maxwell was criticised by coach Mickey Arthur for leaking runs.
“I feel very sad for these youngsters because they are fed on this wretched T20 nonsense. It doesn’t allow them any capacity to think,” former India skipper and ex-coach Bedi has told AAP.
“This is the sad part. Spin bowling is all about thinking, about control, about confidence.
“It’s all about meeting of minds in the air and off the wicket.
“With the Big Bash League or whatever you have in Australia, it’s doing enormous damage to the spinners.”
Lyon made his first-class debut for South Australia in February 2011 after an impressive T20 season with the Redbacks. Within six months he was in the Test side.
Coach and selector Mickey Arthur said Australia opted for Tasmania’s Doherty in their Test squad ahead of well-performed NSW Shield left-arm spinner Steve O’Keefe because Doherty had shown good form in one-day and T20 matches against Sri Lanka and West Indies.
And Maxwell’s rise in the T20 game is such that he’s been taken for a million dollars by the Mumbai Indians in last month’s Indian Premier League auction.
The 24-year-old has been mentored this summer by legspin legend Shane Warne about the role patience plays in spin-bowling. Warne was Maxwell’s captain for BBL team Melbourne Stars.
A lack of Shield cricket leading up to the February-March India tour has not helped the preparations of the Australians.
Maxwell has played only 16 first-class games in his career while Lyon has played 37, but 20 of them have been Tests.
“He only played (five) first-class games before he played a Test match. He hasn’t played many after that and truth be told he hasn’t gone well this year,” Arthur says of Lyon.