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The Cricket Interview/Laxman Sivaramakrishnan

"I lost the attacking edge to my bowling"

You then went to England, right?

Yes. I guess, in retrospect, that was the big mistake I made. I played for a team called Whalley Cricket Club in the 1985 season. Trouble was, the wickets were not the kind spinners get help from -- they were wet, there wasn't any bite and turn for us. So that meant if you flighted, since there was no turn, batsmen -- even tailenders -- would just hit you up and over. So I began bowling flatter and faster, looking for a tight line and length, no variation -- I guess in other words, I lost the attacking edge, became a containing type bowler.

You came back to join the Indian team to Sri Lanka -- was that tour the beginning of your decline?

In a sense yes, though I would trace it back to the stint in England, more than the Lanka tour. It was in England that I changed my style of bowling -- but what you do there is not noticed as much as what you do playing for the Indian side, so people began talking of my decline only after the Sri Lankan tour.

But yes, the tour was bad for the side, Lanka registered its first Test win against us on that tour, and for me personally, I started off with a thumb injury, and just bowled badly throughout. I was bowling England-style -- flat and fast. And there, the pitches were hard and fast, so my bowling came on nicely for their strokeplayers.

But surely, at your level, you are expected to realise what is wrong and make the necessary adjustments? I mean, in this instance you could have reverted to your attacking style of bowling?

That's how it looks from the armchair but with all due respect, it's not quite so simple. I mean, in retrospect, I know what the problem was. But out there, what happens? I am bowling, the way I bowled the last time which was in England. And I don't get wickets. Meanwhile the runs keep coming. So you panic, and figure if you are giving runs even when bowling defensively, then you can't afford to toss a few up -- so you end up bowling flatter and faster.

What it takes is for a good coach to see it from the outside, talk to you, help you see what the problem is. But what we had, those days, was a manager, not a coach -- and his main job was looking after tour arrangements and things -- cricket was not a priority, really.

And individually, it is difficult to change styles in the middle of a tour. See, to go back to my earlier style meant running in easier, releasing the ball higher. Here I was running in faster, releasing lower and keeping it low through the air. To switch styles means first bowling in the nets, with a competent coach watching to make sure that while trying to correct one mistake you don't make another. And that kind of luxury we didn't have, then. I am not making excuses, mind, just trying to explain what happened.

Okay, you had a problem. You also had, in India, a talent bank of some of the finest spinners the world has seen -- did you ever think of approaching any of them for help?

Yeah, sure. But you have to understand, they are not professional coaches, they are not at your disposal. In Australia for instance, if Shane Warne has a problem today while on tour, they have Terry Jenner fly over to wherever it is to help him sort it out -- because Jenner is employed as a full-time coach, and thus at the disposal of the board and the players. Here, the former spinners hold down jobs in private companies. Sure, you get to talk to them, they help you with tips -- but that alone is not enough.

Like I said, when you are bowling, you don't think of technique -- your run up, approach, delivery stride, release point, all these are ingrained, a matter of rhythm. All you think of is how to bowl to a particular batsman, how to trap him. In the nets, it's different -- say in this came I am told that I am bowling too flat, I am asked to get my arm straighter, brushing the ear at the delivery point, to release the ball at the height of my action to give it flight and loop. Okay, so I go to the nets and concentrate on that -- but the minute you begin concentrating on one aspect, chances are something else changes -- maybe the back foot points squarer, or maybe the front foot is not angled down the pitch straight enough, whatever.

Which is why the person who advises you should also be available to watch you try out his advise, be there to make sure you get it all right. I spoke to most of the Indian greats at that stage -- but I never had the facility of getting their time and energy at my disposal while trying things out in the nets. The result was that I kept slipping from one mistake to another.

But was the whole thing merely technical? There was talk that you had developed an 'attitude'. 'Indiscipline' was another word mentioned in your connection. What is the story behind that?

To put it in perspective, after Lanka we toured Sharjah, then Australia. I missed the Adelaide Test through injury, got only 3 wickets at Melbourne. There we had good hard batting tracks, we had batsmen like Border, Dean Jones, Steve Waugh to bowl too. And there was an element of luck involved as well -- for instance, in Melbourne, we needed 80 to win when it rained and the game ended in a draw. Result, we lost a series we should have either drawn, or even won outright. And a fact of cricket life is, when your side is winning, a bad patch for an individual is overlooked. But when you lose, then they look for reasons. Or scapegoats. I mean, someone has to be blamed, right? So they say, "Siva bowled badly, the bowling was weakened..." And to top it off, the media makes up its mind about the reasons, without ever really analysing things.

An example is that talk of 'attitude' I kept hearing -- one big time cricket writer in India kept writing that I was more interested in batting than bowling -- simply because while my bowling was on a low, I was in fact getting runs. That's like, now, when a batsman hits a trough, they go, "Captaincy has affected his batting". That is snap judgement -- and snap judgements without enough basis are rarely correct. I mean, I was not likely to make the side as a batsman, right? So why would I give up bowling, which was what catapulted me into the side, and concentrate on batting?

'Indiscipline' is another word they used to damn me -- in fact, I believe that it is even mentioned in the little note on me in the Oxford Book Of World Cricketers encyclopaedia. (Christopher Martin-Jenkins, writing in that compendium, says... 'although the loss of control which caused his eclipse was temporary, he gained a reputation for indiscipline off the field and played no more Test cricket...') It's easy to damn a guy, give him a tag like that and keep repeating it often enough. But tell me, did my captains ever complain of my indiscipline? Or the state board? Or the BCCI? Was there ever any official complaint? No. A section of the media for its own reasons hung that tag on me, and damned me with it.

Come on, is the media all that important? Strong enough to make and break careers? My own experience is the selectors don't give a hoot what the media writes anyway...

Remember, you are talking of the mid-eighties. That time you didn't have as much television coverage. You didn't have knowledgeable former cricketers commenting, and writing about the game. And ultimately, even the selectors, the board, they all got their info mostly from what the media wrote. Besides, selectors and officials are also elected to their posts -- they too need to be in the good books of the media, so yes, they listened to what was written or said -- especially by the more powerful reporters.

In sum, you believe that at that point in your career you hadn't lost it altogether, it was merely a slump in form?

Yes, in fact that is what it says even in that Oxford book, that my loss of control was temporary. The fact is that I had, during my England stint, picked up some bad bowling habits. As a result I lost my attacking style, I wasn't getting wickets. A good coach to help me out at that point, an establishment that had faith in my ability and would back me and help me work my problems out -- this was what I needed then, and never got.

"If Robin Singh can come back after nine years, why not me?"