India vs England: Former spinner Venkatapathy Raju explains how visitors can beat hosts in the spin game

The concept of ‘Home Advantage’ is quite pronounced when it comes to cricket, where varying conditions in different parts of the world have an impact on the way the game is played. England and New Zealand are known for supporting swing bowling. Australia and South Africa are known for their fast and bouncy wickets, the latter also having the additional factor of altitude in the ‘Highveld’ region that allows the ball to travel a lot more quickly.

Venues in the subcontinent, especially the cricket-mad nation of India, have traditionally supported spin, and quite a few of them tend to become raging turners from the third day onwards in a Test match. That would explain India’s rich legacy when it comes to the art of spin-bowling. It is also the mastery of this department, and by extension, the conditions, that have allowed the Indian team to become virtually unbeatable in their own backyard.

Yes home support does matter. Other factors such as weather and food, especially for cricketers from nations such as England, also play a role in how teams are able to perform in India and the rest of the subcontinent. Mastering spin, however, remains the key to succeeding in India and that remains an area where the Indians have not been challenged too often in the nine decades or so that they’ve been playing cricket.

That is one of the reasons why England start as underdogs in the five-Test series against India that gets underway in Hyderabad from Thursday, 25 January. This, despite their stellar record ever since Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum took charge of the English Test side as captain and head coach respectively. England are yet to lose a Test series in the ‘Bazball’ Era that began with a 3-0 whitewash of New Zealand in the summer of 2022, and had even defeated India in style in the delayed fifth Test against India in Birmingham.

Facing India in India, however, is a vastly different challenge and everything that Stokes has achieved as leader so far will count for little when he walks out to the centre for the toss in Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Thursday. England’s spin attack, too, is a little short on experience with left-arm orthodox spinner Jack Leach the only one who has toured India in the past.

Wrist-spinner Rehan Ahmed did make his Test debut in Pakistan in late 2022, but India will be a different challenge for him. Tom Hartley, who is set to make his debut in Hyderabad, and Shoaib Bashir, who is expected to arrive on the weekend over visa troubles, are yet to play a Test.

According to former India left-arm spinner Venkatapathy Raju, experience does matter, especially in the spin department when it comes to touring India, and that could be a spot of bother for England in the five Tests. The English squad had been training in Abu Dhabi, where they had been simulating the conditions that they are likely to encounter in India from late January to early March. Raju however, cautioned that to beat India in a Test series, a team would need players who have First-Class experience, especially in spin-friendly conditions.

“If you see couple of the teams, they would go to Dubai, practice on dry wickets and would then come to India, only to find little success. I don’t think this England team has done much. You need little experience also, straightaway you can’t just come in. You have to have First-Class experience, wherever you are. It can’t just be straight away coming in and bowling against a good team which can play spin better,” Raju, who was part of the Indian team that faced England at home in 1993, told Firstpost in an exclusive interaction ahead of the Hyderabad Test.

Despite the inexperience, however, he feels Leach and Co can trouble the Indian batters in the upcoming series so long as they are able to focus on bowling just one line and length, something that has reaped rich dividends for overseas spinners in India in the past.

“They have only one experienced bowler. He (Leach) had adapted brilliantly the last time he came. They didn’t drop him, he kept on bowling and he improved. For new guys, they haven’t bowled on turning tracks. If you can contain the Indian batters and just bowl one line and length which is what all the guys who came from abroad and found success on turning tracks did. They would just keep it there, they never tried anything.

“Whoever comes here, doesn’t need to try anything. Because most of the Indians, they don’t sweep, but for one or two. The guy who don’t sweep have always struggled when someone came and bowled a good line and length,” ex-Hyderabad bowler Raju said.

Raju, who represented India in 28 Tests and 53 ODIs in an international career spanning more than a decade, also shed light on what works for a spinner in India and when a team should deploy an extra slow bowler in this series.

“For a spinner, it is much better to bowl when the shine is there because it might skid, it might go through, it might jump. It will be interesting because of the nature of the wicket. If it’s a red soil and slightly drier, it won’t be a bad idea going with an extra spinner.”

England were better prepared in 2012-13

England, incidentally, were the last team to have defeated India in a Test series in India. The difficulty of vanquishing the Indians in a Test series in their backyard can be gauged by the fact that it has been accomplished just thrice in this millennium — South Africa in 1999-00 and Australia in 2004-05 besides England in 2012-13.

England batting icon Alastair Cook had masterminded his team’s epic come-from-behind series triumph in which the visitors bounced back from a nine-wicket defeat in Ahmedabad with 10-wicket and seven-wicket wins in Mumbai and Kolkata respectively, with the fourth Test in Nagpur ending in a draw. While Cook led from the front with 562 runs in that series, off-spinner Graeme Swann and left-arm spinner Monty Panesar finished the highest and third-highest wicket-takers in that series with 20 and 17 scalps respectively.

According to Raju, not only were the Englishmen better prepared for the challenge in that series, having played three tour matches besides training in Dubai ahead of the trip, India’s defeat also came down to their batting department not playing enough red-ball fixtures in the build-up.

“Swann was brilliant. He had the beautiful variations and was very effective. The one which they had was the ball that was going out. Monty didn’t try anything; he just came and was trying to put pressure by bowling good lines. They came better prepared than India. They went to Dubai, they practiced and were ready for it. The Indian team was travelling somewhere, they came back and didn’t practice much. They don’t play local matches.

“Our batsmen struggled because whenever quality spinners come and they bowl those lines, they’ve always been able to trouble Indian batters. That’s what has been happening recently. We have two guys who do throwdowns, bowling around 140-150. Lot of them practice on bowling machines. But then we’re not practicing for spin. Olden days there were so many spinners, so many state bowlers who were called to bowl in the nets,” Raju said.

Raju cited the example of Navjot Sidhu flaying England spinners John Emburey and Phil Tufnell before the 1993 series and Sachin Tendulkar taking on Shane Warne before Australia’s 1998 tour of India as examples of how Indian batters would psychologically defeat visiting bowlers even before the series had started.

“When these guys batted in those games, they would psychologically take advantage of the visiting team bowlers, like they did in ’93 before we came back. Somebody like Sidhu, Embulney and Tufnell, he just smashed them in that match before the first Test. Till then they were bowling brilliantly, but were smacked in such a way.

“Same thing happened when Mumbai played Australia. Sachin played that game against Shane Warne. All these guys played, Nilesh Kulkarni, the full team was there. Psychologically they put that thing in their mind. So when Sachin started hitting, naturally Shane Warne then itself lost the battle. Unfortunately, present players they don’t have much to play,” Raju added.

Hyderabad hosts the first of the five Tests starting Thursday with the action then shifting to Visakhapatnam on the eastern coast where the second match gets underway from 2 February.

Rajkot (15-19 February), Ranchi (23-27 February) and Dharamsala (7-11 March) host the remaining fixtures in the series, in which India will hope to collect valuable World Test Championship points and surge ahead of current table leaders Australia with a dominant display.