Three slips, two gullies, a point — for generations, the arc behind the batsman on the off-side was a clear pointer that Test match cricket was on. Fast bowlers would steam in at the batsman with the sole intention of clinching that classical dismissal — the delivery seaming away, searching for the outside edge of the bat, with fielders in a half-squat wait to play their roles. The Bangalore Test was different, though. With the slips vanishing quicker than the shine on the new ball, unorthodox placements became the new order over the five days. The Australians, in particular, regularly employed silly mid-off, silly-mid on, mid-on, short-mid-wicket, short square-leg, deep backward square-leg, even as their quicks steamed in. In fact, Ricky Ponting even had a sweeper out on the off side for most part, a ploy repeated by Anil Kumble as boundaries were at a premium and singles remained the source of survival. “Actually, the new field setting takes a lot of toll on the batsman,” confesses a Team India player, on condition of anonymity. “Even though I didn’t score too many runs, I felt exhausted as I had to concentrate much more with this setting. First you had to pick the right delivery to hit, then you had to make sure the ball was placed in the right area as there weren’t many open spaces and finally, it was important to keep the ball down due to the number of catchers in front of the wicket. From a batsman’s perspective, we often tend to play shots with a set mindset of a Test field. Bangalore was different,” he says, adding that these kinds of fields were here to stay. From time to time, especially of late, batting in Test cricket has evolved. The deliberate upper cuts have found a way into the longer version, as well as a few reverse sweeps. Even bowlers have increasingly employed the slower deliveries, reflecting a direct impact of one-day and Twenty20 cricket. “I think that the conventional thing has gone out of the window. It’s more about the pitch that you are playing on,” says former India left-arm spinner Maninder Singh. “With the advent of T20 and one-day cricket, batsmen tend to play a lot more shots and they develop a tendency to continue playing shots. Might as well keep the fielders posted where they’ve realistic chances of getting catches — like those of Dravid and Sachin — rather than waiting for batsmen to get out in a stereotyped manner,” he says.Former Indian opener Arun Lal feels it has more to do with the changing nature of pitches. “Even if you go back a few years, you will notice that on pitches with low carry, captains never set orthodox field placements because it never made sense to have people standing in a queue in the slips when the ball just wouldn’t carry. Some captains did try unconventional placements to tackle unorthodox cricketers, but those were largely psychological moves, not really tactical,” he says.Former India opener Aakash Chopra also feels the change could be permanent. “Pitches across the world are getting slower, which would mean this change is here to stay. Mohali might be different if there’s some carry.”But it can also be argued that the Bangalore Test wasn’t even played on a typical sub-continental pitch. First and foremost, the seamers took 24 of the 30 wickets that fell, a statistic that goes against the basic character of Indian conditions. And the two umpires had to tackle many more decisions about how much a ball was swinging or reverse swinging rather bat-pad shouts, the bread and butter of slow bowlers in the sub-continent. Australian captain Ponting had said ahead of the tour that his team had a few new plans in place to tackle India in India. Slowing the Indian batsmen down, it seems, will play a large part in it. Of course, it could also be, as Zaheer Khan said, that they’re just being defensive.
