Historically Why does the 3rd seamer always lets us down

[maniac]

Let me give some historical backdrop of why I have formed this opinion Late 70's and throughout 80's, obviously India was a one man pace attack barring some good performances here and there by Binny sr. and Chetan Sharma . I haven't watched enough 80's cricket to form an opinion but obviously it is well documented that we did not have a proper fast bowling pair post independence till about the late 80's to early 90's, when we had Prabhakar who was semi-decent in terms of consistency(I always felt he was kind of bits-and-pieces though). During 1992 Aus series we had Kapil-Our greatest fast bowler,Prabhakar who-Was having a good run and was in good form,Srinath a rookie at that point as the 3rd seamer....But looking back at the scorecards rarely did all 3 of them step up In 1996 Srinath was our spearhead and Venky stepped up beautifully during the Eng and SA tour and this was the closest until that point we had 2 world-class fast bowlers and both in form, opening the bowling for us.But Alas we just didn't have the 3rd seamer to complement these guys....We had the who's who of clown fast bowlers as the 3rd seamer back then. In between we had many combos but we never could pool together a combo of 3 really good seamers with unique skill-sets Now forward to the current era and by this point we did manage to somehow ,at-least get a semi-decent pool of fast bowlers with somewhat decent credentials but what happens? In 2011 Eng-when P.K stepped up Ishant or Sree would F up(Sometimes both :giggle:) even though they were proven performers in fact more experienced than P.K. In 2012 Aus tour- Ishant was consistently unlucky when Umesh the rookie stepped up to the occasion and Zak was consistent more often than not. 2014-In this game-Bhuvi is the inform bowler,Aaron has shown his skills but Pankaj goes missing completely There are many such examples I can list out but hopefully you get the point-We might pick the top 3 seamers on current form in India but one of them will always let us down-Not sure why this happens. Whenever we won overseas because of a bowling performance it was solely because of individual mercurial performances.Yes,That is obviously the way it is for most teams especially on sporty pitches,but here is the thing...... the 3rd seamer becomes critical on good pitches where there is a little bit of everything for everyone i.e,Batsmen,Fastbowlers and also spinners....I would say 3rd seamer is extremely critical even on Pattas but then again it is dependent on the strength of your individual team.' This is where teams like Australia,WI and at times even S.A have won games on not so sporty wickets. Now I know there will be jibes that getting 2 seamers together is a big enough deal for India but the point is even when we managed to get 2 very good seamers even in good form,We always had the 3rd seamer mess it up for us. In 2000's when we had a decent pool to pick 3 good enough seamers,One goes missing always. Why do you think it happens 1)Is it because our captains(No this is not Dhoni Bashing but even in recent history) just don't know how to rotate their bowlers? 2)a.Is it because pooling 3 decent seamers in decent form at the same time is a myth and it never happens. b.If you want to make it worse 3 decent seamers in India at the same that never happened-Debatable subject 3)Sheer bad luck

[India-KXIP fan]

Lack of quality. You can't expect all 3 seamers to be performing when you have never had a fast bowler averaging below 30 (barring Kapil) having played a significant amount of time. Good signs now though and I think they will last. Indian bowlers coming through recent years are so much quicker than the typical Prasad type trundlers that came in the past. Things are changing now just in recent few years so many 140+ like Shami, Pankaj, Aaron, Umesh, Ishant (was) and a few U-19's I think his name was Milind. Only a matter of time before we have a permanent fixture in the test side performing regularly l like prime Zaheer Khan. Except this time we will have 2-3 prime Zaheer Khan's. ie we will have a proper test level attack in about 5 years and batting will remain the same (strong) India will eventually find a proper spinner soon enough too. Like prime Harbhajan.

[gaurav92]

Actually the second one spoils it too, many a times, its a one bowler army for more than 70% of the Tests :D

[rkt.india]

Pick 4 seamers in these conditions if one has a bad day, You still have 3.

[maniac]

Lack of quality. You can't expect all 3 seamers to be performing when you have never had a fast bowler averaging below 29 having played a significant amount of time.

Well Kapil Dev,Srinath and Zak all 3 are world class and deserved better stats,They just didn't have bowlers to complement them on sporty pitches....One out of form bowler would let the opposition off the hook and Stats ki Maa-Bhen right there.

[tweaker]

I think the combo of Zaheer,Nehra,Agarkar was good but doubt they have performed collectively

[Sooda]

In the mid to late noughties we should have had a near world class pool of fast bowling talent- RPS, Sree, Munaf should have been helping to this day, Irfan too perhaps. The ones like Sri and Zak who do come through- I think its fair to say it is despite rather than because of the system. Zak became a better bowler after his county stint, I dont know how much Indian coaching system helped him. We dont know how to maintain the quality of pacemen- this is partly down to some of these guys being lazy or even in the case of Sree, nuts. But often poor techncial advice too it seems and a coaching system that just does not seem geared to rectifying flaws like in the case of Ishant. The MRF pace foundation has a world class bunch of coaches but what are those guys doing really

[CG]

In the mid to late noughties we should have had a near world class pool of fast bowling talent- RPS, Sree, Munaf should have been helping to this day, Irfan too perhaps. The ones like Sri and Zak who do come through- I think its fair to say it is despite rather than because of the system. Zak became a better bowler after his county stint, I dont know how much Indian coaching system helped him. We dont know how to maintain the quality of pacemen- this is partly down to some of these guys being lazy or even in the case of Sree, nuts. But often poor techncial advice too it seems and a coaching system that just does not seem geared to rectifying flaws like in the case of Ishant. The MRF pace foundation has a world class bunch of coaches but what are those guys doing really

Bcci does not support or acknowledge the mrf foundation i think.You right atleast 2 of sree,r.p munaf, should have been playing today and imporve with experience but its never happened.The cycle continues.We really do not focus on fst bowling biomechanics and coaching we easily can afford the best coaches but we choose to get guys on jugaad like dawes or simmons who are their on friendship with head coaches.Yes sometimes great bowlers do not make great coaches but they will more often than not.

[rkt.india]

I think the combo of Zaheer' date='Nehra,Agarkar was good but doubt they have performed collectively[/quote'] Nehra and Agarkar were really poor test bowlers for the most parts.

[Roshanrocks]

First seamer mushkil se ek test mei perform kartha hai and ur talking of 3rd seamer.

[rkt.india]

In the mid to late noughties we should have had a near world class pool of fast bowling talent- RPS, Sree, Munaf should have been helping to this day, Irfan too perhaps. The ones like Sri and Zak who do come through- I think its fair to say it is despite rather than because of the system. Zak became a better bowler after his county stint, I dont know how much Indian coaching system helped him. We dont know how to maintain the quality of pacemen- this is partly down to some of these guys being lazy or even in the case of Sree, nuts. But often poor techncial advice too it seems and a coaching system that just does not seem geared to rectifying flaws like in the case of Ishant. The MRF pace foundation has a world class bunch of coaches but what are those guys doing really

MRF is more like training academy rather than coaching academy. They not have a full time bowling coach after TA Shekhar for 4-5 years. Their international coach comes twice a year for 2 weeks which isn't enough to correct techniques of the bowlers.

[Pagalpanti]

We have a good pool tbh but our handling of the resources is pathetic. Bhuvy can swing Shami can seam and also reverse it Aaron and Yadav have pace But we play Ishant, a Past it Zaheer and a tall trundler in Pankaj