BackStepping into Dhoni’s shoes
Replacing the iconic wicketkeeper must be the hardest job in Indian cricket. Is Wriddhiman Saha the man for it?
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Wriddhiman Saha made his Test debut against South Africa at Nagpur in February 2010. He had to wait until January 2012 to play his second Test against Australia, at Adelaide. His next Test appearance came at the same venue, nearly three years later. Saha has played just five Tests for India since his debut. To say that he was an understudy to M.S. Dhoni would be stretching it a bit.
Dhoni’s retirement from Tests in December has meant that Saha has played his last three matches at breakneck speed compared to his earlier stints—in a span of six months. He was the backup keeper on the tour of Australia late last year. When he was picked for the Bangladesh tour this year, the selection committee confirmed that Saha is now India’s first-choice keeper in Tests. He goes into the Sri Lanka tour, which started on Wednesday, as the one and only glove man in the side.
It has been a long time coming. For a decade now, Indian wicketkeepers have had little hope of making it to the national squad in any format; Dhoni was a larger-than-life presence behind the stumps—Captain Cool, an unwavering keeper, a deadly bat. How well can Saha fit into his new role, one of the toughest jobs in cricket to begin with, and made even more daunting by the shadow of Dhoni’s towering career?
Dhoni was never a magician behind the stumps; in fact, in the last couple of seasons his most valuable asset as a keeper—his consistency—was showing signs of erosion. Saha is perhaps technically a better keeper, but he will also be judged by how he does with the bat. The Indian team’s new leadership, captain Virat Kohli and team director Ravi Shastri, believe that playing with five bowlers in Tests, especially abroad, is critical to winning matches.
“To win Tests, you need to take 20 wickets, and for that we need five bowlers. That is the first option always," said Shastri in the build-up to the first Test against Sri Lanka. He is right, of course, for this Indian team struggles to take 20 wickets on a consistent basis. But this also means that the team will play only six batsmen, and Saha will have to hold his own with the bat and not just impress with his wicketkeeping abilities.
“The idea of playing five bowlers is pretty clear," said Kohli in the pre-Test press conference on 11 August, admitting that it puts pressure on someone like Saha, who hasn’t exactly done well in his limited outings as a Test batsman.
In the five Tests he has played, Saha did not cross the 50-run mark even once, his highest score being 36. It is too small a sample size to form a concrete opinion about his ability to contribute, but his shot selection has often come in for criticism. Take the three-day practice game in Colombo preceding this Test series. Returning to the crease for the first time since the Bangladesh tour, he got out to loose shots in both innings, scoring 3 and 1, casting a shadow on the management’s five-bowler formula.
“It will add to the pressure, yes, but I will enjoy the challenge of that situation," said Ajinkya Rahane, who is batting ahead of Saha. “Regardless of how many batsmen you are playing with, the lower order has to chip in with important runs, that’s the way Test cricket is played nowadays," added R. Ashwin, acknowledging the role he will be expected to play when he comes in to bat after Saha.
“The responsibility, then, is on the top five batsmen to score the bulk of the runs so that they can take the pressure off someone like Saha, who is looking to cement his place in the side, or even the lower order," Kohli said. “Till the time they feel comfortable and get going in this format, the responsibility is more on the top five batsmen to take on the burden of scoring."
Until the Melbourne Test in the last week of December, six batsmen, including Dhoni, shared this burden. Despite talk of Dhoni’s supposed inefficiency with the bat in foreign conditions, the statistics show he was quite effective. Of his 90 Tests, Dhoni played 32 matches in Australia, England, South Africa and New Zealand, averaging 31.47 per innings compared to his career average of 38.09.
Australia was the one place he really struggled to get going, perhaps because of his limited technical ability to counter the extra bounce. If his tours Down Under are taken out of the equation, his average from 23 Tests played in England, South Africa and New Zealand rises to 36.41, just a shade under his overall career average.
In addition, he heaped responsibility on his shoulders when the last cycle of overseas Tests began in late 2013. The seven-batsmen, four-bowlers formula had not paid dividends on the tours of South Africa and New Zealand, so Dhoni moved to No.6 in four of the five Tests played on the ensuing tour of England. Again, he averaged 36.62 in those eight innings, and hit three half-centuries. By his own admission on that tour, he had had to make minor adjustments to his game to enable himself to bat at that position and be the link between the top and lower order. This allowed him to pick five bowlers for those four matches.
It leads us back to that question: Is Saha ready to step into those big shoes? And is Indian cricket looking at a long-term replacement who can be as effective as Dhoni was across all formats?
“When selectors want to find a good wicketkeeper batsman, sometimes they end up looking at their keeping skill," says former Sri Lankan wicketkeeper Romesh Kaluwitharana. “Unfortunately, times have changed. The batting aspect has become more important and a balance is needed in any wicketkeeper’s skills. Indian selectors need to give time to these selected players to harness them. And they have enough opportunity to do so in India-A matches, Ranji cricket and the IPL (Indian Premier League). It will be interesting to see how they will replace Dhoni."
Though Dhoni is still the captain and keeper in One Day Internationals (ODIs), time is running out on that too. It puts the spotlight squarely on the options available to Indian cricket at present. Is Saha quick enough and adaptable enough to make the switch from Tests to ODIs as well? He is first in the pecking order, but he is unproven in shorter formats.
An interesting point to note here is that the selectors did think of a backup wicketkeeper when announcing the Test squad for Sri Lanka, but they withheld his name. While it is too early to say that they are looking for long-term options beyond Saha, they do have alternatives.
Naman Ojha and Sanju Samson are two names that come up in this scenario. Both have been on the fringes of Team India for quite some time now; the former was part of the Test squad in England last year as a backup keeper, while the latter was part of the ODI squad on the same tour. In July, Samson went on to make his international Twenty20 debut against Zimbabwe. Both are currently part of the India-A set-up (which also includes Himachal Pradesh’s Ankush Bains and Saurashtra’s Sheldon Jackson after an impressive 2014-15 Ranji season), but inconsistent performances have put a question mark on their immediate call-up to the international side.
There are two other names worth mentioning here: Dinesh Karthik and Robin Uthappa, both still actively pursuing a place in the Indian XI, with the latter making an appearance on the Zimbabwe tour as well. While Uthappa came on to the scene at the same time as Dhoni, Karthik’s debut pre-dates Dhoni.
It was Dhoni’s belligerence with the bat, across formats, that helped him rise above these names in the first place. He was India’s impact player, a bulldozer when he needed to be. Perhaps his best knock came on a turning Chennai pitch in 2013, that double hundred against Australia scored in just over two sessions in the company of tail-enders.
The selectors might need to cast their net wide, bringing up names old and new. Rest assured, replacing Dhoni will take time, and some degree of luck.
Chetan Narula is the author of Skipper: A Definitive Account Of India’s Greatest Captains.
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