Bengaluru: Temperance has its place in cricket, but when overdone, it bites you in the back, and how. India A suffered the humiliation of that truth as they played themselves out of the contest in their Duleep Trophy opening against India B.
India B, on the contrary, were flexible in their approach and were rewarded as they notched a 76-run win on the fourth and final day at the M Chinnaswamy stadium on Sunday.
Frankly, though as this game went into the final session, there was little reason to believe the chance India A had when they were in pursuit of 275 after they lost wickets early on.
After bowling India B out for 184 (which was only a few runs more than Musheer Khan’s first innings individual tally of 181), India A, what with their quality batting line-up, would have surely fancied themselves.
Plus, all things considered, India B’s bowling unit, besides being disciplined and such, is not in the same league as India A’s pace purveyors.
They didn’t have, say, Akash Deep for instance. The pacer finished with a fifer in the second innings to complement the four wickets he had in the first innings.
India B were dependent on Mukesh Kumar, Yash Dayal and the like. Firstly, they aren’t as quick, and they also were not nearly as consistent on bowling the heavy length. They held onto good lines, though.
Turns out, that was good enough to get rid of some of the best batters in Indian cricket at the moment.
After Mayank Agarwal was dismissed by Dayal for 3, Shubman Gill and Riyan Parag looked to calm the nerves with contrasting approaches. While Gill looked a steady bet, Parag opened up his arms and collected runs quickly.
Worked a charm for a while, but once Parag nicked Dayal to Pant, India A’s batters went into a shell.
This is not to discredit India B’s bowlers, but to not acknowledge that India A’s batters approached every delivery post Parag’s dismissal with caution, would not be wrong.
Naturally, this played into KL Rahul’s temperament as he went about collecting runs at a glacial pace, but the rest - their defensive technique, at least - were found wanting.
While the pitch had slowed down with tennis ball bounce off certain areas, there was no reason for India A to not take on the bowlers a bit more, especially since they had enough time in the day to do so.
In fact, all they need to do is look at Akash’s 42-ball 43 - a knock of reckless abandon - to see what they should have adopted a sliver of. Instead, they shook hands with the eventual victors and smiled as if the result of this contest was no consequence to them.
Maybe, therein lies their problem.