Dubai: Bharat Arun, who had nurtured the growth of India’s pace bowling battery as a bowling coach in tandem with head coach Ravi Shastri, endorsed the need of a greater pool of pace bowlers in view of the volume of cricket being played now.
A former Indian Test seamer, Arun is widely regarded as a mentor behind the coming of age of the Indian pace battery and is believed to be on the exit route along with the rest of Indian coaching staff after the ongoing T20 World Cup.
Speaking during a zoom interaction with the media on the eve of India’s inconsequential last Super-12 match against Namibia on Monday, Arun said: ‘‘I think the bio-bubble will be a norm for another one or two years and I have seen from close quarters that it takes a huge toll on the mental health of the boys. It certainly calls for different set of bowlers for different formats.’’
Asked if the absence of a break between IPL and T20 World Cup became a factor in the underwhelming show, Arun showed empathy for his bunch. “Being on the road for six months is a huge ask. Players haven’t gone home and I think they had a short break after the last IPL got suspended (in May),” he said.
Picking up the likes of Mohammed Siraz and Prasidh Krishna, he felt there is an assembly line of pace bowlers in the pipeline and credited skipper Virat Kohli’s policy of playing with five bowlers across all formats. ‘‘When Kohli and Ravi came together, he insisted that we go in with five players if we wanted to win Test matches. The norm before was to go in fourth bowlers and a batter who can bat but Virat felt that the regular batters should take more responsibilities and now that we have got a wicketkeeper a which is a very good batsman, it’s easy to implement it,’’ he said.
Looking back at India’s campaign, Arun candidly said that the defeats in the first two matches against Pakistan and New Zealand were most unfortunate. ‘‘No excuses, but toss played a very, very vital role and I believe in these kind of matches, toss shouldn’t be of any consequence,” Arun said.
He was understandably non-committal on a query if the squad missed Yuzvendra Chahal’s leg spin as India did not field the only genuine leggie in the squad, young Rahul Chahar, in a single game so far. ‘‘See it’s for the selectors to comment, and I would not like to dwell on them,’’ he added.
