Indian bowlers yet to master the art of mixing deliveries: Aakash Chopa

Two overs 29 runs conceded Mahendra Singh Dhoni had quite reluctantly gone back to his pace bowlers for the final 12 balls of the warmup game against Sri Lanka And by the end of those 12 balls one could gauge the reason behind the skippers reluctance The same trend continued in the second warmup game against EnglandCoach Duncan Fletcher chats with MS Dhoni during a practice session yesterday PicAFPIndian fast bowlers bowled only 12 balls in the last five overs Games before the tournament are good indicators of the teams strengths weaknesses and options Indias weak and inexperienced fast bowling department isnt a secret and both the games just reiterated that pointKey questionWhy does India leak so many runs in the death overs mdash thats a key question Is it because our bowlers dont bowl enough yorkers or they havent mastered the art of mixing the deliveriesSince India doesnt play enough International T20s Im taking into account Indias death bowling woes in the ODIs too Bowling in the final four overs of a T20 game is quite similar to bowling in the last 10 of an ODI and weve been found wanting in bothWhen you talk about bowling in the death overs there are only three lengths that you can bowl mdash yorker bouncer and a back of good length ball that rises sharply and hits the higher part of the bat Anything other than these three lengths is likely to be carted around with easeYou may like to vary the pace every now and then too but bowling a half volley or a good length ball is simply blasphemous even when you take the pace offWhere to bowlSo where do the Indian bowlers bowl Dont they bowl enough in the block hole In fact they find that spot more often than their counterpartsOn the tours to South Africa and New Zealand Indian bowlers bowled a total of 48 yorkers in the eight ODIs as opposed to 22 from Kiwis and South African bowlers in the same number of matches Incidentally its not the yorkers that are going for plenty but the balls before and after a perfect yorkerYorker is a tough ball to bowl and requires a lot of accuracy and body strength While the former can be achieved by practice the latter is something that you build over a period of time But bowling a yorker or rather not bowling a yorker hasnt been Indias bane but the constant struggle to get it right hasSince Indian bowlers dont have a fast bouncer like Dale Steyn or Mitchell Johnson they stay away from it and since they dont get extra bounce like Morne Morkel even the back of length ball isnt an option eitherThat leaves our bowlers with the option of only one ball which is the most difficult ball to execute The pressure to find the block hole every time takes its toll and they end up missing the mark more than they would prefer The other major problem of bowling a yorker is that the margin of error is too little for a bad yorker turns out to be the easier ball to hitHalf volleys galoreWhile Indian bowlers may have bowled a lot of yorkers theyve also dished out most number of half volleys and full tosses while attempting the yorkers In addition to that most batsmen around the world have found a way to score against the yorkers tooMost go deep into the crease which makes even a low full toss ineffective and others the more adventurous ones bend their knee to play the lap shot Yorker has lost a little bit of sting off late most definitely the ones that arent reasonably quick or the ones that reverse swingIndias best chances however radical it may sound lie in playing three spinners and asking one or two of them to bowl in the backend of the T20 innings India must also dearly hope that the ball continues to grip the surface and turn in Mirpur for Indian pacers simple cant be trusted with the job of bowling the final four overs in the World T20