8 - 1 field, "negative" tactics ?

At the end India comprehensively beat Australia in Nagpur test and won the series 2-0. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has come in for a lot of flak for his "negative" strategy in third day's first session, where he employed a 8-1 field and asked the bowlers to bowl wide of off stump. Former Australian player Ian Chappel has gone so far as to say that rules should be changed so that not more than two-third of the players can be on one side ! What next? Should it be made mandatory to have three slips and a gully to make cricket more interesting ?

The strategy was defensive, but not negative, and definitely not easy!!! The way many people, especially Australians, reacted to it suggests that anybody can bowl to a 8-1 field and restrict the opposition. But it requires great amount of skill and accuracy to bowl to such a field, for any ball even on the middle stump will fetch a boundary. Even Australians tried bowling to such a field in India's second innings, but could not implement it successfully and India still scored at a runrate of around four. Also, if a bowler is bowling defensively the batsman can do something innovative to break the bowler's rhythm and force a field change. The Australian batsmen did nothing of that sort and allowed the Indian s dominate them.

The surprising thing is that the criticism comes from the Australians, who themselves have this attitude of win-at-all-costs. At least, India did not claim bump catches to win the match. I remember the league game between Australia and West Indies in 1999 world cup. Australia needed to win the match against West Indies to progress to Super league stage. But they wanted West Indies to come through as well, for that meant they could carry points into the super league. Chasing 111 for a victory, Australia slowed down considerably after reaching around 90 runs and took another 15 overs to score the remaining runs. All this just to increase West Indies' net runrate and enable them to reach super league. Isn't this negative tactics ?

Sometime back I read in cricinfo about the bowler who introduced googly into the game ( though, I dont remember his name or the year ). Surprisingly, people's initial reaction was that it was against the spirit of the game. A leg spinner should bowl only leg spin and should not "fool" the batsman by bowling offspin in leg spin action. Slowly people realised how difficult it was to disguise googly and it indeed required a lot of skill. The 8-1 field was not only a good strategy, but Indians implemented it in very well. Australians have once again proved that they are hyprocrites and sore losers !!!