Navjot Singh Sidhu says Team India’s spin struggles stem from poor skill, not strength — stressing technique as the key to countering turn.
Team India’s latest home Test series meltdown against South Africa is almost a case study to prove Navjot Singh Sidhu’s warning: when “skill” erodes, “strength” is exposed as a myth against quality spin. Sidhu’s contention that India have turned a traditional strength into a glaring weakness gained brutal statistical endorsement in a two-match Test series where South Africa spinners Simon Harmer and Keshav Maharaj dismantled India on their own pitches.
In his recent chat with Sportstar, Sidhu pinned India’s crisis on a loss of craft rather than lack of power, insisting that “skill, not strength, is key to counter spin” and calling spin a “strength that has now become our weakness.” He described modern Indian batters as having “apprehensive footwork,” neither fully forward nor fully back, and therefore always at the mercy of the spinner.
He also revived his old four-point “mantra” for playing spin: step out often to clutter the bowler’s mind, move at the bowler’s “point of no return,” watch the wrist “like a hawk,” and make a small initial forward movement instead of a big, doomed lunge. In Sidhu’s words, if you commit early and plant your front foot, you are “a dying duck in a thunderstorm,” a line that sums up more than one Indian dismissal this season.
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Eroding habits, changing ecosystems
Sidhu also linked the decline in tackling spin bowling to a broken ecosystem around Test batting. He pointed out that many top players no longer grind through domestic first-class seasons on turning tracks, and so miss out on the hundreds of long, ugly overs needed to hardwire spin-playing habits.
He argued that the calendar is overloaded with T20 leagues on flat pitches, where bat speed and power-hitting against skid and slower balls have replaced the traditional arts of smothering spin, using the crease, and manipulating fields.
In his view, India batters are being trained to hit through the line, not to read the hand. On top of that, India now play a large volume of cricket in countries where conditions favour pace, encouraging techniques built around the horizontal seam and chest-high bounce, not low, sharp turn.
How Tendulkar fixed his weakness against spin
To explain what real skill looks like, Sidhu turned to Sachin Tendulkar. He recalled how Tendulkar approached spin as a problem of geometry and options – using the sweep, stepping down the track, and even converting good-length balls into full tosses with decisive footwork, rather than waiting passively on the crease.
“He was tied down by Sanath Jayasuriya in a Test match where I was batting at the non-striker’s end. He kept bowling outside the leg stump. Tendulkar got frustrated, tried to pull, and got out because he did not know how to sweep,” Sidhu was quoted by Sportstar as saying.
“He called up 10 spinners, all left-armers, from Chandigarh. He reached the ground at seven in the morning and was just sweeping, sweeping, sweeping. I had never seen him sweep before,” Sidhu recalled.
Sidhu’s broader comparison is blunt: earlier generations “dominated” spin because they trusted their feet and bat-swing to manufacture scoring areas; this generation too often trusts bat-speed and power, which are irrelevant once you have misjudged length.
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How India actually fared vs South Africa’s spin
The South Africa series exposed India’s vulnerability against spin in stark detail. In the opening Test at Kolkata, India were dismissed for 189 and 93 on a pitch where South Africa also had to battle, but still managed to extract crucial runs. Simon Harmer’s off-spin proved decisive, as India lost 12 of their 18 dismissals to spin, repeatedly caught on the crease, pushing tentatively or misjudging bounce and dip.
The second Test in Guwahati was historically worse. Chasing 549, India folded for 140 to lose by 408 runs, their biggest defeat at home, with Harmer taking six wickets and Maharaj closing the series with another stifling spell. Across the two Tests, India failed to score a single century and finished with a series batting average of just 15.23, one of their lowest ever in any Test rubber, with Harmer picking up 17 wickets at an absurd average under 9 in India.
The technical rot in India’s spin game
Sidhu’s criticism maps neatly onto what the numbers and visuals show. The current Indian batters, even on home pitches, show several recurring technical flaws against spin. Batters get caught with minimal initial movement, neither stretching right forward nor decisively going back, which means they play spin off the pitch rather than at the pitch.
Harmer and Maharaj camped on a teasing length, and India batters often pushed with hard hands without using their reach, bringing bat-pad and inside edge into play.
Also, Sidhu urged watching the wrist closely in his interview. It was evident in many dismissals against South Africa – late or faulty reading of drift and dip, with batters playing for non-existent turn or getting beaten in the air.
In that sense, Harmer exposed the erosion of a collective muscle memory developed over decades of facing spin in domestic cricket. Right now, India batters have plenty of power, plenty of reputation, but on turning tracks, not enough of the quiet, unfashionable craft that once made this the hardest place in the world for visiting spinners, not for home batters.
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