India vs Australia: Why Indian Batters Don't Bowl? Rahul Dravid's 'Five-Fielder Rule' Explanation

The Indian cricket team think-tank's urge to play more all-rounders in recent years has got a lot to do with the current crop of top-order batters not rolling their arms over unlike some of their illustrious seniors from the bygone era. The Indian team's desperation to field bits and pieces players like Axar Patel or Washington Sundar is based on two counts -- batters not bowling enough and tail-enders not displaying enough gumption with the willow. So what has changed? "I think it could be because of the rule change. Suddenly you have gone from four fielders inside the ring to five fielders inside the ring. I think that has drastically changed the ability of part-time bowler to be able to bowl in the middle phase," Dravid said in defence of his team in which none among Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Shreyas Iyer or Suryakumar Yadav bowl.

Surya in fact was called for suspect action some years back during a Mumbai Indians match and never bowled again. Before Surya, Shikhar Dhawan would bowl his off-spinners on and off but he was also called for chucking in domestic cricket and stopped bowling altogether.

A glance at some numbers from the past will help us dig deeper as to what changed.

Sachin Tendulkar, who bowled, inswingers, outswingers, leg-breaks, off-breaks has 154 ODI wickets. Sourav Ganguly with his military medium stuff has 100 scalps while Yuvraj Singh, whose bowling won India the 2011 World Cup, retired with 111 victims. These were all specialist batters in the top five.

If these names are not enough, Virender Sehwag with 96 wickets and Suresh Raina with 36 sticks also did their part under MS Dhoni.

"If you remember and mention all these names (Sachin, Sourav, Sehwag, Yuvraj, Raina) bowling in this phase, a lot of