India get a grip on their spin issues

At an optional practice session on Friday, Ravindra Jadeja took first strike against the spinners. He treated them with roughly the same kindness Daffy Duck is used to.

Considering how all their best-laid plans backfired - tossed-up deliveries were biffed straight, quicker ones cut away and even the good-length balls were turned into half-volleys and dispatched - it was entirely disappointing that none of the bowlers accused Jadeja of being "dithpicable".

Then a 46-year-old man took the ball and bounded up to the crease. Oh boy. Where was this going to go? Slog-sweep to midwicket? Over the training area at the back and into main ground?

Jadeja planted his front foot forward, but realised he couldn't reach the pitch and was forced to defend. Eight years after his retirement, it still wasn't easy to play Anil Kumble.

The sequence continued. Jadeja attacked the rest, but he had to be watchful against his coach, slowly building up to a back-foot punch along the ground through the covers. Kumble had basically grabbed Jadeja by the ear and led him into a tutorial on how to play quality spin.

Not that he is a bad one, mind you. Jadeja plays a lot of his first-class cricket on rank turners. He had been one of India's most important contributors in the last home season, when they played on pitches that spun from day one. His lower-order runs against South Africa were often vital in securing leads. Now he was in Mohali again - scene of his Man-of-the-Match winning comeback from a shoulder injury.

It was here also that Virat Kohli admitted to the team's problems against slow bowling, after they lost four wickets to the genial left-arm spin of Dean Elgar. Before that they had lost a Test to the genius left-arm spin of Rangana Herath.

Kohli took pains to say the issue wasn't technical. He felt India were giving away too many wickets in clumps. He would be pleased to know, then, that only one of England's three slow bowlers - Adil Rashid - has a strike-rate under 50 on this tour.

Kohli himself has played a big part in that. He has read them out of the hand, tried to play late and off the back foot, trusting the slowness of the pitches and the quickness of his wrists. Even balls that stay low haven't been spared from his wrath and barring the time he was hit-wicket in Rajkot, his methods have been flawless. His stats against spin from this series are: 83 singles, 19 twos, one threes and 15 fours that make up 185 runs in 332 deliveries.

Cheteshwar Pujara has been even better. He has been collecting four runs per over of spin and averages 163 against it. A lot of those numbers are a result of his confidence in playing a spinner. He loves coming down the track, so much that he wouldn't think twice about doing so for a whole over. He did so quite early against Kumble in the nets on Friday, unleashing an on-drive against the turn, all along the ground. And he's no slouch on the back foot either, as the bowler finds out when he makes the adjustment and flattens his trajectory. It is because of his vast range of shots versus spin that Pujara is often happy to defend or take blows from the fast bowlers. He knows he can prosper later.

M Vijay is quite similar, only he takes the aerial route, and tends not to give any warning of those intentions. His hundred in Rajkot was replete with such shots that caught the slow bowler off guard. R Ashwin has become a rock-solid No. 6 at home and he has tackled spin off the back foot with the late cut as his cheat code. None of these strengths are new though. They are just being used a little better and some of the credit for that must go to Kumble. India were bound to improve their batting on turning pitches with one of the greatest spinners in the history of the game in charge.

The one area that they clearly have done better is in making sure they are set before dominating a spinner. Moeen Ali, at home in 2014, got a lot of wickets with the Indians going after him blindly. This time, he has been made to work a lot harder because Kohli and company have learnt to rate him better.

"Not taking anything away from Moeen, I think he is a pretty terrific bowler," Kohli said. "He makes an impact in England as well, so he understands which lines and lengths to bowl, what speed to bowl at. Even Adil, I payed against him at the Under-19 level and I told him in Rajkot I was surprised he didn't make it to the England squad in the next two years. When we played back in 2006 he was that good even then.

"So we understand the quality these guys bring to the table for England. Not everyone plays for England in Test matches. We respect that but at the same time, we understand and we believe that we are good enough to counter that. You saw in Rajkot, they put us under pressure with their quality and we respect that and we are still going to find ways to keep countering what they throw at us."

The surfaces India have played on this season have been considerably less extreme and that helped the batsmen as well. But the self-belief that India's captain spoke about may just have a lot more to do with it.