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| India vs England | Test Series, 2012 | Eden Gardens | Kolkata (WB) |
It's been a few days since I was thinking of a topic to write on and during the first test between India and England, I got one, when I interacted with some of my friends over twitter discussing our team's performance and strategies. Well, I am not a cricket expert but I can call myself a cricket enthusiast for sure. I like cricket a lot like every other Indian. Also, in the country where cricket is being treated as a religion; everyone holds a viewpoint about our team and players. I won't say it's wrong to hold an opinion about cricket and especially about players when they fail to deliver or perform as champions. But there is a huge difference in the way we react when our team win or lose. We often see that most of the public in India builds a negative image in their mind whenever our team's performance is bad and sometimes it really hurts when we hear unpleasant things about our players from hatemongers, who know nothing about cricket.Well, its a controversial and a debatable topic any day, if properly presented on any platform. Also, I will not dig much into this as my primary motive of writing this post is to talk about just cricket not about outsiders.
Let's start with the ongoing test series between India and England. The first test resulted in a draw and all the speculations which were being made before the series that the new England side is not that strong as it was in 2012; proved everyone wrong. After drawing the series against Bangladesh, England looked a shattered side who had a big series coming up against the no. 1 test team in the world. Also, the way Indian team was performing in their backyard from past 5-6 months, the signs were ominous for the mighty Englishmen. But every speculation made just before the series came to rest when England dominated in more than 10 sessions of the game. The stakes were high for both teams and somehow India saved the match on the last day. On the other hand, England missed the chance to bag a win in their account.Now, what happened with the no. 1 test team? or was it just that the England team outclassed us? Let's try to dig in and find out what went wrong.
1) In India, it's often a saying that toss plays a major role in deciding the winner of the game. And if you've have 3 genuine spinners in the side then it becomes even more important to bowl second. Well, nobody can predict the toss results, it's just a saying which sometimes falls in favor of the winning captain and sometimes not. But it does play a part in some or the other manner! And we witnessed that in first test match (3rd session- 5th day), when Indian batting line-up stumbled against the mediocre spin attack of England team. Only Kohli and Ashwin looked a bit settled on the 5th day track.And this actually revealed few things that playing spin in spinner friendly conditions requires patience and technique.The greats of Indian cricket were magnificent players of spin bowling and this new set of energetic individuals just need to polish this trait and become the best in the business.
2) We all know that Indian team is a very good fielding unit but somehow they dropped a lot of chances in the first innings itself that made things difficult for the bowlers. They were not difficult chances and some of them were even sitters. Also, it's a very well known fact that "catches win matches" and a team just can't afford to drop catches when the batsmen are of great calibre. The same happened when India dropped around 8-9 catches in the first innings and a few in the second innings. Indian team couldn't build pressure on the English team which resulted in a massive total in the first innings.
3) India hasn't seen a better bowler after Anil Kumble who can remove the tail cheaply. Bowling to tail-enders requires a completely different set of skills and in today's cricket, no country has the fire power in their bowling line-up to crack that. Fast bowlers have forgotten the art of bowling yorkers and conventional reverse swing and the spinners have now-a-days forgotten the art of bowling flighted deliveries to intimidate the tail-enders to make mistakes. The same sort of thing happened in first test match as well. Both teams couldn't manage to get the tail removed quickly and a lot of runs were scored by the lower order batsmen.
4) Opening partnership didn't click again,which raised a concern in the batting department for upcoming matches, as already Shikhar Dhawan and Lokesh Rahul are both injured and Gautam Gambhir is not looking as solid as he used to be a few years back. Hopefully, Gambhir will put a better show in next game because we all know that he's a class player when he's on song.
5) Well, this is purely my personal view that this side relies a lot on 3-4 players, who have been doing magnificently well from past 1-2 years. Batting line-up is still delivering but there are very less instances which we can count when all the batsmen clicked together in a single game. Same goes with the bowling line-up, if we're playing in India then we rely a lot on our two mainline spinners. Whereas, outside it's more or less a single man who holds the key of the spin department i.e. Ashwin. The pacers are not fixed in the line-up except Shami, who has performed brilliantly in India and outside.Also, Bhuvi has performed equally well in foreign conditions. I believe the true test of Kohli's captaincy starts now from this series where he needs to build his team and make it a true champion side to fight against the bests in the world.
I have tried to cover all the aspects of the game (from my point of view) except pitches, because it's that area which can only be assessed better by the cricket experts or players.
I would love to know about your view for the ongoing test series between India and England. So, go ahead and drop a comment with your inputs.
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