India's tour of England 2011

Summer 2011, England, in the grip of highly contagious virus ‘Cricket’.

This summer expectations were high of some scintillating cricket. India-England encounters were suppose to be an epic battle just like 6 years ago when during Ashes 2005 history was created by England when they defeated the great Australian team against everyone’s expectations. Incidentally, both these series started on the same day, same date and at the same venue, Thursday 21^st July at Lord’s.  

This series was meant to be special not only because it was meant to be a series between two top test playing nations but also because it was new ‘Era’ for test cricket with the 2000^th test being played between them at ‘Home of Cricket’, Lord’s. The pressure was more on Indian team with their No. 1 ranking at stake and of course on Sachin Tendulkar who was on the brink of another milestone in his career, 100 international hundreds. 

MS Dhoni’s team was asked to field first in the conditions which were tailor made for bowling with the ball doing a bit and the remaining part being played by the peculiar nature of the Lord’s pitch. India started off well by maintaining accurate line and length with Zaheer Khan attacking English openers with ferocious intensity. By claiming Strauss and Cook in the very first session he all looked set to conquer Lord’s just like Glenn Mcgrath did 6 years ago with his magnificent spell of 5 for 2.

But it seemed that sporting Gods decided to give MS Dhoni a hard time for his captaincy or in other words they wanted to test his resource management skills. So injury to Zaheer suddenly turned the fortune into England’s favor and the worried look on Dhoni’s face gave an indication of the silence that exists in the sea before the arrival of storm. It seemed that he already anticipated the outcome of the series.  

It has been said that mark of a champion is the way which he comes back fighting rather than how well he dominated. This is where the so called ‘Team India’ failed. Many cricket experts and commentators have blamed IPL, fatigue as the reason. But the truth is Indian team was more like a one man army. India simply did not have bowlers who looked set to come out of Zaheer’s shadow. To make matters worse batting looked clueless on those swinging pitches where the ball’s trajectory even made Dhoni’s keeping look fragile. Result : India lost the series 0-4, they were simply outplayed, thrashed and more importantly humiliated.  

Whether it was luck or whether it was nerves, either way it did not go India’s way. Everyone in the team might have got away by saying that it was the injuries which resulted in the team’s downfall but I feel the following reasons led to the team’s downfall:

Firstly, English conditions are very much different from other conditions in the world. Ball swings a lot in the initial sessions of a test match and as soon as ball becomes 50 over old, it starts to reverse swing. Andrew Flintoff explored these aspects effectively in 2005 and 2009 which resulted in England winning the Ashes. So Indian team definitely needed more time to settle in these conditions taking into account that majority of the players weren’t aware about English conditions.

Secondly, it has been pointed out rightly that in Cricket momentum plays a big role. It was observed in this series that the Indian players who batted with some authority like Dravid and to some extent Dhoni, were the ones who played test matches in the preceding series in West Indies. So the conclusion is straightforward : making a transition from one day or t20 to test format is a difficult one. Test matches requires impeccable fitness and a lot more skills as compared to its counterpart formats.

Lastly, bowling was the one which was on the receiving end majority of the times. As pointed out earlier about how cricket ball swings in the English conditions, India simply did not have the bowlers to exploit those conditions. For instance, Ishant Sharma who failed to understand the difference between Carribean and English pitches. For most part of his spell he bowled on the shorter side while he was required to bowl on the fuller side given that at his pace he could have troubled batsman with his swing. Praveen Kumar was swinging the ball well but his pace was not good enough to keep the English batsmen under control as was shown by KP(Kevin Peterson) who scored double century at Lord’s. And then we had Sreesanth who is known to ball 5% good deliveries and 95 % half volleys. If a batsman can survive those 5% then scoring runs of his bowling is a piece of cake. Finally Harbhajan Singh who was no longer an attacking bowler looked to contain runs than taking wickets.

Injuries are part and parcel of the game. India should have a bench strength to fill the gaping holes left by the absence of some their main players. India’s defeat again seems to have triggered the ‘Club Vs Country’ issue. For this BCCI must look to resolve it. It is BCCI who manage the schedule of national team and the IPL. So the big question is how can BCCI allow club franchises to pay more to players as compared to what they earn from international fixtures. If a player receives say $1 million for 2 months of mindless slogging then his interest is bound to deteriorate in the longer formats. This does not mean that I am against IPL since it allow many players to get decent exposure by playing along with some of their international counterparts. But then it must be ensured that IPL should not become money oriented so as to keep an international player focused on his international commitments and at the same time allowing domestic players to develop skills which are required to play at highest level.

India may have won the home series against England (5-0) but this doesn’t overshadow the fact that Indian batsmen lag the skills of playing swing bowling. BCCI must look into this matter rather than just making money and drain the players. Few pitches must be prepared with a little grass on it so that it has enough bounce to trouble batsmen. And finally, focus must also be maintained on domestic tournaments like Ranji trophy alongside IPL so as to keep longer formats of the sport alive.

Well that’s it. Let’s hope that this becomes the only ‘bad’ series for Indian team in times to come and let’s hope that India will not only regain its No. 1 status in the future but will also become ‘invincible’ like the Australian team of mid 90’s and early 2000’s.