India's Tour of England - Second Test review

Some jelly beans, Great inspired bowling by Zaheer Khan, the unintentional beamer by Sreesanth which made Kevin Peitersen too loose his concentration, excellent batting by the Indian top order and some really helpful conditions on the first day made it possible for the Indian team to register its sixth win in England, Micheal Vaughan's century not withstanding.

It was a great contest between India and England and a treat to watch. Every time you checked the scores from office on www.cricinfo.com something had happened and you rued being in office.

Read an interesting statistic on www.cricinfo.com post match - in its last 12 tours India has a won at least one match in 10 of the tours and in at least 4 of these series against major cricketing nations, India has drawn first blood and taking a lead in the series only to let it go. Lets hope this does not happen this time around against England.

In my first article on this series I had said almost all of the earlier tours of England, India have lost the first test and that has caused them to loose the series. The only tours they have not lost are the ones where they have not lost the first test. After the rain gods saved them, it seems that history will be repeated, India will now not loose this series and there are high chances that we may even win the series given that the pitch at the Oval has always been a belter.

Lets hope that it is not a repeat of India's famous tour to Australia in 2003-4 where we drew the series after saving the 1st Test, by some inspired batting from Saurav Ganguly and then winning the 2nd Test after a memorable knock by Rahul Dravid.

Postscript: the advertisements on Star Cricket are on the rise again and Sachin Tendulkar's Aviva advertisement is now on air again after a hiatus. Happy days are round the corner for the sponsors of the Indian Cricket team and the players.

Back to normality.

India's Tour of England - First Test review

After a tantalising fight, India was finally able to save the match courtesy some gutsy batting by MS Dhoni and the Rain God. Had it not rained for the last 3 hours of the match India would have surely lost this match. Today's papers are full of reasons of Indian teams sorry state in this match. My own analysis is not very different from them. We bowled really bad on day 1 of the match and that was the major difference between the 2 sides. After that India was always catching up with England.

One thing that surprises me these days about the Indian cricket is the way we play spinners. Gone are the days when we used to treat the spinners with disdain. Shane Warne's performance against India is pathetic. Muralitharan's average against India is worst when compared against other countries. Performance of spinners from other countries against India in past is not even worth mentioning. So it is very surprising when one sees Tendulkar, Dravid and Ganguly giving respect to spinners from Bangladesh and then again to Monty Panesar, both when he toured India and now when India is touring.

I don't know what has caused these changes in the playing tactics of Indian batsmen against spinners, but we continue to play this way then one thing is for sure that we are going to loose out on what is our strength. In our continuous pursuit to improve our performance against the quickies it seems that we are forgetting the art of playing against the spinners. And this is not going to take Indian cricket forward. Nobody ever improves by forgetting ones strengths while removing the weaknesses.

India's Tour to England -- Pre tour thoughts

The Indian Cricket team starts its tour to England tomorrow with a Test Match at the Lords Ground. The newspapers have been carrying articles on the past tours of Indian Cricket team to England. The one consistent feature of all the tours barring the 1986 tour is that we have lost the first Test always. Even in the famous last tour where we almost one the series had it not rained in the last Test, we lost the first Test quite easily, with only Ajit Agarkar saving grace with a cherished hundred at the Mecca of Cricket.

This time around, my patriotic self, would like to see that we repeat the 1986 tour, winning quite comfortably. But my realistic self, says that given the Indian performance in the tour matches till now and the still undecided batting order, we may land up in a familiar situation. This is the last chance for the famous trio of Indian batting, Sachin, Saurav and Rahul to leave a lasting impression. Sachin has already shown his intents in the tour match with a match saving knock of 177 against the England Lions team. Saurav, though lacklustre till now, have in the recent times shown a penchant of staying on the crease for longish periods in both versions of the game, so he can be counted on for at least staying on the crease and wasting time if not on scoring runs. This may be helpful for us in case we have to save a Test. Rahul have always been reliable and had been India's best bat overseas. He is sure to come up trumps this time around too.
Of the other players I have great expectations from Dinesh Karthik. He has shown a lot of improvement in recent times and I would place my bets on him.

In the bowling department, the Indian pace attack, though dependent on Zaheer Khan, I would trust Sreesanth to get wickets and along with the ever reliable Anil Kumble could be the match winner. I don't have much faith in the other bowlers. But to win a match, it is the bowling that has to come good. Lets hope it comes good this time around, like it did in the first Test in the latest series against South Africa.
And lets also hope that the Indian team does not let go the initial advantage like it did in South Africa.

Best of Luck India!!