India in England, Summer 2011

[ssp]

Worse than anything I could have imagined. England will easily score 400 runs in a day. Our bowling is rubbish. I can see Broad , Anderson & Bresnan bowling us out for around 220 in a day-maybe even this is score is optimistic. 2-0 is virtually guaranteed. Had they restricted the scoring to 250 in the day- a draw would have been a (remote)possibility.
I'm afraid heads will go down after this spanking and 4-0 could be our fate.
From 124/8 to this....only India can 'engineer' such dramatic reversals.
Don't deserve to be No3 in the rankings, let alone No 1. I don't care who is injured, the team chosen have been shockingly bad since tea yesterday. Bangladesh level of performance.

[Peter]

Dhoni chooses grace over gamesmanship

This was a day when my heart beats for India. Although we got thrashed on the field.

[Atithee]

Don't deserve to be No3 in the rankings, let alone No 1. I don't care who is injured, the team chosen have been shockingly bad since tea yesterday. Bangladesh level of performance.

This is a tad over the top. Don't be a perennial cynic! And, please don't insult Bangladesh.

[ssp]

Atithee: on this evidence, England are way better than us. South Africa too are stronger in pace, fielding and even in batting. I can't think of any other attack that would concede 400+ runs on this pitch in this kind of situation. The team seems to have given up. To be No 1 you have to compete much harder than this, your back up players need to have more to offer than our bowlers have shown and the batting would be a shambles without Dravid & Laxman.

Maybe my comment was not fair on Bangladesh!

[vivekmanghat]

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[Sandeep]

We lost the match when our batting collapsed in the first innings. No point blaming our bowling, they have been very decent through out the series. It is our batting which has let us down. There was nothing for the bowlers on the pitch except for the first day and we should have en cashed it. Except for Dravid, it was a careless batting all through. I really got peeved with the way Sachin and Raina thre their wickets away. We are paying for those shots now! As always I am ever hopeful and expecting a miracle here. Go India

[ssp]

I can see Broad , Anderson & Bresnan bowling us out for around 220 in a day-maybe even this is score is optimistic.

I was too optimistic. 55/4. We may not even get 100 at this rate. This looks like a repeat of our 1974 tour to England. Each successive day brings about a worse performance.

The best we can hope for is to avoid a 4-0 thumping.

Oops, while I was typing it is 55/6!! Have to laugh at the abject surrender. Men against toddlers. We find new players to gift best performances to. Bresnan is having a party after Broad, Prior, Bell, Peterson....and practically all the other English players. Can we get to 70? Can Bhajji get a run..maybe he will have more wickets than runs.

[arjun2761]

We lost the match when our batting collapsed in the first innings. No point blaming our bowling, they have been very decent through out the series. It is our batting which has let us down. There was nothing for the bowlers on the pitch except for the first day and we should have en cashed it. Except for Dravid, it was a careless batting all through. I really got peeved with the way Sachin and Raina thre their wickets away. We are paying for those shots now! As always I am ever hopeful and expecting a miracle here. Go India

How can we not blame our bowling unless we set our expectations of them really low. Our bowling attack is one of the worst among the regular test playing countries especially outside of India where the spinners are ineffective and our spinners are not all that dominant anymore.

Our batting team's achievements must be considered in the context that they never get a chance to face and feast on India's dibbly dobbly attack. However, even our batsman are not as dominant outside India and that's why they struggle outside India other than a few of the ageing warhorses -- Dravid, Tendulkar, and Laxman.

[prasen9]

The last match was lost on the last day by our batting. This match was lost on the third day with our bowling. Of course, the bowling contributed to the loss in T1 and the batting in T2 too. But, I am talking about the final turning points. Nothing is clicking for this team. What this shows is the lack of depth for the test team. They could not recover from the loss of Sehwag, Gambhir, and Zaheer. I hope all three come back in T3 in place of Mukund, Raina, and Sreesanth.

[indiansportsfan]

Raina has been found out in England. I just wish it had happened earlier in WI, but a lack of quality opposition made him look better than he was. Instead of wasting time on him, why didn't we try better Test prospects like Badri or Rohit? The blame lies squarely on Shrikant and Dhoni.

[PKBasu]

Raina and Mukund have been pretty abject. Playing in English conditions requires at least some experience, and neither of them has any. The swinging ball had them all in a tangle. Yuvi came to play for Yorkshire several years ago, and failed miserably. But at least he tried (and did succeed brilliantly in that ODI triumph at Lord's nine years ago).
Frankly, we should have been more careful when Sehwag was injured. Picking someone like Wasim Jaffer (for experience) would have made much more sense than the green Mukund (who hadn't covered himself in glory even in the Windies). Rahane has succeeded for India A in England, and would have been the better choice. Mukund has longer-term potential, but these two abject failures have set back (if not ended) his Test career.
Srikkanth has been a pretty poor chairman of selectors, but nothing succeeds like success -- so he has got away with some of his silly picks in the past. In Test cricket outside India, the margin for error gets reduced -- and injuries have exposed the bench horribly in this series. Not picking RP Singh (who was hugely successful on the 2007 England tour) also smacked of complacency (and a lack of basic selectorial discretion/research).

[Sandeep]

IMO, Akash Chopra should have been the first choice in the absence of Sehwag! Our selection has been mediocre and placed too much faith on the youngsters. Selection of Mukund was favoritism and outright ridiculous. Was he the best opener on sight in the domestic circuit? Definitely a big no for me. Raina is ok, I think he deserves the test spot. There are several players who can't play short ball well and still succeeded in the test cricket. Raina is a hard worker and I think he will over come that weakness.

Yuvraj Singh is another dubious selection. How many more chances should we give him before declaring unfit for the tests. He has got enough chances, he is simply not good for the tests. Let us understand that and leave him out of the test selection till he does something significant in the domestic circuit.

I think things will improve drastically with the arrival of Sehwag in the next test. He along with Gambhir will make a formidable opening pair and with Dravid, Sachin and Laxman in the middle order we should play like the no.1 team in the next test. Even though we might end up winning the next two tests, bench strength is something which we have to seriously look at. We are severely exposed in that matter in the ongoing test series.

This is probably the biggest challenge Dhoni has faced so far in his career. Worst, even his batting is being scrutinized now.

[ssp]

Boycott thinks the same as me:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/spor ... 456428.cms

It's OK to lose to a very strong team, but we have been hammered really badly in both matches and apart from Dravid and Laxman, our batting is pathetic. Problem with Laxman is his inability to convert 50s into really big hundreds, like Peterson & bell have done for England. Prior, Broad & Bresnan have been really destructive. We still haven't got anyone with real pace to knock out the tailenders.

I don't think Sehwag, Gambhir & Zak will make much difference, because they have hardly played any 'longer format' cricket for 6-7 months. Raina & Yuvraj will be found at test level by their weakness against the short ball. They get away with it in ODIs as there are no slips to take their nervous edges and 1 bouncer per over ensures they can survive long enough to play a few shots.

[indiansportsfan]

This is probably the biggest challenge Dhoni has faced so far in his career. Worst, even his batting is being scrutinized now.

I believe his batting is what should be under scrutiny. His captaincy has been generally good, except for sometimes backing clearly undeserving individuals over more talented ones, like Bhajji and Raina.
His batting was never good to begin with. By accumulating runs on flat tracks, his stats look better for a person of his talent. I looked at his Test stats from beginning of 2010 and not once did he play an inning of substance when the others did not play. He always piles on the platform set by others.

[prasen9]

Backing Raina? Who is a more talented MO bat among the under-30s than Raina? Yuvraj may be. But, he remains injured a lot these days. Who else? Playing Raina has been a legitimate choice. He is our investment for the future. Hope it works. You have to look at the last test to see Raina play an innings of character. And in West Indies, first test, I believe. Unless you are advocating recalling Ganguly, Raina is the best we have, again, except Yuvraj maybe. Did you watch how hapless Kohli, Vijay, and Mukund were in WI? It is sad, but, we have to stick with the Rainas and hope they mature in the next couple of years or so. Badri did not look too good in the tests he got and the one-day matches. If he was solid, he would have gotten matches.

Yuvraj keeps getting chances because Raina has not grabbed his chances and performed better than him. And, Raina keeps getting chances because Pujara, Badrinath, and Kohli did not grab the few chances they got. Once some junior shows up and scores consistently, all of these guys will be swept aside because they did not use their chances. Rohit?

Wrt Bhajji, have you seen how Mishra bowled in the last few matches he got? It is sad, but, we have no choice. Again, Murali Karthik may be the only one who could be better than an off-form Bhajji.

Chopra would not have made a big difference in the absence of Sehwag. Chopra would simply delay things a few hours and not score runs. Only thing maybe would be that he would have seen off the new ball. Perhaps that is helpful. I think Wasim Jaffer with his experience in England could have made a difference. Imho, Jaffer is still the #3 opener in India in tests. Ganguly rightly asked why he was not included as a backup at least. He is 33, it's sad. But, we do not have any other decent choice.