England in India 2024-25 : The Pataudi Trophy

[Atithee]

Yes, even more pleasing is Burmah who has stayed with Kuldeep. If we could do this consistently, we will be that much more formidable.

[Kumar]

Indian spinners has been horrible compared to others in NZ, which has been one of the reason for their poor show as they have failed supporting pacers.In England, team has got some test wins but has troubled to handle swing.

Going back to 2010, we have just played 4 test matches in NZ. Ashwin has played one match with average of 33 and Jadeja 3 matches with average of 60. So the narrative that indian spinners have failed is probably flawed. In those same 4 matches none of NZ spinners have a wicket.

https://wisden.com/series-stories/india ... e-in-front

Since 2017 summer.

Ashwin’s 24 wickets in the SENA countries had come at 56.58. That subsequently dropped to 30.34 – the same as Lyon’s 30.51 under the same conditions..

Ashwin has been totally bad in SA, but has been decent in other countries. He has not gotten decent chances

[Atithee]

Done and dusted. This should’ve been 5-0. The loss was a freak one.

[prasen9]

Yes, even more pleasing is Burmah who has stayed with Kuldeep. If we could do this consistently, we will be that much more formidable.

They cannot do this when the ball is swinging and/or when the pitch has grass and there is movement off the pitch. They can do this on batting wickets in docile conditions. We need to help them improve their batting for swinging conditions. You will have seen the English tail was not really that great here. You will see them score and have these frustrating partnerships when they go back home. The tail always finds it tough abroad because they don't have the skills for foreign conditions.

[prasen9]

Grades for India.

Batting
Excellent - Yashasvi, Padikkal, Gill, Sarfaraz, Jurel, Rahul
Good - Rohit, Jadeja ... maybe Axar too
Failure - Iyer, Bharat, Patidar

Bowling
Excellent - Bumrah, Kuldeep, Ashwin, Jadeja
Good - Akash Deep
Failure - Axar, Siraj

This is one area we need to look at. Siraj has been a failure and was carried. This caused us to lose the first test. Axar may not be that great with the ball either, but, I'd rather play him for the 11th man because he will contribute with the bat. There is no point carrying one person for five tests where they give tons of runs away and bowl inoccously just for one spell. If we need to carry a second pacer, we should carry someone who can bat. Ideally, Akash Deep, with lots of battin practice by Rathour. My preference would be to play the best batting fifth bowler. This is going to cause us to lose matches as it did with the first test. The freak loss happened because we were playing with 10 players. You don't realize it when you are way ahead but we were severely handicapped in Dharamsala. Luckily, we did not need the last man but we will many times.

[prasen9]

England forgot to bring some bowlers to India. I can't recall an English team without any good bowlers visiting India. And, a rather poor batting team too. So, overall a very poor team and we wasted our time playing a five match series with them. We need to play five match series at home perhaps only against Australia. A three match series against England is good enough. At max 4. Unless, they improve, of course, which they can. All other teams we should play three matches at home. I want to see more tours from the SENA countries at our home tests because they are simply better teams at this point and we won't play Pakistan. West Indies, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe are rather bad as is Afghanistan, Ireland, etc. We shouldn't have tours from them.

England grades.

Batting:
Very Good - Crawley
Decent - Root, Duckett
Bad - Pope
Very Bad - Bairstow, Foakes, Stokes

Bowling:
Sort-of-okay: Bashir, Anderson
Below Average: Hartley
Awful: Rehan, Root, Leach
Worst Bowler, Totally Terrible: Wood, Robinson

I am relishing the pace fetishists have gone underground. The holy trinity and all. These guys, like me, were afraid of the big, bad fast bowler during their amateur days. But, unlike me, they still think that their problems against really fast bowlers are faced by all batters today. Our young batters showed that they don't care about Wood's 150k bouncers, etc. coming at their throats. In India. Of course, Wood is a good bowler. But, sheer pace is useless. He will be a handful in swinging wickets. But, so will smart bowlers like Anderson and Robinson. Sheer pace is over-rated. England fell for it. Good for us. We got some freebies in the form of Wood. And, Robinson too. Pace or no pace, if you do not have Anderson's skills, you can't survive in India. Line, length, a thinking brain, variations and some pace, i.e., a good, complete bowler is what is needed to succeed in India.

Of course, the pace-fetishists will come out of the Woodwork (pun intended) as soon as some really-fast bowler has a good spell.

[prasen9]

Bashir was average. Maybe because of his age, we can consider him promising. But, I wonder whether England missed a trick by not bringing in Dawson, maybe once Leach got injured. And, Liam Livingstone. They would have given them more runs at least. You need to get players who can contribute one way or another and both if you don't have very good bowlers on their own. Or Will Jacks. Or Matt Parkinson. Whoever. They needed more spinners once Leach got hurt or Rehan left.

[Kumar]

At all of ur faces

As rightly predicted by yours truly , we dominated them 4-1 and that indian spinners will chew up bazball .

Kudos to Indian team mgmt for picking the slow pitches where bazball did not work

[prasen9]

Dravid said that the selectors forced Dravid and Rohit to play juniors. More power to Agarkar and his fellow selectors. I think Agarkar has at least played for India for a while and can show some spine. Some of the other selectors got rolled over because they were giving Dravid, etc. a lot of respect having not had great careers themselves. Then, Dravid cops an excuse that he does not see that much of the juniors and does not know. Then, perhaps, he will have the humility to shut up and not call for the continuaton of the seniors devoide performance.

I have not problem in continuing with Rohit, Ashwin, Jadeja, Kohli, etc. while they were performing. But, I did have a problem with continuing with Pujara and Rahane even though they were really going downhill. Good they have been dropped. I suspect Dravid and Rohit wanted one of these and the selectors said that they would not. Because on the bowling side, we have replaced nobody. And, in the keeping side, our hand was forced. So, reading between the lines, Dravid had wanted one of these two - most possibly Pujara. But, could be Rahane too. I am glad they did not get their way.

I think Rohit and Kohli are also replacement level at this point. In that, we should replace them now and build up the next gen. We may make mistakes such as Gill for the short-term but longer term they may grow as Gill has done. So, even though we lost a bunch in England, RSA because of Gill (and others) maybe he will win us a lot more in the future abroad. Consider it as an investment. Anyway, Pujara was failing in these conditions and almost everywhere too. So, we at least have a higher upside with Gill.

In general, in India, with this bowling attack, any half decent batters will win us the series as we saw. Especially against this toothless English attack of guys got off the street, etc. as they are saying. The real challenge is Australia in Australia. Let us hope they give us batting wickets (i.e., not totally rigged wickets) again and let us hope we stun them again.

[indiansportsfan]

I think the selectors did a good job in introducing in-form and young players such as Jurel, Sarfaraz, Akash Deep and Paddikal. However they also took a few missteps along the way in the form of Patidar and Mukesh Kumar. Another player I was hoping to be selected is Ricky Bhui. Saurabh Kumar should also be finally given some chances. He will just have to hope for both of Jadeja and Axar to be injured to get his turn. Our fast bowling cupboard is still completely bare.
Overall our batting is looking quite good with Jasiwal and Gill looking like superstars of tomorrow, and quite a lot of new talent waiting in the wings; however bowling (especially pace) still remains an area of concern. So we are continuing our past tradition in this regard.

[Sin Hombre]

Why do we have clowns like these parroting piddly island nonsense?

Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta: "It has been a fascinating series. I don't think the final score does justice to how close it has been.
"Apart from this last Test, England were in a winning position in every match."

India won a test match that they should have lost and had good chances in one another but otherwise they lost 2 by record margins.

[Sin Hombre]

Dravid said that the selectors forced Dravid and Rohit to play juniors.

I haven't found this quote, can you share this.

[Atithee]

SH: here is the link to Dravid’s comments. Not exactly forced:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ind- ... rs-1424216

[Rajkumar Sharma]

None of the teams at present has firepower to win a test series in India. Spinners like Lyon, Ajaz Patel, Hartley can win one or two matches, but they doesn't have the bite to continue it throughout the series. And these spinners also doesn't have support from other end.

[prasen9]

Why do we have clowns like these parroting piddly island nonsense?

Former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta: "It has been a fascinating series. I don't think the final score does justice to how close it has been.
"Apart from this last Test, England were in a winning position in every match."

India won a test match that they should have lost and had good chances in one another but otherwise they lost 2 by record margins.

And, England won the first test by fluke. This was a crappy English team that was hyped by their PR campaign. Bazball and all.