Indian England Test Series A Report Card

Another series drawn, another match lost. And I guess time for us to take stock of what happened. So here is my report card for the India England TVS Cup Test concluded recently.

England Team

They were without Vaughn, Trescothick, Giles and Jones, four of their Ashes heroes. But they combated well throughout the series and lost the Mohali Test only due to their wooden batting and some great bowling by Munaf Patel and Anil Kumble. Bowling was excellent, and at no stage did their intensity diminish. The drawn series is in fact a victory for them. Many "so called cricket fans" wrote them off, but if you are writing off a team that has Flintoff, Pietersen, Hoggard, Harmison in it, please don't call yourself a cricket fan. Unless you belong to that breed of cricket fans whose knowledge of cricket begins and ends with Sachin Tendulkar/ Saurav Ganguly. Many were thinking that having lost 2-0 to Pakistan, we would make mincemeat of them. But for heaven's sake you don't win the Ashes just like that, and in Pakistan they lost because of their batting. Even in India, their batting was a let down, and in Mumbai also, they could not capitalize on a great start of 270/3. Need to brush up on their batting and also get rid of their ultra defensive techniques. Not every team would lose 7 wickets for 25 runs.

Score 8/10.

Indian Team

I really don't know what to make out of this team. For 3 days in Mumbai they often fought back hard, and I thought fine even if we lose we are not surrendering. But the team which scrapped hard for 3 days, suddenly decided they couldn't scrap longer and just surrendered in a manner which even the English team wouldn't have expected. But still one defeat doesn't make this a bad team. I still maintain this is one of the better teams, but at times, for reasons they only know, they play some rank bad cricket. Maybe we need to keep guys like Kumble, Patel, Dravid who are willing to scrap, and chuck out all the "you slap one cheek I will show you another kinds". We had enough of them. Too much is being made of Dravid's decision to bat first, but you discuss about decisions and strategies when you lose a match closely. When you capitulate like the way you do on the final day of Mumbai Test, no strategy can help. Positives are we finally have a good bowling attack, ground fielding is better and we are willing to scrap, if you take out the final day in Mumbai. Now will the batsman start to bat please, after all Dravid cant bat every time right.

Score 6/10.

Indian Top Order Batting

In one word awful. Right from the Sri Lanka series the top order has been consistently failing, and even on a dead wicket in Faislabad, it needed Pathan and Dhoni to get us out of jail. If Kumble and Harbhajan can defy the England bowling attack in Mohali, if Shreeshanth can hook Flintoff for a boundary after getting hit on the helmet, then what prevents our top order batsman from doing so. No use boasting about highest no of this and that, unless you bat. High time they did so, or else give the place to youngsters who can bat. Or even better maybe its better we pack our side with 10 bowlers. After all it's better to have 10 bowlers who can bat. Kidding, well Anil Kumble has the third highest run aggregate now in this series. Something our batting stars would do well to ponder about.

Score 1/10.

Indian Bowling

The most positive thing that has come out of the series. Munaf Patel is really one of the best bowlers, and after having had the mortification of watching semi pop gun bowlers like Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra, its great to watch an Indian fast bowler making batsman look like fools. Sreeshanth is another great find, and I guess we have a good pace attack now. Kumble was as usual brilliant, but we need some good spinners coming up. Cant comment much on Piyush Chawla. I guess we could use Munaf and Shreeshanth as frontline bowlers and Pathan as the third option now. We do have a good bowling attack, now if only the fielders start taking the catches. And yes one more thing, all of them have showed that they can bat too.

Score 8/10.

Indian Fielding

Ground fielding has improved vastly, gone are the days when batsman would convert one's into two's or balls would go past bowler's legs. Cant say the same about the catching though. And you cant win matches by dropping catches. We dropped 6 catches in Mumbai and allowed England to score 400. Dhoni needs to improve on his wicket keeping skills too. Either we are not putting the right persons in the right places, or something wrong, but we need to improve our catching.

Score 5/10.

Indian Cricket Fans

Wouldn't call them cricket fans. They reminded me of the bloodthirsty mobs during the Roman days, who shouted "kill, kill". India has not only lost the Test at Mumbai, it has also lost a cricketing culture. We have a bunch of goons and morons, masquerading as cricket fans. They only think of winning and losing. If the team wins, all are heroes, if team loses, all are zeroes. Players can be booed off, heroes become villains and villains become heroes. We have become a bunch of blood thirsty mob who needs a scapegoat. We were baying for Ganguly's blood, now that he is gone, we want Dravid out and Ganguly back. So what happen's if Ganguly fails, again throw out Ganguly and get Dravid back in. We have lost the right to be called as cricket fans, we are no better than a bunch of hooligans and morons, who are unwilling to treat a game as game. I want to ask all these guys who are going on a head banging spree, just one question "Ok we lost, but was any one killed,it was not a national calamity". Why cant we take a game as a game?

Look even when England lost the Mohali Test, no one asked for Flintoff's head. Neither have I seen the Australian public asking for Ponting's head after the Ashes loss. If after 50 years of independence, we still depend on the result of a cricket match to feel proud of, well then we are a big bunch of losers.

Score 0/10.