Team India lacking substance in all three departments
The big debate in the first half of the tour was whether India’s bowling had been inferior to the batting. By tea time on the second day of the last Test, I would imagine there was no dispute remaining, albeit with a rider: both batting and bowling were equally bad, but worse than both has been the fielding.
It is agonising to be critical of a team so down and out and for reasons that have been verbalised and written about ad nauseam through the past month. It is doubly painful to repeat this about a side that for the better part of four years brought so many laurels to the country. But such has been the fall in standard on this tour, that this becomes inevitable.
The morning session’s play was deceptively good for India what with both openers falling early. But thereafter India’s problems were exposed once again, and in such grotesque fashion as to make the proceedings look almost farcical. Indeed, by mid-afternoon it was difficult to keep a straight face as the fumbling and bungling reached epidemic proportions.
Barring Ishant Sharma, the other bowlers flagged. The fielders, Suresh Raina excepted, were either butter-fingered and dropped catches, or simply too slow to prevent ones from becoming twos, twos into threes and so on. Where R.P. Singh was concerned, these two dubious attributes seemed to converge embarrassingly.
Not only was he slow in reacting to a skied shot from Kevin Pietersen before the batsman had reached his century, but also let a ball slip between his legs to the boundary in the same over. Why an overweight and rusty bowler should have been flown in as replacement for Zaheer Khan remains inexplicable, just how he could have been picked for this Test even more so.
Meanwhile, the infinitely more fit looking Munaf Patel looked on from the dressing room, having spent more than a month in England bowling away at the nets, working on his rhythm and length only to find somebody else coming in his place. If he was not even fourth choice, why was Munaf in the original squad?
As with Viru Sehwag in the previous Test, many selection decisions on this tour seem to have been based more on hope and bluster than cricket sense; indeed any sense at all. Sehwag looks a little more fit than he did at Edgbaston and even took a catch here to prove that his ball sense is not entirely lost. But he was off the field towards the last session.
Then Gambhir hurt his head in muffing a catch (admittedly difficult) running back to give Pietersen a reprieve which necessitated his return to the dressing room for medical attention. Not only were India without both their openers now on the field, but also in tatters where staying alive in the match was concerned.
All this, of course, does not take a whit away from England’s superb display yet again. Strauss and Cook may have looked tardy in their scoring rate, but had ensured a decent start which Bell and Pietersen could then build on with some crisp run scoring in the second session and a blistering rate in the third.
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