Matters of Concerns for the Men in Blue.
Indian national side is touring the British Isles for the first time in 3 years and if we go by their last outing, this tour does not promise to be an easy one for the Men in Blue. Indian national cricket team will challenge the England’s national side with an aim to erase the memories of a disastrous tour of 2011. India failed to register a single win in their last tour having lost the Test series 0-4, the five-match ODI series 0-3 and also the lone T20 International. India suffered the humiliation last time in 2011 despite being equipped with seasoned campaigners like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir and, of course, skipper Dhoni himself. But with all of them missing this time, the onus will be on youngsters like Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara to hold fort.
Team India sneaked into the country almost unnoticed with most people either mesmerized by the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Brazil despite England’s poor showing there, or pre-occupied with their cricket team’s first-ever home series loss to Sri Lanka.
England’s series loss to Sri Lanka bodes well for Dhoni and his young squad and the hosts will be low on confidence going into the series.
Although the batting line-up seems to do a lot batter in foreign condition since the change in the core of the batting line up, the matter of concern for the Indian team have not disappeared. However there are a few areas that are of concern to the Indian national side:
- Batting: Inexperienced- Even though the team has had a couple of not so disappointing tours of South Africa and New Zealand in the recent past, England pitches and conditions are a different level of problem all together under particular conditions. Given that except Gautam Gambhir and Mahendra Singh Dhoni no other batsman has a previous batting experience in the English conditions, Batting is not going to be every easy for the Indian youngsters.
- Bowling attack: Dull- India has couple of very good and promising bowlers in the form of Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Shami and couple of other upcoming pacers, but the fact of the matter remains that India lacks the edge in the bowling department. Apart from the fact that except Ishant Sharma, the bowling line up lacks any experience whatsoever of bowling with the red ball in English conditions, if you go by the performances of the practice game, they haven’t been able to find their groove as yet. To win a test match you need to pick 20 wickets of the opposition team and that looks quite unlikely at this point for the Indian team.
- Overseas Captaincy: Terrible: Of the last 4 overseas series, Dhoni has not managed to win a single test match out of 13 tries, losing 10 of them. Dhoni is considered as one of the best captains that Indian cricket has seen in its glorious history and has taken the team to unexpected heights in the limited overs format. But his record in foreign land has been terrible and at times has given away matches to his opposition from positions where it looked that winning is the only possibility for the team. This tour will surely test the captaincy of our captain cool.
- Opponents: Inspired- The English team has been under the weather for some time now and so has been their captain Alastair Cook. They will see this as an apt opportunity to get back at their critics. Alastair Cook has always loved the Indian attack to show his best to the world and this is exactly the right time for him to hit form if there ever was one. The team they have is new, but not greatly inexperienced. They have almost the same attack that they had in the 2011 series and would have a major effect in this particular series.
