The placid pitch at Trent Bridge was a major disappoint to cricket fans as the first Test match of the Investac series was a boring draw. This was in spite of a few great performances by the lower order batsmen of both teams. But for Test matches to be exciting, bowlers need to take wickets – lots of wickets – and we didn’t see that. A contest where even those batting at number eleven dominate the bowling attacks because of the sheer lifelessness of the pitches, is Test cricket at its worst, regardless of the records that are set. It is hoped that tomorrow’s Test match at Lord’s will be a lot better and more exciting.
But even before the Test match begins, there has been a controversy with the Indian team accusing England’s premier fast bowler Jimmy Anderson of misbehaving with all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja, complaining that Anderson pushed at Jadeja and used abusive language against him – a serious misconduct, which is taken seriously by the governing body of cricket, the ICC. England have hit back, accusing Indians of mischievous intent, and even of lying, insisting that Anderson did no such thing, and counter-accusing Jadeja of misbehavior. This has led to a lot of bad blood and ill will in the relationship between the two sides, which has otherwise remained friendly so far, and so the Thursday’s Test at Lord’s should be a spicy affair, with both teams wanting to have a go at each other.
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England have made one addition to their squad for the Lord’s Test, recalling left-arm spinner Simon Kerrigan to the side, exactly an year after his embarrassing stage-fright against the Australians in the Oval Test match. Kerrigan is one of the few decent spinners in County cricket, and England didn’t have much choice other than to pick him, as the Moeen Ali experiment wasn’t really working out. Ali is basically a batsman who can bowl a bit of off spin, to expect him to be the lone specialist spinner in the side is asking for trouble.
The pitch at Lord’s has always assisted seam bowlers, and India have never done well here, having won just one of the 16 Tests played in the so-called “Mecca of Cricket”. The groundsman at Lord’s, Mick Hunt would be wary of not meeting the expectations of the English management, who want a lively track that helps their seam dominated attack, and wouldn’t want to meet the fate of his counterpart at Trent Bridge, Steve Birks, who was lambasted by one and all for producing one of the most placid tracks in recent memory. Birks has since publicly apologized.
While the younger English batsmen, Gary Ballance, Sam Robson, Moeen Ali and especially Joe Root have had a flying start to the summer, the home team would be worried about captain Cook’s batting form, which has gone from bad to worse. Cook could only manage 5 runs against India, and this follows a string of bad scores from him over the past couple of years. Once England’s most consistent batsman, Cook is fast turning out to be a liability for his team and England would be hoping that he returns to form in the Lord’s Test. His captaincy too has come in for a plenty of criticism by the English media.
Things are not much different for Cook’s counterpart MS Dhoni, as his tactics in the Trent Bridge match, where he allowed Jimmy Anderson and Joe Root to put up 198 runs for the last wicket, and somehow contrived to draw a match that India should have won, because of his complete inability to inspire his bowlers to grab the last three English wickets, have come in for massive criticism from India’s cricket experts and much of the national media. Already there is a clamor in the press for Virat Kohli to be made the captain of the Indian Test team.
Talking of Virat Kohli, he hasn’t done much to advance his case for a promotion by going out cheaply twice in the Test Match at Trent Bride, managing to get only 9 runs from the entire match. A lot is expected from Kohli as he is one of India’s top Test batsmen along with the more consistent Cheteshwar Pujara. India will need Kohli to start firing, if they are to have a chance in this series.
A good show from England at Lord’s hinges upon their two main strike bowlers, Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad. Both Broad and Anderson have been over bowled by Cook since the beginning of the Ashes series last summer, mainly because of a lack of other wicket taking options. With Graeme Swann retiring, the pressure on the duo has only multiplied. Already there is talk of resting Broad and Anderson to prevent a breakdown. This would be disastrous for England as that would only weaken their bowling attack further.
Indian bowling too seems equally weak and ineffective, if not more so, as the trio of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ishant Sharma and Mohammad Shami was largely toothless for India at Trent Bridge, allowing the last three English wickets to score as much as 300 runs between them. The inability of their bowlers to finish off the opposition by quickly taking the wickets of tailenders would be deeply worrying for skipper MS Dhoni and coach Duncan Fletcher.
