India’s captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, is a very positive man. It’s a part of his personality that is noticeable in almost every media interview or press conference given by him. So what are the positives from the Investec Test series that Dhoni can take with him when he goes back home? I can think of one. The nightmare is over.
The nightmare for the Indian cricket started at the Aegis Bowl, Southampton, continued at Old Trafford, Manchester and climaxed here, on the third day of the fifth Test match at Oval, and finally it was all over. After being 1-0 down after the Lord’s test, Alastair Cook’s England have turned things around so completely that there had been only one team in the contest for the last 3 Tests. India were nowhere in the picture.
But the way the Indian team capitulated beggars disbelief. India lost all ten wickets on the third day’s play, for just 94 runs and lasted a mere 29.4 overs. What a disgraceful way to bow out? Even the apologists for Dhoni and his men had trouble defending such a horrendous performance.
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To put India’s performance on this day into perspective, the last three English wickets made 168 runs in just 22 overs, while the entire Indian team were all out for 94 in under 30 overs, getting only 63% of the runs got by just one English batsman, the 23-year old Joe Root. Can things get any worse than that?
The Indian team hasn’t lasted even 90 overs in both this match and the last at Old Trafford. Never in the history of cricket has a cricket team got out in both innings of a Test match after having faced less than 90 overs in the entire match, on two consecutive occasions. Not even Bangladesh and Zimbabwe have been so pathetic.
The day began with one of England’s heroes of the entire Test series, Joe Root, just a few runs short of his hundred, which he got right at the start of the day. Then Stuart Broad walked in, and in the company of Root, the two young men made merry in the middle smashing the Indian bowlers all over the ground. Broad was in an angry mood after having being struck on the nose in his last stay at the crease and he singled out Varun Aaron, the man responsible for that for a special treatment, pulling and hooking him effortlessly. By the time the English innings came to a close at 486 all out, with a lead of 338 runs, the only question to be asked was would India survive the third day’s play.
India didn’t, as it turned out. Murali Vijay started the series well but his performance has deteriorated since and he got out for 2 trapped right in front of the wicket by James Anderson. Gautam Gambhir survived 29 painful minutes before he was put out of his misery by a ridiculous run out. Cheteshwar Pujara’s nightmare of a series was brought to a close by his tormentor Anderson. Rahane started well, but has floundered since, getting out for another low single digit score.
Dhoni has been the grittiest batsman for India in this series, but he too was out, for a duck, caught by Gary Ballance at short leg off Stuart Broad. Only Virat Kohli was left, and it was hardly a reassuring thought for India, considering that Kohli has been a walking wicket in the entire series. Kohli’s reputation as a batsman has been torn to shreds in this series, but to his credit, he did try harder in this innings than any other Indian batsman. But it wasn’t anywhere close to being good enough, as Kohli was out for 20, ending an incredibly poor series in which he has got just 134 runs from 10 innings, at an average of 13. It really can’t possibly get any worse for Kohli.
Rest of the Indian wickets fell in a hurry after than as nobody really put up even a semblance of a fight. Not even Ravichandran Ashwin who had batted so well in the last match or Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who was just a star performer in the first two Tests. India’s nightmare series finally ended, in completely abysmal fashion.
