India tour of England Aug-Sept 2021

[Ed Smith]

Came back out for one ball man

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

Lest he not be able to help us, am pretty sure the coach and captain would proceed to drop him for the 2nd Test

Sarcasm?

 

[Bigby Wolf]

Same old, same old!

Moving balls, Indian batsmen and the English have struck Gold!

I pin my hopes on Lord Shardul, the first of his kind. Lest he not be able to help us, am pretty sure the coach and captain would proceed to drop him for the 2nd Test

In Lord we Trust and rest all our hopes on.

And yeah he got the best batsmen of the Opposition as well triggering a collapse.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

Came back out for one ball man

Epic session of two balls.

 

[Bigby Wolf]

Next should be three balls resumption

 

[icyman]

I am pretty sure the next innovation would see cricket being played in the rain!

 

[Aalay]

It might be an unpopular opinion, but how long should we stick with Pujara and Rahane? Pujara is horrible against the moving ball, and his record in England is not that great. Rahane, the captain, is much better than Kohli, but Rahane, the batsman, has been mediocre for a while. Both of them will need some solid performances this series for India to win and save their respective spots in the test team.

 

[NILAYSHAH60]

Pujara is horrible against the moving ball

But he also scored the 2nd most number of runs for India in the last series. I don't think we can conclude that Pujara won't help us in these conditions on basis of just one innings and the horrible tour of 2014.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

I was thinking about how one might structure the first-class game in England to better prepare the Test side. I've mentioned before about how I would rejig the County Championship as well as how I would dearly love to bin off the Hundred so I'll leave that alone, but one addition that could most certainly be made would be North v South matches.

So looking at the current itinerary:
-- North v South Match here --
02 Jun - vs @ Lord's
10 Jun - vs @ Edgbaston
-- North v South Match here --
04 Aug - vs @ Trent Bridge
13 Aug - vs @ Lord's
-- North v South Match here? -- (this one would have to not include players from the second Test)
26 Aug - vs @ Headingley
03 Sep - vs @ The Oval
11 Sep - vs @ Old Trafford

By having these matches baked into the schedule, you could still give players some good preparation regardless of whether or not they're in the middle of a white-ball block.

Also, I would have a few tweaks to the playing conditions for the best possible Test preparation:

• These would be five-day matches
• The matches would have 13-man "Matchday Squads"
  • The game starts with a playing XI and two substitutes
  • Teams can make two tactical substitutions if they so choose
  • Players substituted out can only be brought back into the game as injury replacements (such as concussions)
• Bonus points would still be counted so that the series is more likely to have a winner

Spoiler: Hypothetical Full-Strength Matchday Squads

Spoiler: The North

Starting XI

1. Dominic Sibley (Warwickshire)
2. Haseeb Hameed (Nottinghamshire)
3. Jake Libby (Worcestershire)
4. Dawid Malan (Yorkshire)
5. Jonny Bairstow (Yorkshire)
6. Moeen Ali (Worcestershire)
7. Jos Buttler (Lancashire)
8. Chris Woakes (Warwickshire)
9. Mark Wood (Durham)
10. Ollie Stone (Warwickshire)
11. Matt Parkinson (Lancashire)

Substitutes

• David Willey (Yorkshire)
• Dom Bess (Yorkshire)

Unlikely to be included

• Joe Root (Yorkshire)
• Ben Stokes (Durham)
• Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire)
• Jimmy Anderson (Lancashire)

Spoiler: The South

Starting XI

1. Rory Burns (Surrey)
2. Zak Crawley (Kent)
3. James Vince (Hampshire)
4. Ollie Pope (Surrey)
5. Dan Lawrence (Essex)
6. Ben Foakes (Surrey)
7. Sam Curran (Surrey)
8. Craig Overton (Somerset)
9. Ollie Robinson (Sussex)
10. Jack Leach (Somerset)
11. Sam Cook (Essex)

Substitutes

• James Bracey (Gloucestershire)
• Liam Dawson (Hampshire)

Unlikely to be included

• Jofra Archer (Sussex)

Not necessarily saying that these would be the squads, but they give you a feel for what the series would look like. It wouldn't necessarily be Test quality but it would be as near as can be, and should be the ideal preparation - especially for fringe players. Also, with an actual competition on the line, it ought to be more than just glorified middle practice.

We play too much international cricket (specifically test matches). I don't think having what amounts to a few inter-squad games would make much difference. That's seven matches - Jos Buttler's played six in the last six years.

In the last three years we've played eight more tests than India - that's... 40 days? It's basically another summer of cricket. 15 more than Australia.

After a long year, of bubbles, disrupted tours, isolation. What do the ECB do? Sneak in a couple more test matches against New Zealand when half our team will be unavailable.

I love test cricket but I want to see our best players playing. At the moment three (maybe four) of our best have been so poorly handled because of the schedule put upon them, that they aren't playing against one of the best teams in the world.

 

[Aislabie]

We play too much international cricket (specifically test matches)

I do agree on this. No arguments whatsoever

There's also too much cricket in the County Championship too - no other country plays more than ten rounds in its domestic first-class structure

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

It might be an unpopular opinion, but how long should we stick with Pujara and Rahane? Pujara is horrible against the moving ball, and his record in England is not that great. Rahane, the captain, is much better than Kohli, but Rahane, the batsman, has been mediocre for a while. Both of them will need some solid performances this series for India to win and save their respective spots in the test team.

Exactly what I have been saying since the Aussie series. For how long will we not question Pujara/Rahane and if Kohli continues to bat this way for another year, him as well? Rahane the captain is good, the batsman has been more then mediocre over the years. Somebody on this forum had previously raised a good point that Rahane is trying to up his Limited Overs game but is losing all his game. Also Pujara has been rock solid in some matches, he has played some wonderful knocks, but he has not played a LONG knock. His recent scores are 8,15,17,0,21,7,73,15,25,56,50,77,17,3,43 & 0. That is 26.68 runs per innings on an average. This does not count his failure today. Remove the home series and his average in last few test matches is 27 which is an improvement but not a drastic one that can help India.

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

Ajinkya Rahane's last few innings is 49,15,27,7,67,10,1,0,37,24,22,4,112,27,42,0 which equates to 27.75.

 

[wasteyouryouth]

Exactly what I have been saying since the Aussie series. For how long will we not question Pujara/Rahane and if Kohli continues to bat this way for another year, him as well? Rahane the captain is good, the batsman has been more then mediocre over the years. Somebody on this forum had previously raised a good point that Rahane is trying to up his Limited Overs game but is losing all his game. Also Pujara has been rock solid in some matches, he has played some wonderful knocks, but he has not played a LONG knock. His recent scores are 8,15,17,0,21,7,73,15,25,56,50,77,17,3,43 & 0. That is 26.68 runs per innings on an average. This does not count his failure today. Remove the home series and his average in last few test matches is 27 which is an improvement but not a drastic one that can help India.

Pujara has become the Indian Sibley.

 

[WubbaLubbaDubDub]

Now some people will crucify me but that is not what you want your number 3 and number 5 to average. Now add your number 4 in Kohli who has now scored 74,4,11,72,0,62,27,0,44,13 in the same time which equates to an average of 30.7, does not give me confidence as a fan watching Indian cricket's test matches.

Basically you have 3,4,5 contributing mere 100 odd runs per innings in the last 16-17 test matches. You add in how our openers have not scored a huge opening partnership baring a few here and there, we see what we saw today. Indian team at 100 losing 4 to 5 wickets.

We cannot rely on Pant always and our lower order is subhanallah!

Our batting has lead us down time and again. Just a quick fact, Kohli's last international AWAY century was on 14th December 2018 in Perth. He has since then played 14 innings without scoring 3 digit score. Has total of 7 centuries since 2018.

Rahane has played 34 innings in away tests in last 3 years and has 2 centuries

Pujara has played 40 innings in away tests in last 3 years and has 5 centuries, Pujara's last century was back in 2019 against Australia in Sydney.

 

[Bigby Wolf]

We cannot rely on Pant always and our lower order is subhanallah!