India tour of Eng, June 20 - Aug 4

[Arthur Crabtree]

Gillman dropped before tea by Dawson off Carse. Luck is turning India's way... And he gets to 50.

Carse could have done with that though.

[sussexpob]

Draw still looks a long way off, but another clean session for India might bring it sight.

[sussexpob]

Weather forecast for tomorrow now saying rain between 08h00 to 17h00, with one dry spell at 14h00 (BBC Weather).

Are India going to escape? 45 overs without a wicket this afternoon....

[meninblue]

Gautam Gambhir record as coach:

Test: 13
Won : 4
Lost: 8
Draw: 1

Out of the 4 test win, 2 are against Bangladesh in test played in India.

The most disastrous test series loss for India came under Gauti when NZ beat India 3-0 in India last year.

[sussexpob]

There is a lack of quality test batters in India and it is just not a new phenomenon. Have been seeing this for last 10 years. Nobody of the likes of Sehwag, Sachin, Rahul and VVS. It is really a waste of time to watch the test because only Yashasvi and Jasprit deserve a place in this test squad

The statistically best Indian batting line up to play in England was in 2011. Their averages in England compared to now...

Sehwag 27, Jaiswal 34
Gambhir 12, Rahul 44
Dravid 68, Sai/Nair 22
Tendulkar 54, Gill 60
Laxman 34, Pant 43
Raina 13, Reddy 11
Jadeja 39, Dhoni 37

So yeah, only Dravid would get in this side based on their performances.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Weather forecast for tomorrow now saying rain between 08h00 to 17h00, with one dry spell at 14h00 (BBC Weather).

Are India going to escape? 45 overs without a wicket this afternoon....

My impression is there's usually less rain than is forecast.

The rain that went off the map this morning seems to be back. But if you look at the graphic, there's one tiny cloud sat in top of the ground. Move it fifty metres in any direction and it's dry. Maybe there'll be a couple of showers.

Anyway, these two are going to bat all day tomorrow anyway.

[meninblue]

There is a lack of quality test batters in India and it is just not a new phenomenon. Have been seeing this for last 10 years. Nobody of the likes of Sehwag, Sachin, Rahul and VVS. It is really a waste of time to watch the test because only Yashasvi and Jasprit deserve a place in this test squad

The statistically best Indian batting line up to play in England was in 2011. Their averages in England compared to now...

Sehwag 27, Jaiswal 34
Gambhir 12, Rahul 44
Dravid 68, Sai/Nair 22
Tendulkar 54, Gill 60
Laxman 34, Pant 43
Raina 13, Reddy 11
Jadeja 39, Dhoni 37

So yeah, only Dravid would get in this side based on their performances.

2011 was a bad series for someof those legends, and two of them were at end phase of career. Yes, many of those Fab 4 had that bad series in that phase. And they faced Jimmy, Stuart Broad, Swann not these England bowlers and not on such flat wickets in their decline phase. Nitpicking one test series or an year to say Sachin was worse than them, or VVS and Sehwag was also worse is not my cup of tea. I would personally not like to compare these Fab4 with anyone of the players you have listed ( KL., Gauti, Jaddu, Sai Sudarshan, Karun, Suresh Raina, Rishabh Pant, Nitish Reddy). Never in for such comparison as I am of the opinion that there is a limit to what should be compared and what should not be.


Sachin - 53.78
Rahul - 52.31
Sehwag: 49.34
VVS - 45.97

[meninblue]

3 all-rounders in playing 11was another blunder in many tests of this series. Yes, I do see that Gauti has very less faith in this batting lineup but still one is enough. Already that NZ whitewash series loss has dented his coaching records to an all-time low in Indian cricket , but even his strategies and selections are coming under severe criticism now. Had better expecations from him and chief selector Ajit Agarkar. Another phase to go wrong.

[meninblue]

Kuldeep Yadav has been a spectator. Should have played as a specialsit spinner ahead of both Jaddu and Washington in this series. A victim of not being able to bat as good as Jaddu or Washington Sundar. Another master stroke by Gauti.

[sussexpob]

2011 was a bad series for someof those legends, and two of them were at end phase of career. Yes, many of those Fab 4 had that bad series in that phase. And they faced Jimmy, Stuart Broad, Swann not these England bowlers and not on such flat wickets in their decline phase. Nitpicking one test series or an year to say Sachin was worse than them, or VVS and Sehwag was also worse is not my cup of tea

Those figures are career records in England, not one series, so nothing is nitpicking. India's most 5 capped current bats combine for over 50 tests in England as well, so its a comparable sample size (Gill has already played more tests in England than Sehwag for instance) and not a small one. Worth also noting that India's fab 4 era was a historical high scoring era for test cricket, the last 2 India tours to England are in the midst of a clear declining scores and historical lows - so relatively, those figures are even worse for the "fab 4" team. I guess those pitches in England in 2011 were not that flat .... England after all were not bowled out in the series in 4 tests, and in consecutive first innings made 500, 500, 700 and 600 declared, which they have never repeated or had done before. There is no excuse - India's star bats played rubbish on pitches England made their highest series average score ever.

Its a bit of a counter-factual argument. 4 players in this series from India average over 80 for the series, blaming the batters for not scoring runs is flat out madness.

[sussexpob]

KL and Shubman will need flat wickets and perform in one series, secure their spot and then flop in others. Their test career has been like this. In fact Shubman had to be kept away from new ball by batting down at 4 as soon as he got captaincy and needed flat wickets to score.

Sehwag had two hundreds in Australia. The first was followed by Ricky Ponting's highest test score (257) in a test Australia scored over 650 runs for 11 wickets lost. His second was a game which ended with only 2 complete innings and both teams scoring over 550. Sehwag's only 100 in England was a game England scored 600 in the first innings. He never scored a 50 in 5 tests in NZ. In South Africa he scored 1 hundred and averaged under 25, and guess what? That was in a match SA made 600 runs for 11 wickets lost in. He didn't make a 50 against the statistically worst test team that ever played (Zimbabwe 2005) in both tests he played. 1 hundred in WI on a pitch that produced a draw. Never scored more than 50 in BD in two series. His 300 v Pakistan in Multan was on a pitch that Cricviz ranked the flattest ever, and his 250 in Lahore come on a pitch with match figures of 1100/7 in all innings. He scored 2 centuries in Galle, the first is undisputedly a great innings, but the second once again is on a pitch SL made 620/8 on. H made another score in Colombo, SL made 642/4, India 700 in the first innings.

If the ball moved, Sehwag was useless. His career is the pure definition of dead calorie innings made on roads. He was a dolly away on wickets that did anything, and was utterly rubbish when he played in England.

[sussexpob]

I would personally not like to compare these Fab4 with anyone of the players you have listed ( KL., Gauti, Jaddu, Sai Sudarshan, Karun, Suresh Raina, Rishabh Pant, Nitish Reddy). Never in for such comparison as I am of the opinion that there is a limit to what should be compared and what should not be

The irony is, when you look at the whole Fab 4 era from the debut of Tendulkar to the retirement of the last of the greats, the test team only really had a plausible case of being considered a brilliant team for a small period of around 2008 to 2009 with a string of series wins - right at the time Gautum Gambhir was going through a two year period where he was batting line Bradman (7 centuries in 13 tests, 2000 plus runs, 7 additional half centuries). So while you will dig into him being crap, his hot streak is the high point of India test cricket history and never before or after his peak can you claim to be better. This is where this whole fab 4 argument falls down. They are hero worshipped and modern India teams are compared to that standard - but why? What standard are we talking?

It took 12 years after Tendulkar retired for India not win a home test series against anyone, and they only lost (by memory) something like 2-3 single tests in that time. Go back 12 years from that retirement to the fab 4 era, India lost at home to England (2012), Failed to beat SA twice (2010 and 2008), Failed to beat England (2006), Pakistan (2005), lost to Australia (05), drew with NZ (2004), lost to South Africa (2000), Lost the Asia Cup (2000), drew with Pakistan (99). Absolutely no where near as good as the modern team, not even on the same planet.

And away.....

Sri Lanka. The Fab 4 had three tours in SL, lost 2 and drew one..... since India have won both series in SL with a 5-1 record
Pakistan.... can't be compared.
South Africa ... both sides lost three times and have 1 draw.
West Indies... three wins and one loss v three wins. Laxman, Tendulkar and Dravid played 5 tests in 1996/97, they didn't win a single one. Modern day wins again.
Australia - 3 series losses + 1 draw v 3 losses and two wins. Modern day wins again
Zimbabwe - Three of the fab 4 lost to Zimbabwe away in the late 90s, and two series either side were draws. India did beat a Z team in 2005 before the ICC kicked them out of test cricket for not being up to standard - absolutely rubbish record. Modern team have ever played there, but I doubt theyd take 4 series to register a win.
Bangladesh - All historical series have been victories, save for a one off test in 2015 played out of season in the Monsoon period which ended in a draw after 3.5 of days of rain - BD were bowled out before the follow on and were clearly going to be battered without the rain. Honours even
New Zealand - 2 losses + 1 win v 2 losses.... Fab 4 win
England - one loss, one win, one draw v two loss, one draw and one ? - Goes to the Fab 4

Overall, home form and the majority of away form goes to the modern team. Two wins in Australia trump the one win in England. And while NZ form is better, India played NZ in modern times when they won the test championship... they were ranked last when the Fab 4 lost away.

I struggle to see where the evidence of the glorious Fab 4 winning games for India was, because India have been a better team without them. Their home batting figures after the Fab 4 era become historical all time great, over 40-45 per wicket averages which is insane. I think in Tendulkar's career span it was 33-35 ish depending on period, so India's batsman have been statistically better.

[sussexpob]

I guess you could argue pitches are flatter now in India, hence worse batsman do better... .but data doesn't agree with that. It might be unsurprising, but naturally batsman with large enough sample sizes all follow similar trends - they tend to average most in draws, a little higher than their career average in wins , and below average in losses. Similarly, draws with higher than average first innings scores tend to indicate flat pitches by the trends in total scoring - by comparing the differential between these statistical highs in drawn games, with performance in other matches, you can get a sense of flatness of pitches. It might sound a little bit of a stretch, but instantly identifiable trends appear in the data grouped in times/team/multiple team mates that show players in the same situations appear together.

As an example, Australian bats between 2010-2020 ... five appear on all time highest batting average in the top 20 when limiting the scope to players with 1000 runs in first innings of drawn games, and Steve Smith is top all time with a staggering 110 run average in drawn first innings. This is 50 runs more than he performs in wins, all of which indicate a high frequency of pancake flat pitches, and the trend is consistent because batsman in his team all similarly outperform themselves in the same conditions, but his higher career average accounts for a higher differential. Khawaja is next on career average and differential... and so on. The better a bat, the more his stats become benefitted by the flat pitch.

The same is true of the 3 W's and Sobers in the 50s (Worrell and Weekes only scored runs on roads, Sobers and Walcott score high in wins, all weirdly performed absolutely terribly in losses - Worrell averaging near 15 in lost games and 110 in first innings of drawn games!!!), 90s/early 2000s Windies, and Pakistan bats in UAE... all consistently appear in clusters at the top of the list, clearly indicating trends in conditions. For England, Kenny Barrington and Wally Hammond score a huge amount of runs in dead matches.

More to the point.... Tweak the formula a bit to remove the lesser instances and take players with 2000 runs, and you end with only 29 players who have scored that many runs in high scoring drawn games..... based on batting average in these innings....

3rd - Sehwag
8th - Tendulkar
9th- Dravid
12th - Gavaskar
20 th Laxman
21st - Azharuddin
22nd - Vengsarkar
23rd - Viswanath
24th Shastri
29 - Kapil Devl

Taking a list of most test runs for India in test all time, removing the players who played the majority of their career after the Fab 4 era or who are still playing....and by runs scored, you basically get exactly the same list in almost the same order, with a general correlation between more runs scored in drawn/high scoring matches accounting for increasing career runs/batting average. And these are not small samples either, in the top 3 cases we are talking over 4,000 career runs scored. Gavaskar incredibly scored over 60%/6000 runs in his career on pitches that did not produce results. You could say the best batting line up possibly ever would naturally draw more games by scoring more runs than losing, but India score more runs after this era, with some years at 48 wicket averages at home, and every single game produces a result.

The bottom line is, all of India's top scorers before this era played on pitches where they made historically high proportions of their career runs on wickets both teams scored on and matches were drawn. This trend is consistent for all their top historical scorers up until the Fab 4 retires, then completely disappears at a time Indian home batting performance hits all time records and they win almost every test in a 12 year period. The Fab 4, and all the Indian greats of the past, have stats padded on dead wickets. They all profit from it in historically high numbers.

Just to compare Tendulkar with his nearest scoring contemporary, Ricky Ponting...

Ricky played in 17% of matches that ended in a draw
Tendulkar played in 36% of matches that ended in a draw

Only 19 games went to a 4th innings in India in the 2000s, and the wicket averages are still higher than the all time score for the 1st and 2nd innings. Just great pitches to score on.

[sussexpob]

Instead of these long posts, maybe I could just point out the seemingly universal position that Indian fans take to slag off any new player who does well as being inferior to anyone in the past because pitches are so easy to bat on in India now anyone pleb could bag runs.... and at the same time argue Anil Kumble is better than a person who averages 10 per wicket less on Indian pitches, on the basis all the pitches are raging cobra pits where the ball moves at right angles, and any average spinner can take wickets....

Not sure how to square that circle....

[meninblue]

Instead of these long posts, maybe I could just point out the seemingly universal position that Indian fans take to slag off any new player who does well as being inferior to anyone in the past because pitches are so easy to bat on in India now anyone pleb could bag runs.... and at the same time argue Anil Kumble is better than a person who averages 10 per wicket less on Indian pitches, on the basis all the pitches are raging cobra pits where the ball moves at right angles, and any average spinner can take wickets....

Not sure how to square that circle....

Neither you nor me have the capacity to improve Indian test cricket. Needless to say that it is out of our scope to improve individual player performances and team performances We can just watch and analyse the positives and negatives. Onus is on BCCI to sort out this mess after all. Such a powerful cash rich cricket body should be able to sort things significantly.

These are the career batting averages over the longest career Indian test batsmen have had. No nitpicking whatsover. Not even mentioning the bowlers like Shane Warne, Wasim, Waqar, Alan Donald, Ambrose, Shane Bond, Dale Steyn, Jimmy, Broad, Mushtaq, McGrath, Muralitharan etc. Not even any other doubts which I have observed as I such discussions are very subjective and requires endless time.

This is what is a 'Indivudual benchmark' not the 'Team Benchmark' for Indian test batsman. I will try to mention about Team benchmark later in the post.

Individual benchmark:
Sachin - 53.78
Rahul - 52.31
Sehwag - 49.34
VVS- 45.97

However, just because the other batsman fail to achieve the benchmark set,
It is wrong to say that there has been no appreciation for anyone out of the Fab4. I can only speak for myself.

Virat was given a status of the great Indian test batsman after those 5 years he had. Then even when he flopped many supported the decission to be in team because bad patch catches everyone and it was only when that he flopped for another year he was asked to be dropped. Still the selectors picked him for another year and then they too realised his decline had come at a very early age in comparison to others. Speaking strictly about test format, I rate him as the 6th best test batsman India has ever produced. His fitness was top class too which hekped him achieve what he did with respect to his batting.

Yashasvi Jaiswal is someone I think who will be averaging over 45 if not more.

Chet was one if the best and very well appreciated by me. In fact he was the key player in many series. Although I do not have him in Fab4, he was a proper test quality batsman from India whom I liked watching.

But just because the players are appreciated , it does not means they will acheive the career averages of Fab4.

Just because Virat and Chet do not get into Fab 4 , it does not means they are bad. Just that they are a level lower and that should not be viewed negatively.

KL Rahul is a lost case at 34. Has been dropped many times. The other openers like Easwaran are worse options than him.

Shubman Gill atleast has age on his side. But I do not see him ending with test career average over 50, around 50 or even at 45. If he does, it woukd be nice for Indian test team to have another prolific batsmen and he for sure will be appreciated.

Fab 4 is an elite class. Not every Indian batsman should be given that place just because they too are good. They have to be as good or better to enter that elite class. Let these players prove themseves over a long career.

Vinod Kambli...the next Sachin. We know how it ended.

The latest trend is Virat the King and Shubman the Prince. Virat imo is the 6th best Indian test format batsman. Even if Shubman does not gets into Fab 4 class, I woukd happily take if he gets anywhere near even Virat Kohli. In fact I would not mind all Indian batsman getting in that Virat Kohli range. Yashasvi Jaiswal is the only one I think can break the Fab4. Yes, he needs to improve the way he approaches the initial spell by bowlers but he is the only one imo who has potential of being in Elite Fab 4. Obviously Sunny also is that elite list but as we know he played in totally different era he was not grouped as Fab 4.

Just because I classify them into different categories, does not means that they are not appreciated. Nor do I mean that they have not played a quality innings of their own. It just means that they are not as good as the ones I rate at the topmost category. Also, I mean the count and quality of Indian batsmanship has been on a decline in last 15 years. India which produced Sunny and Fab 4 have later produced great bowlers like Ashwin, Jasprit and a quality test all rounder in Jadeja though. So India are still winning and continue to win a test here and there or a series as well. I guess India has played 2 test championship finals and it is just not helping India that test finals are played year after year in England. But being aware of having lost at home 0-3 in the whitewash series to NZ, I for one cannot gurantee India would have won had the test finals been played in Asian conditions. Somewhere ICC should start rotating test championship finals like they rotate final venues for LOI.

Had guessed India would be losing this series. Not aware about which test series follows next.


Is there a chance that India make the test championships finals in this test cycle and wins it?


Will Gautam Gambhir survive as coach for more than two years by turning things upside down in test format?

Whether Yashasvi Jaiswal can continue to grow in his journey as test batsman ?

How severly will Jasprit Bumrah decline due to his workload and fitness issues?

Does think tank really have a clue about who is India's most skilled spinner in SENA , lest have a plan to develop one ?

Does BCCI has any top level plans to build a pipeline of proper test batsmen, quality spinners and intelligence in selecting a right combination of specialist batsmen, specialist pacers, specialist spinners and all-rounders for test for different conditions. Or are they after umpteen years still figuring out that Jadeja is useles spinner in conditions like England and waste more time which further aggravates the delayed development of other spinners for these conditions?


What weightage does fielding gets in team selection?

These are some of the major aspects that seem important to me. To be a too team, it will need a lot of crucial strategies, plans, transitions and succession planning (never ending in this case), slections and ultimately performance to fall in place. It has been a mess for long now.

To start with, BCCI needs to give importance to test format first. That first step itself is not being taken and reflects in many aspects.