Tears on their Pilau – a post mortem of India’s test defeat to England

We received this very very serious submission via email earlier in the week. It discusses India’s test humiliation at the hand’s of Alastair Cook’s Barmy Army with intelligence, eloquence (and not a trace of sarcasm). It also prevents us from having to consider England’s abject showing in the T20 yesterday … something which will come as relief to Jade Dernbach, who seemed to be impersonating a blind muppet for most of the match.

Anyway, over to you Mr James Hindle, aka @TarkaCricket …

‘In 1882, following England’s first Test defeat by Australia on English soil, a British newspaper famously published an obituary for English cricket. It included the brilliant line:

“the body [of English cricket] will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. A group of Melbourne WAGs proceeded to burn some bails, and the noble Ashes were born.

India’s 2012 defeat by England, on home soil and despite many advantages, is a similarly momentous moment in the history of our game. Much was in India’s favour: they faced an England team which had proven itself desperately poor against spin bowling, under a new captain, and struggling with much publicised internal strife.

India, on the other hand, possessed the second best batsmen ever to play the game, wickets tailored to exploit their perceived spin advantage, and a DRS-free series (MS Dhoni has struggled with DRS reviews and Indian batsmen are said to benefit from its absence via the “benefit of the doubt” rule).

Despite all of this, and a Machiavellian plot by Indian administrators to ensure England faced no spin bowling whatsoever in the warm up matches, India were defeated at home for the first time in 28-years.

How was such a humiliation possible? Well, it turns out that their seamers are weaker than Afghanistan’s, their fielding comparable with the much maligned Pig & Parrot Invitational XI (the Outer Hebrides only pub team), and their spinners now poorer than Xavier Doherty.

How far must the nation of Bedi fallen, for us to be able to write such a thing?

Additionally, there has also been – to borrow the witty words of Cricinfo’s Sidin Vadukut – substandard batting, incompetent captaincy and fan angst at the teams failure to win a world cup since 2011.

Some Indian fans are responding to their defeat -shellacking may be a better term – by blaming the very ordinary umpiring of HDPK Darmasena. Granted, the man has had a poor series, and his status as the current “best umpire in the world” would seem to make as much sense as the BCCI’s stance on technology, but England have suffered from his errors too. Witness Captain Cook’s two awful dismissals in this most recent test.

Some have (quite reasonably) argued that India are desperately poor at the top of the order and that this is a crucial area in Test matches: the previously excellent Gambhir averages only 30 over the last 3 years, and Virender Sehwag is a 34 year old in a 54 year old’s body.

Personally, I’ve never liked Sehwag at the top of the order on the grounds that he cannot play swing bowling and – even when the man comes off and hits a brilliant 20-odd – this innings is so brisk, that the batsmen who must follow inevitably have to start against a new ball.

Virender Sehwag fails at the opening batsmen’s first task: to see off the new ball. At his best he would have been a superb, Gilchrist-like, late middle order batsmen. He is now far from his best. He looks like Inzamam U Haq, but without the talent. Or perhaps a poor man’s Dwayne Leverock.

Other’s are pointing out that India are a magnificent limited overs team. This may very well be the case, and India may well win their two Twenty20 games against a scratch England squad. But this is not really the point. T20 is comedy cricket. So what?

When it comes to Test cricket, the very pinnacle of our sport, India have been weighed, India have been measured – and they’ve been found wanting.

Enough is enough. The time has come to withdraw India’s test status on the exceedingly plausible grounds that they simply aren’t good enough. If the BCCI behave, and give all their money to a charity (a county championship div two side perhaps) we might readmit them – but only when they’re good enough to give Zimbabwe a game.’

@TarkaCricket

6 comments

  • India will pay lip service to the defeat at the hands of England but the news (if ever news it was) that India haven’t the players or the application to compete in 5 day cricket at the moment, is already today’s fish and chapati paper. Yesterday’s T20 defeat of England with a couple of overs to spare is far more important and the numbers that paid to enter through the turnstiles will weigh more heavily than the revenue from Test Match cricket. The goose that lays the golden eggs must be force fed until it’s liver can take no more. So sad – so very sad!

  • Sooper dooper performace by England. Before the start of series indians were expecting white wash but it is big blow on their face. Yes, hard work and concentration can pass all hurdles.

  • Having seen @TarkaCricket play on many occassions I am not surprised by his Sehwag comments. He hates a “Dasher”.

    • I do bat a little like Geoffrey … at a much lower level of course. Perhaps I should have “declared an interest” before those Sehwag comments!

      On these T20s under Eion Morgan, has it occurred to anyone else that it may be in England’s medium term interests to lose them (badly if possible) as this will keep India focused on comedy cricket? And delay any overhaul of their test side.

  • I wonder if the current England test XI would beat our T20 ‘specialists’ in a twenty over slogfest. My money would probably be on Cook, Bell etc (as long as KP was playing for the test lads!) Sometimes I think we’ve lost the plot completely when it comes to selection in the T20s …. unless it’s just a plan to give senior players a rest. For example, I like Meaker as a bowler, but his domestic T20 record is rubbish (an economy rate of almost 10 an over). What on earth has he done to warrant selection in this form of the game. I can see a case for his inclusion in the test squad i.e. he’s quick and can take wickets, but the faster you bowl the faster you go to the boundary in T20 sometimes. It reminds me of Saj Mahmood, a guy with pace (in his younger days) who played almost exclusively in ODIs despite the fact he was an attacking, but not very accurate, quickie. It would be like Devon Malcolm emerging today, but being ignored for tests but playing T20 exclusively. Why not recall Chris Tavare or Sir Geoff as a specialist T20 opener while we’re at it?!!!

  • I think the reason behind this humiliating defeat of India is that they relied too much on their home conditions and the pitch and one of the reasons is that after winning the first match they took the second match lightly and in they third match after the defeat in the last one they were panic and the role in their defeat was partially played by the bad forms of their batsmen.So it’s a multi-factorial defeat for India.

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