India 1-2 England review and player marks

Ten months ago I stayed awake through the night and listened in horror as England capitulated against Pakistan’s spinners in Abu Dhabi. The contrast between that and staying up through the night in this series could hardly have been more pronounced.

England played remarkable cricket to win this series. They had a horror start as India piled on the runs in Ahmedabad and then England’s displayed their same problems against spin. To come back from that massive hole and nine wicket defeat was a massive achievement. After that they batted much better (actually they batted much better starting in the second innings at Ahmedabad) but more importantly they outbowled India. England’s spinners comfortably outperformed their Indian counterparts in Mumbai and then James Anderson took over in Calcutta and Nagpur. England’s willingness to adapt, sometimes ruthlessly, was perhaps their most impressive aspect. Stuart Broad had a shocking two Tests and was dropped despite being the vice-captain. England knew they had someone better. The same thing happened with Samit Patel; he did not play terribly, but England decided they had better batsmen to fill that role and Joe Root performed brilliantly.

That came in sharp contrast to India, who now have a lot of questions to answer. India’s selection throughout the series was muddled, their tactics were questionable and their players badly underperformed. They seemed to have watched England struggle to play spin last winter and at Ahmedabad in the first innings and then simply refused to believe over the next Tests that England had improved in that regard. They seemed certain that they were going to win the series and never responded when England started to get he upper hand. Their minds also seemed out of it. They showed some fight, but very seldom at times that were really important. When their chances of winning the series started to slip away in the second innings at Calcutta their entire middle order surrendered and left it to Ashwin to spare the humiliation of an innings defeat. On the fourth evening at Nagpur they lashed out at the batsmen and umpires instead of trying to actually get wickets before coming out the next morning, still with an outside chance to make something of the series, and doing absolutely nothing for five hours until they could shake hands. MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli showed admirable fight and application in their first innings at Nagpur, but it served mostly to highlight the absence of that mentality for the rest of the series.

As important as the tactics and relative mentality of the two sides were, however, England in the end simply outplayed India. Alastair Cook led the way and could seemingly only be denied a ton by dodgy umpiring. But six of the seven batsmen to get more than one Test for England scored a fifty in the series and so did one of the two who got only one Test. Four of them scored a hundred at some point and as a team England scored more than four hundred in three of their five completed innings. India managed to do the same just one time in six innings. Part of that was down to the bowlers; Stuart Broad aside, England’s generally turned in very good performances. They either took wickets or kept the batsmen tied down. India simply never had the same kind of control. Ashwin had a shocking series, Zaheer Khan was so bad he was actually dropped. Ishant Sharma and Pragyan Ojha were the only ones to do much and even they sometimes looked helpless. India did not help themselves with selection though; picking Piyush Chawla for the last Test was mystifying and it was clear well before he was dropped that India had better bowlers than Khan.

England deserved their victory, their first in India for 28 years. My marks for the individual players are as follows (and unlike the Times I don’t think any of them played for Chelsea at the weekend):

England (88/150, average 5.87)
Alastair Cook* – 10
Perfect ten for the captain. To use the old cliché, he led from the front with the bat and would have finished with the highest average fro England were it not for Joe Root getting his runs with only one dismissal. He also led the side well; his tactics were good, his bowling changes were good and he did not let heads drop after the defeat in the first Test. Now if only he could get a coin toss right more often than once every six times…

Nick Compton – 7
It was a good, if unspectacular series for Compton. He batted solidly in the first three Tests and helped England lay an important platform in the first innings of the Mumbai and Calcutta Tests before getting the winning runs in style in the first and keeping his head on the last day of the second. His final average does not do him justice.

Jonathan Trott – 5
Trott had a bit of trouble at the start of the series; he was a little bit scratchy and got out to some good deliveries and some only mediocre deliveries. But he finished strongly with 87 in Calcutta and 143 in Nagpur to see England to Test and series winning scores. His fielding at slip followed a similar pattern; he put down a sitter in the first Test, but took some very good catches later in the series.

Kevin Pietersen – 8
Pietersen was successfully reintegrated into the England side and marked this by attempting to sweep a ball that went on to hit his off stump. But that was the nadir of the series for him; he went on to play the best constructed century I have seen from him on a very difficult wicket in Mumbai and followed up with a pair of solid fifties in Calcutta and Nagpur.

Ian Bell – 5
Much like Trott, Bell had a poor start to the series. He played a horrific shot in Ahmedabad and although he looked in decent touch throughout he got a bit careless at times to get out. He came through in the last Test, however, playing a vital unbeaten hundred to ensure England’s safety.

Joe Root – 8
Root looked like a Test batsman from the first ball of his debut in Nagpur. He came in with England in a bit of trouble and played very mature 73 to see England most of the way to a good total. He will certainly be on the plane to New Zealand.

Matt Prior† – 9
Prior was very solid throughout the series; he had few errors behind the stumps as usual and scored runs at an average of better than fifty. His biggest blemish was the terrible run out that precipitated England’s collapse in Mumbai.

Tim Bresnan – 1
Bresnan only played the first and last Tests and he had an absolute shocker in the first. He was not threatening and had no control. He was a lot better in the second Test, though could not pick up a wicket on the lifeless Nagpur pitch. He did cause problems and keep the scoring down, however, which was about all a bowler could do.

Graeme Swann – 8
Swann was statistically England’s best bowler in this series. He took a team best twenty wickets at a team best 24.75 average. He never had a single standout performance, but he was always a threat to pick up wickets and made the most of the Mumbai track in taking 8-113 in the match.

James Anderson – 9
Swann was statistically England’s best bowler, but Anderson was England’s actual best bowler. He could only keep the runs down in the first Test and had little to do in the second with the spinners bowling, but turned in exceptional performances in the last two Tests. With the pitches still not giving him any assistance he took six wickets in Calcutta and four in the only innings he bowled in Nagpur.

Monty Panesar – 8
Panesar was left out of England’s defeat at Ahmedabad, but recalled for the raging turner at Mumbai. He took his chance as well as eleven wickets in the match. His performances in Calcutta and Nagpur were significantly less impressive, but he was able to bowl long spells that kept the runs down and pressure on.

Jonny Bairstow – 0
Bairstow only played one Test, filling in for Bell at Mumbai, and contributed nine runs to England’s first innings total before playing a terrible shot and then failing to realise that he wasn’t actually out off it. It was a poor innings and he did not get to bat in the second. He’ll have to fight to get his number six spot back in New Zealand.

Samit Patel – 3
Patel played in the first three Tests as and never really did anything wrong. But he never managed to convert any starts of follow up the promise he showed in the warmup matches and was dropped for Joe Root.

Stuart Broad – 0
Broad was appointed vice-captain before the start of the series, but was troubled by a heel injury and bowled utterly appallingly in the first two Tests. He was then dropped for the fit-again Steven Finn and ultimately returned to England for treatment.

Steven Finn – 7
Finn bowled very well in the only Test he played. But two different injuries (the first of which had a recurrence) kept him out of most of the series. It was a blow to England who clearly missed his pace and bounce in the other three Tests.

India (46/150, average 3.07)
Gautam Gambhir – 6
Gambhir had a surprisingly good series for someone who came into it so out of form. He made a nice rearguard fifty as the rest of the side collapsed around him in Mumbai and similarly made a few runs before the implosion at Calcutta. But he never managed to do anything with those starts and also ran out two partners in Calcutta. He’s only a few overs of surprisingly effective rubbish bowling away from being India’s answer to Shane Watson.

Virender Sehwag – 3
Sehwag scored a blistering 117 on the first day of the series, then returned to his usual form making only 136 runs in the next five innings. A lot of this was down to his terrible technique, but he also was run out by Gambhir when he was looking dangerous in Calcutta.

Cheteshwar Pujara – 8
Started the series by looking like Rahul Dravid had in England. He scored an unbeaten double century at Ahmedabd before scoring a fighting 135 in Mumbai to get India to a respectable, if ultimately insufficient, score. He fell off from there (how could he not), but between incorrect decisions and being run out by his partner he still comes out of the series well.

Sachin Tendulkar – 1
Tendulkar’s top score in this series was the 76 made whilst trying to arrest a collapse in Calcutta. That much is quite respectable, but his next highest score in the series was 13 and he failed to get to double figures in six of his eight innings. He looks very much like a fading force and it his not clear what he gains by hanging on any longer.

Virat Kohli – 3
Kohli scored a fantastic century in Nagpur that rescued India from a position of considerable danger. It was a great innings in which he completely abandoned his usual game and just accumulated runs. But he waited until the last innings of the series to do that; in the first three Tests his top score was exactly twenty.

MS Dhoni*† – 1
Dhoni took some responsibility for his side in the last Test and fought hard for his 99. But his tactical deficiencies throughout the series were glaring and his selection muddled. As much as he fought in the last Test, he surrendered just as much in the third Test. He will be lucky to hang on to the captaincy.

Ravindra Jadeja – 1
Jadeja gets a very low score, but only got to bat once and was trapped by a vicious inswinger from Anderson. There’s really not enough there to judge for the long term. His one point comes from the wickets he picked up bowling.

Ravichandran Ashwin – 3
It’s very hard to judge Ashwin in this series. He was meant to be their main spin bowler and a decent bat down the order. But he was utterly innocuous with the ball and took his wickets at over fifty runs apiece. But he still managed to keep his batting average higher than his bowling one with some excellent rearguards. But those all came too late to help his country; he needed to perform with the ball and didn’t.

Piyush Chawla – 2
Chawla somehow took four wickets in England’s first innings despite bowling fairly poorly throughout. He was never threatening in the second innings and actually never should have been picked.

Ishant Sharma – 4
Sharma was India’s best bowler in the last Test and did okay in the third as well. But that was all relative and it was not a pair of Tests he will put on his highlight reel. The nadir was probably dropping an easy return chance from Alastair Cook, but his fielding overall was worse than lazy.

Pragyan Ojha – 6
Ojha was the only Indian bowler to really show up in the series and he finished level with Swann as the lead wicket taker in the series. Those wickets still came at a cost of over thirty apiece, however, as he was often made to toil during England’s long innings in the second and third Tests.

Yuvraj Singh – 1
Yuvraj Singh was apparently selected off a desire for a fairy-tale comeback story and a thought that he would be useful against Kevin Pietersen. But he has never really been Test quality and he showed that again in the first three Tests before being dropped for Nagpur.

Harbhajan Singh – 0
Selected as a third spinner for Mumbai, Harbhajan Singh took only the wickets of two tail-enders and scored 27 runs in what very well might turn out to be his last Test. Certainly he did nothing to suggest that he was still good enough to play Test cricket and did not even get a recall when India played four spinners at Nagpur.

Umaesh Yadav – 7
Yadav looked very good in the one Test in which he played. Unfortunately for India he then picked up an injury and missed the rest of the series. It was a story very similar to that of Steven Finn for England and like Finn India missed him quite a bit.

Zaheer Khan – 0
Khan is another who may very well have played his last Test; he managed just 4-213 in the first three Tests and three of those came in the first Test. For the most part England were happy to hit him around and happy to find him in the field as well; he was distinctly disinclined to pursue balls hit near him.

Nagpur, day four: England 161-3

The series is almost in England’s grasp. They need only to bat for another three hours or so on the last day to put the match out of India’s reach and guarantee a 2-1 win. India actually helped them a bit with one of the strangest first hours one will ever see to start the fourth day. I said on day three that India should try to build a lead and the other alternative was to hit out and get to parity as quickly as possible. Instead they decided to farm the strike and went at one an over for a time. It was neither getting enough runs to put England under pressure or giving them time to bowl and was only ended when MS Dhoni inexplicably declared four runs in arrears at drinks. India had essentially taken an hour out of a Test they needed to win.

Like day three, most of the excitement today came in the last hour, but there was some interest in the afternoon this time. England batted very slowly through the start of the day, determined to keep wickets in hand. Alastair Cook eventually fell and fell to a decision just as bad as the one which disposed of him in the first innings. Both were from Kumar Dharmasena who did make some good decisions in the match, but the number of utter howlers he has made will ensure it is a match he wants to forget. It would be over-dramatic to say that his errors have ruined the match, but they are just as bad for the game as the terrible pitch. It is not possible to properly construct innings when the umpire is giving random decisions and undermines the credibility of the game.

These problems would be strongly mitigated with DRS, but India refuse to use it and one of the reasons they refuse is that they thinks it does not show respect to the umpires. But apparently no one told the Indian players. Late in the day Jonathan Trott played at one away from his body and the Indians appealed for a catch behind. There was a noise, but Dharmasena gave it not out. The Indians response to this was simply disgraceful. They surrounded Trott and the umpire and Virat Kohli was particularly loud. It was very reminiscent of the antics of Ricky Ponting and Peter Siddle at the MCG in 2010. It was utterly unacceptable behaviour; Kohli should lose a fair bit of his match fee and Dhoni should not get off either. Having DRS would not necessarily prevent scenes like that one, the 2010/11 Ashes of course did have DRS and that was what sent Ponting into his rage, but it does completely undermine the BCCI’s point about respecting the umpires.

After this things started to get ugly. Ravichandran Ashwin made one of the worst Mankading threats to Trott one will see. I have no problem with Mnkading in principle; if the batsman is trying to steal a run the bowler should be able to stop him. But Trott was not trying to steal a run; he was actually following the law perfectly. He did not leave his ground until Ashwin had started his delivery stride. That is the law, as was subsequently pointed out to me the new playing conditions allow a Mankad up until the delivery swing, but Ashwin actually went through his entire delivery motion without releasing the ball before turning around to talk to have a few more words with Trott. The ball was long since dead by this point so it would have been an utterly futile endeavour either way. Ashwin gave an odd justification for this in the press conference; he said that India were upset that Trott had hit a mistake delivery from Jadeja for four earlier in the day. But this holds little to no water; Trott had hit his four a full session, 34 overs, before the threatened Mankad and at the time even the Indians were chuckling! If they were upset about it then they had an odd way of showing it.

One gets the impression that India were letting their frustrations show as the series started to get away from them. They are very close to losing a series on home soil for the first time since 2004 and they are justifiably upset about this. But they have only themselves to blame for their predicament and lashing out at the umpires and opposition is not at all acceptable.

Nagpur Test preview

Of the two teams who will contend the Nagpur Test at this time tomorrow, one will be a lot happier than the other. England go into the Test on the back of two comfortable wins which retained the Pataudi Trophy. They need only a draw to secure the series, but a result seems a lot more likely. There is a lot less information on the pitch than there was before the Calcutta Test, but given how much of the information on the Calcutta Test was inaccurate that may be a good thing. Most likely it will be a result wicket with India needing to win to level the series, but it might be closer to the sort of result wicket we saw in Calcutta than Mumbai.

The type of wicket has not mattered much in the first three Tests, however. In all three cases one team has comprehensively outplayed the other. After the batting collapse to which we had become accustomed in Ahmedabad, England have looked much the better side and it has forced India into a pair of changes for the last Test. Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan have both been dropped and been replaced by Ravindra Jadeja and Parvinder Awana respectively. It is hard to blame India for deciding to ring the changes after two below par performances on the trot, but their problems go a lot deeper than those two players. Jadeja looks like a step up from Singh, if nothing else his recent triple centuries show that he does have the wherewithal to occupy the crease, something that has been conspicuous by its absence from a lot of the Indian middle order. Awana has also had a good domestic season, but he actually played against England once already. He was part of the India A side who England faced at the start of the tour and took 0-60 off twelve overs, the same figures that got Stuart Broad dropped for the Calcutta Test.

I expect India will have only those two changes to the XI that played in Calcutta, but there have been demands for many more and there is still the chance that Ravichandran Ashwin will miss out now that Piyush Chawla has been added to the squad. Despite being India’s lone resistance with the bat in the last Test, he is primarily a bowler and had a terrible match, and indeed series, with the ball. With India needing to win the Test and therefore needing to take wickets I would suggest that they drop him except for the fact that Chawla does not like being any sort of improvement; he has a first class average this year of almost fifty.

England, by contrast, can justifiably select the same XI as they did in Calcutta. I still want a fifth bowler and once again there were periods of the last Test when four bowlers simply did not look like enough, but that is very unlikely to happen and in any case the XI who played in Calcutta did an excellent job. England will not have been happy to lose three quick wickets in the second innings, but it did at least give Ian Bell some time at the crease and he made the most of it. He looked utterly fluent in steadying the ship and guiding England to victory. Despite some suggestions after the first innings, there should be no suggestion of dropping him.

India could certainly come back to level the series in Nagpur. They have failed to make the most of winning the toss twice in a row, but if they win the toss again and do make the most of it for once then England will be in some trouble. England are probably favourites; those are both big ‘ifs’, of course, and I don’t think England will look even at a changed Indian XI with a lot of fear. We also don’t yet know whether India will even be up for the fight. And if England win the toss and bat sensibly again then India are all but out of the series. But England must maintain their intensity in the way they did at Sydney during the last Ashes. Now is not the time to let things slip.

Calcutta, day four: India 239-9

Today was a day of brilliance and frustration in almost equal measure for England. The morning was the worst session England had since the first day at Ahmedabad and if one had told England at lunch that they would be have India nine down at stumps they would be delighted. But the first eight of those wickets fell in an extraordinary three hours after lunch.

The afternoon session was the one that took India utterly out of the match as they lost quick wickets and then appeared to capitulate. It was such a dramatic collapse that several interesting points got a bit lost at the time, but the one that very much did not was an incident in the innings of Gautam Gambhir. He prodded forward to Graeme Swann and appeared to have edged the ball to slip where Trott took an athletic catch low down. But the umpire waited and then went upstairs to check if it had carried. It clearly had and as that is the only thing for which the umpire can go upstairs it looked like it was going to be out. But the replay showed that Gambhir had not actually hit the ball and under the regulations the third umpire is allowed to give not out because of that. This is clearly a good thing; it would have been an utter farce if the replays had clearly shown that the batsman was not out, but he was given out because the umpire was not allowed to say so. But it is hardly less of a farce as it is because effectively Gambhir was saved by a having DRS for that one ball. There have been several howlers in the series with regard to the batsmen either hitting what the umpire thought they hadn’t or not hitting what the umpire thought they had. Why on earth then were they not allowed to go to the third umpire? If the BCCI accept that this back door use of technology is reliably why can they not use the same technology without having to pretend to check a catch?

The reprieve for Gambhir hardly mattered though. Even before that incident he had taken to wafting his bat at balls well outside off stump trying to dab them to point and missing. It came as absolutely no shock therefore when he edged one such ball behind trying to do the same thing a couple of overs later. It was another failure to convert a start and he also had run out Cheteshwar Pujara the ball before the catch incident which may start to invite some unwelcome comparisons to Shane Watson. But the rest of the Indian top order had fared either no better or even worse. Virender Sehwag played a loose drive the first ball after lunch and was bowled by an admitted beauty from Swann. Sachin Tendulkar pushed forward to a ball outside off for only five. Only Yuvraj Singh can say that he got a good ball, but he did not look like hanging about anyway. India’s captain seemed to embody their spirit by limply hanging his bat outside off to only the third delivery he faced. It was an absolutely terrible shot by any batsman, coming from the captain at such a point was absolutely appalling. The only way MS Dhoni could have more obviously surrendered is if he had actually taken a white flag out to the crease with him. And the sad part was that it felt more inevitable than anything else.

But luckily for Dhoni and India the message never got to Ravichandran Ashwin. He played a fantastic innings in Mumbai that appeared to help save India in the first innings, though it proved to be in vain, and this was very similar. He actually fought. HIs entire top and middle order had given up and mentally gone to Nagpur, but Ashwin almost single-handedly made sure they would be going there with some shred of dignity intact. It made for an incredibly frustrating last session for England who can justifiably think that they should have had a day off tomorrow. But as well as Ashwin played, England are partly culpable for their inability to finish the innings off. They seemed to relax a bit too much when the eighth wicket went down and just like they did in the first innings started to put too much store in keeping Ishant Sharma on strike. The result was a pair of grinding partnerships that have avoided an innings defeat for India and made sure the teams will come back tomorrow. Neither of those looked even possible half an hour after tea.

It is a moral victory for India, but it will still take a miracle for it to be anything but that. England need one wicket with the new ball tomorrow morning and then will have to knock off about fifty runs. Like in Mumbai, they will not be troubled and will go 2-1 up in the series. Perhaps on the way to Nagpur Ashwin can explain the concept of resistance to his colleagues.

Ahmedabad day four: England 340-5

There will be a fifth day of the first India v England Test. At the start of today’s play I did not think there would be and halfway through today’s play I though there definitely not be a fifth day. But Alastair Cook has played an innings of legend. That’s not an exaggeration; he is 168 not out over night having spent a mammoth eight hours and 22 minutes at the crease so far and having been on the field for all of the first two days. During the course of today he became the first player to ever score a hundred in his first three innings as Test captain and also passed the English record for longest innings following-on. There is no way to overemphasise his innings; he has kept England alive in this Test when they really have no right to be. He can now also draw serious comparison to Mike Atherton and the epic ten hour 43 minute defiance at Johannesburg; there is still another two and some hours to go to match that and India will be a lot fresher in the morning, but the scale is comparable and we will have to see how close he can come.

But an Atherton-esque innings needs a Jack Russell to partner him and Matt Prior has filled that role. Prior came in with England 199-5 after Ian Bell and Samit Patel had gone to successive deliveries and took very little time to get settled in. The only time he really looked nervy was when tea was approaching and he suddenly started trying to sweep every single delivery. But before and after that he showed not only good composure, but a good mix of attack and defence. He kept the scoreboard ticking over without looking troubled whilst his captain was immovable at the other end. Like with Cook and Compton last night it was exactly how England should play and by the time stumps came India were clearly tired and even a bit desperate.

It was a great fightback by England, but of course to fight back they have to have been behind and the first half of the day was, whilst not nearly as bad as the first half of any of the other days, still bad enough that they were 199-5. Nick Compton, Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell all got out to good deliveries and all had actually looked okay before then. Bell in particular had been timing the ball beautifully and was much more relaxed than in his brief first stay at the crease. There has been, and will still be, some suggestion that Bell should not get his place in the XI back for the third Test and whilst part of that depends on how Jonny Bairstow (presumably) does as his replacement I think it is a bit harsh on the whole.

To drop Bell now would be tantamount to dropping him for one absolutely terrible decision and if that was England’s philosophy then there would have been no need to reintegrate Kevin Pietersen as he would have been out of the side long ago. Pietersen provided a reminder of that today as well as he tried to sweep a ball of Pragyan Ojha from outside off. He missed and was bowled for only two. It was the second time that Pietersen had got out to Ojha in the Test and the second time he did so to a terrible shot. As much as he swears that he has no problems against left-arm spin, the fact that he so often gets out playing stupid shots to them suggests otherwise.

Poor Samit Patel though was neither out to a good ball (though it wasn’t a bad one) or a stupid shot; he was given out lbw to a ball that he had inside edged onto his pad. It was the second poor decision to go against Patel in this Test and it means that he will look like he fared a lot worse than he did. It is also another example of the importance of DRS. It’s all well and good to say that decisions ‘even out’ (though they certainly don’t even out reliably enough for that to be a good argument against the DRS), but they don’t even out for individual batsmen. What will be recorded for posterity is that Patel scored ten and nought; the fact that he was not out both times will be largely forgot and the fact that Cook and Prior were both reprieved will be of no help to him when arguing about his place in the side.

India are still strong favourites to win. England are only five down, but India will be refreshed tomorrow and England are effectively still 10-5 in the second innings. If the first wicket goes down appreciably before lunch then it will be a long road for England. They won’t write this Test off, of course, but assuming they do go 0-1 down they can still take a tremendous amount of confidence from this second innings. The England from last winter batted in the first innings, but so far in the second England have been utterly competent. Cook and Prior may have saved them, but it is all the top order together who have kept Ravi Ashwin to figures of 0-104 and the spinners as a group to 2-232 from 91 overs. Those sort of figures would have been unfathomable in the UAE. On a fourth day pitch England were never going to go out and score 300-3, but what they have done, Pietersen aside, is bat competently and correctly and they have done as much as any other side would reasonably expect. They can go into the Mumbai Test knowing that they can play spin.

And they also achieved a bit of a bragging rights milestone when they went to 301-5: it was more than India ever made in England in 2011. India’s top score in that series was 300 all out in the first innings at the Oval. England can now truthfully say that they played spin in India better than India played seam in England. I don’t think anyone would have guessed that at teatime yesterday!

India win by an innings and 115 runs

India put their most recent losing run behind them in fairly emphatic style inside four days against the Kiwis. I didn’t get to see all of the Test due to the time zone, but there were a few aspects that stood out:

– New Zealand were shoddy. This is something I’ve seen from them quite a few times, of course, and I think it is probably the biggest thing keeping them from becoming an average side. They have very little application with the bat and although their bowling was good their fielding was not. They have the talent, I think, to get better results than they do. But they just don’t seem to put in the work to get there.

– Ravichandran Ashwin is a decent bowler. It’s not wise to read too much into a result on an Indian wicket against a team seemingly determined to get a day off and his failures in Australia cannot be forgot. But one can only beat the opposition that is presented and Ashwin got very good turn and bounce. He still has a lot to prove, but it is a red flag for England in three months.

– Speaking of England, they may be slightly encouraged by the amount of swing and seam the New Zealand bowlers got. Boult and Bracewell in particular were getting a lot of movement in the air on the first morning and given the similarity of England’s attack it will be very interesting to see if the conditions in November are still conductive to swing.

– Virender Sehwag is an idiot. We knew that already, of course, but it goes to a new level when one does not even manage to bully on a flat track. He made a decent 47 and off of only 41 balls, but offered two clear chances and a few edges through the slips in that time. He didn’t take the hint though and got out trying to cut a ball that was too close to his body. He then went off rehearsing the shot, seemingly under the impression that it was the execution which had let him down as opposed to the shot selection. There is almost no other way to describe it apart from ‘stupid’.

– The DRS must be made universal. For all the arguments over the influence the DRS has had over umpires and whether it is correctly applied to close decisions, there is little doubt that it has achieved it’s stated goal of getting rid of the howler. At least when it is used. It was not used in this Test, of course, because the BCCI don’t like it. And so, after a year of discussing marginal cases and whether it was a good thing with front foot lbws we got to see the return of the howler. New Zealand were hit the worst by it, with two absolutely terrible decisions going against them. Guptill and McCullum both were given out lbw, the first to a ball that was comfortably spinning away and going over the stumps and the second to a massive inside edge. There is little chance that the result was affected, but it is still quite troubling and not the least because of what it says about the elite panel of Umpires. They do, of course, get more decisions right than they do wrong as well as getting more decisions right than most people would. But that is not really good enough at Test level and especially without some sort of backup in place. Right now, the only two really trustworthy umpires are Aleem Dar and Simon Taufel and unfortunately even they make errors and in any case they cannot be at every Test. Which means that some sort of review system is an absolute necessity.

The final Test is on Friday in Bangalore and it is hard to see any other result than another Indian victory. Even with quite a bit of rain, New Zealand did not come close to saving this Test and collapsed from 92-1 at lunch on day four to 164 all out before stumps. They have a huge amount of work to do and have the disadvantage of only playing a two Test series so they just don’t have the time. Though even if there were four Tests, I expect they would struggle.

Compare and contrast

I’ve complied some quotes following England’s loss in Abu Dhabi and India’s loss in Adelaide. See if you can spot a pattern.

‘We also won 2-0 in India.’ – Virender Sehwag

‘It is a struggle to think of a loss that has hurt more than this.’ – Andrew Strauss

‘We make our own plans, and it didn’t click. It happens with every team, with every player. The time is not good for Indian team, for individuals, so maybe that’s why we are not scoring runs.’ – Sehwag

‘[…] we weren’t good enough to deal with their spinners; we weren’t skilful enough and we didn’t deal with the pressure well enough. We have to face up to those facts.’ – Andy Flower

‘”Embarrassed” is not the right word. Nobody has done any one thing faulty. We have not fooled or cheated anyone. “We are extremely disappointed” is probably the words I can use.’ – Ravichandran Ashwin

‘As a batting unit we have to hold our hands up and say we haven’t done well enough. We have been rolled over three times in four innings this series. There are no excuses – we need to be better than that.’ – Strauss

‘I think there are people that appreciate that once again things – dew, rain, everything – didn’t go our way. I hope that doesn’t happen here. I am sure it will not happen over a period of one month.’ – Ashwin

‘[…] these issues will not disappear and we’ve got to face them with skill and a bit of courage. We’ve got to be a lot better than we were yesterday. Each individual will have to work very hard in working out his method of scoring.’ – Flower

‘Everything is going to be fresh. It is going to be a different ball game. The colour of the ball also changes. Hopefully we could change our luck as well.’ – Ashwin

England have lost a quarter of the Tests away from home that India have lost. I Would suggest that they are thus four times as motivated to win, but I think that may be an understatement.