Posts Categorised: India

0Ruthless India Despatch Visitors

There was a point in the fourth test between India and Eng­land when the hosts were 30-odd runs behind their oppon­ents with only three wick­ets remaining.
It was a false dawn though and the mas­ter­ful Kohli and mag­ni­fi­cent Jay­ant Yadav (in only his third test) com­bined to take the match and with it any hopes of a series draw bey­ond the grasp of the visitors.
It served to under­line the gulf in exper­i­ence of con­di­tions on the sub-con­tin­ent. India rammed home their great­er know­ledge and under­stand­ing of how to play in such an arena. Through most of this series they have been the far bet­ter of the sides and a win was inev­it­able once a lead of 200 was sur­rendered. … Read Full Article

0Political Machinations Start Series With a Bang

Dur­ing a week in which the world saw a new Pres­id­ent elec­ted Com­mand­er-in-Chief in Amer­ica and Brit­ish Prime Min­ster Theresa May vis­ited India, it is per­haps apt the first test is com­pared to glob­al polit­ic­al machinations.
The say­ing goes that a week is a long time in polit­ics – and the say­ing would appear apt in crick­et too.
Only a few days ago many naysay­ers (myself included) were fear­ing the hosts could inflict a series white­wash on the vis­it­ors — espe­cially if the top order in par­tic­u­lar didn’t apply them­selves bet­ter.… Read Full Article

0The Ashes urnHome conditions — more important than ever?

So, Eng­land have com­pre­hens­ively wrapped up the Ashes with a game to spare. What a turn-around from 18 months ago where they were humi­li­ated by an aver­age Aus­trali­an side. With such huge swings out­come over the past 3 Ashes series the talk­ing heads have focussed on the con­di­tions play­ing a huge part. Are they right to?
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0Cook shows his mettle in a Ballanced performance

Well done Alistair Cook. OK, so he missed out on mak­ing a cen­tury, just, but to score 95 when the chips were really down took unbe­liev­able char­ac­ter. The only way he was going to silence the crit­ics was with some runs and hope­fully today’s score marks a per­man­ent return to form. The crowd’s reac­tion when he scored his half cen­tury and the ova­tion when he left the field when speaks volumes as to the sup­port for him amongst the crick­et watch­ing pub­lic. He’s a good man and didn’t deserve some of the diatribe fired his way.

Geof­frey Boy­cott has pre­dicted a draw already – and the Rose Bowl pitch looks like it will pro­duce anoth­er unin­spir­ing match where the bat rules supreme. How ridicu­lous. We need pitches that have some­thing on offer for both bats­men and bowl­ers, one that rewards top expo­nents of both dis­cip­lines. So what if the game is over in four days instead of five? Short term fin­an­cial think­ing risks under­min­ing the entire fab­ric of the game – and then where will the money come from?… Read Full Article

0India take the initiative into the third test

Two tests in, 1–0 to India. England’s poor sum­mer con­tin­ued apace today with a shock­ing (sorry, appalling) col­lapse after lunch today to hand the vis­it­ors the ini­ti­at­ive going for­ward into the rest of the series. On cur­rent evid­ence it would be hard to see past India win­ning the series.
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