What is the ideal schedule on an overseas cricket tour? In South Africa, India spent over a week acclimatising but preferring not to play a warm-up game before going into the Test series, which they lost 1-2. They won the last Test and went on to clinch the six-match ODI series 5-1 and the three-match T20 series 2-1. At the end of it all, it was said that the Test scheduling was bad, and that India should have started their Proteas tour with shorter formats as they had played ODIs and T20s against Sri Lanka before leaving.
This time around, they began their England tour with a ODI series in Ireland, then T20s before playing three ODIs. They won all matches before the ODIs in England. Even there they began by winning the first match but lost the three-match series in a sudden reversal.
Ahead of the five-Test series, India’s tour game against Essex was reduced to three days citing severe heat wave! When the match started, there were murmurs about the condition of the pitch and ground, though team director Ravi Shastri in his professional commentator’s style stated that his team would never complain about these issues. He said it with a caveat: “My philosophy is very simple — (in) your country, I don’t question. (In) my country, you don’t ask. I said (to grounds men) leave it, and don’t take anything off.”
These days no team complains. That’s why an overseas victory is considered far greater than winning at home. If you overcome odds and win it’s made out to be big as a loss is always on the cards in alien conditions. A win in the subcontinent is remarkable for any team just as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh winning a Test on green and bouncy pitches in England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand is huge.
Shastri reiterated that his team will offer no excuses and take pride in performing in all conditions. “We want to be the best travelling nation,” he thundered. Shastri is not one to concede an argument easily. He saw a virtue in curtailing the warm-up game as that would give the boys time to practice at the first Test venue in Birmingham. So, most of the boxes are ticked this time, except that the team will miss two key fast bowlers: Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah. Both would have been a handful for English batsmen.
Though the kind of warm-up games teams play these days do not provide the right indicators, the Indian batsmen had a good outing in the practice game. One should not read too much into the failure of Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, but Murali Vijay, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul and above all Dinesh Karthik, who top scored with 82, provided some solace on a pitch which did quite a bit.
The tour selection committee will have to pick five batsmen from the list even if you leave Karun Nair out from it. Vijay, Pujara and Rahane have been in England playing for India A while the seniors were busy with the shorter formats. Pujara’s form in particular is causing concern and he is under pressure.
The question is will the selectors play two spinners and three fast bowlers that include Hardik Pandya, or go for an extra batsman. If Kohli and Shastri are to be trusted, they will go in in with five batsmen plus Karthik and Pandya. England announced their squad on Thursday and it provides an insight into the conditions. They included leggie Adil Rashid on the strength of his showing in the ODIs and they may even be tempted to play him along with Moeen Ali. Thus the picking of the playing elevens of the two teams has become interesting.
(The writer is a veteran commentator and the views expressed are personal. He can be reached at sveturi@gmail.com)