The first couple of matches of the India-England series might remind shrewd observers of elections in R Ashwin's home state of Tamil Nadu. The resemblance is striking. To people who have not been observing Tamil Nadu politics since the beginning of time, I'll explain. Not that I'm an expert but the general principle is fairly straightforward - the AIADMK wins by an absolute landslide margin and as soon as the government finishes it's 5-year term, the opposition party, the DMK, win by an equally mind-boggling majority. Curious onlookers find this behavior extremely perplexing. Future historians might point to the first two test matches of the ongoing India-England series in a similar way: a 9-wicket loss for the visiting team followed by an equally crushing 10-wicket victory. The jury is still out.
The first morning of the first test match was an interesting sight. Started off being a typical slow, low Indian wicket that Sehwag and co have practically grown up on. A fired up Anderson really put his back behind the first ball and it got up to Sehwag's knees. Barely. Anderson looked broken. Cook might have looked up to the dressing room to see if he could sneak Panesar on to the field and hope that no one would notice. The distance between Lords and the Sardar Patel ground in Ahmedabad is over 4500 miles. At that point, it must have seemed even farther. Finn might have been forgiven for uttering a slight prayer of thanks for his injury. If Freddie Flintoff was watching, he might have thought of his new career as a pugilist as less soul-crushing. I think you get the point by now.
Pujara reaffirmed his status as one of the best young players to have come out of India off late. Sure, his truer tests will come when he eventually tours on bouncier pitches but he's been up to whatever challenge he's faced thus far. His current average of 71.10 places him firmly between Tendulkar and Bradman (leaning slightly on the Tendulkar side of course, but let's not hold that against him). To quote a Ravi Shastri cliche, he definitely "puts a price tag on his wicket" and at least in the first test, the price was too high for the English attack. When Swann finally got him stumped in the first innings of the second test, his wicket was already worth about 380 runs at that point. He had to wait an eternity to break into the team despite scoring mountains of runs in domestic cricket. When you score a triple century and Ravindra Jadeja shows up and scores a triple on the same pitch, your triple does lose it's sheen a little bit. Most people would've been disheartened but not Pujara. He scored another triple, a few doubles along the way and big hundreds on his off days. Now that he's finally here, he'll make sure he makes it count. Here's hoping the other big scorer in domestic cricket, Ajinkya Rahane, gets his chance soon.
You can't write a piece of England in any form of cricket without mention of Pietersen. Whether he's acting clueless against spin to lose his middle stump and then goes one step further in the second innings to get bowled behind his legs to a left arm spinner when the ball barely pitches in line with leg stump, it is either extremely entertaining or mighty infuriating, depending on what side you are on. But after he scored a masterful 186 in the second test, almost toying with the attack on a more difficult pitch, you wondered if it was all part of his Grand Plan of luring the Indian spin attack into a false sense of complacency, getting them to play an extra spinner and then pulling off the ultimate hustle. And of course, there can be no mention of the England batting without mentioning their captain courageous Alistar Cook, who joins a long illustrious list of left-handed opening batsmen including the likes of Saeed Anwar, Hayden, Jayasuriya and Gary Kirsten who have been near impossible to dislodge and like villains in a movie who do their job splendidly, you end up hating them despite knowing that it isn't anything personal.
While Hayden and Sanath would be the kind of villains who would tie you to a rusty iron pillar and badger you with a blunt instrument to get information out of you, Cook is more in the Gary Kirsten mould of baddies. They believe in the long, elaborate forms of torture. Cook is the sort of Bond villain who wears an impeccable tuxedo and does not believe in crude violence. He is more likely to torture you by making you watch The Matrix Revolutions one hundred times in a row. He has been an utter nightmare to bowl to so far. He has managed to dead-bat his way through spin, pace, Harbhajan and anything else India have thrown at him. Honorable mention must also go to Matt Prior. For these two, I have developed a mixture of fear, loathing and eventually grudging respect. I do believe that India's spinners, especially Ashwin, should bowl a lot fuller at Cook and do away with the absolutely senseless strategy of bowling short and keeping a deep point. He has scored a couple of hundreds already - that's a hint that whatever the master plan is, it isn't working.
At the mention of spinners, it's heartening that Ojha has probably been the pick of the bowlers so far across both tests. Swann hasn't been far behind, but that was expected of him. Ojha would've been more threatening in the second test had here been more pressure from the other end - something that Ashwin failed to create. Messrs Dhoni and Fletcher really need to work out their plans else the series could slip away from them faster than you can say 'Mudhsuden Singh Panesar'. What can you say about that guy? That he took to the Wankhede pitch like a fish would take to water is an understatement. He took to it like a particularly showboating dolphin would take to a water-themed amusement park. The ball left his fingers at the perfect pace, had the perfect dip and bounce and spin and it left the so-called great players of spin clueless. After watching him bowl this well in a country where Shane Warne and Murali have been made to look ordinary, you wonder whether Monty was actually part of a lab experiment by England who have been working on a perfect weapon for the last 30 years with a view to unleashing him on an unsuspecting India in the Mumbai test. You may think I'm smoking something but YouTube his wickets from Wankhede and it won't sound like crazy talk anymore.
So where does this leave us for the rest of the series? Firstly, Dhoni needs to learn his lesson and stop hiding behind the pitch excuse every single time. The bottom line is this: regardless of what kind of pitch you play on, you need to bowl and bat well. Also, displaying any sort of competence with the bat and gloves by the Indian captain would be immensely helpful. England still look shaky against spin barring Cook, Prior and the Wankhede Pietersen (I believe the KP on show in the first test was a different person). If India get their tactics right and bowl the right lengths to England, they should still go ahead and win the series. Gambhir has shown promise in the second test and hopefully Pujara can carry his form through the remaining tests. Kohli is bound to produce at least one good innings, but Yuvraj still leaves me unconvinced. There is a giant Sachin Tendulkar sized hole in the middle order at the moment that Sachin Tendulkar seems unable to fill. How he does in the next couple of matches might force him to evaluate his future.
I'm going to stick my neck out and predict an Indian series win - 3-1 is possible but 2-1 is more likely. However, something that India would do well to observe is the grit that England have shown in the first 2 tests. They have shown more fight than India showed in all 4 tests of the England series. Only Pujara has been able to grind out steady, if unspectacular, runs when the going has been tough. India only need to look at Cook and learn some lessons that will help them, not just in this series, but in many series to come.
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