About an year back, India's Test match team, spearheaded by its storied batting line up, arrived in England for a four Test series.
At stake was not merely another Test series but India's No.1 ranking in Test cricket. In a somewhat anti-climactic outcome, India lost the Test series 0-4 and, in doing so, surrendered the No.1 ranking to their hosts. Worse followed that eminently forgettable result as the exact same outcome in Australia hastened India's slide in the Test rankings. Soon the highs of the 2011 World Cup had become a distant memory, and the IPL failed to provide any real solace from those defeats. Subsequent lack of success at either the World T20 or the Champions League T20 only served to deepen the gloom.
By the end of 2011 England series, Indian fans have been waiting to return the result when England visited India next, and some measure of that was extracted with a one-sided 5-0 win in the ODI series when England came calling. However, the Test defeat continues to rankle and so the upcoming series is going to be closely watched in the hope that India can get back some of the bragging rights.
But, as management specialists will always say, change is the only constant and the amount of change in Indian cricket since the England and Australia series has been substantial and dramatic. India's strong batting line up has lost two of its three pillars, with the retirement of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, and while Sachin Tendulkar continues in the side, age appears to be catching up with the greatest batsman of the modern era.
Inevitably, as it is with Indian cricket, the transition from Dravid-Laxman to a newer generation has been characterised by a lack of clarity about who will fill their shoes. Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara remain the only names almost certain to retain their places. However, a combination of circumstances - Kohli was around when Dravid and Laxman were playing, so he is not really a replacement, India's quest for batsmen to fill the No.3 and No.7 slots remains an enigma, and the presence of a horde of contenders for these slots such as Rahane, Tiwary, Yuvraj, Raina, Badrinath, Irfan Pathan, Vijay has meant that India's batting, often the difference in all conditions, has an unsettled look about it. In addition, with the exception of Kohli and Pujara, India's batting is hardly looking in the best of health. Sehwag and Gambhir have struggled to provide India strong starts either home or away, and that has often put the rest of the batting on the back foot from the very beginning. Their decline has been most telling in the recent two away series where they average a paltry 13.60 for the first wicket, which has in turn helped the opposition bowling tighten the screws and, as a consequence, yielded a number of sub-par scores.
So, as India enters the England series there is nothing to suggest that the team has the ammunition required to return the 0-4 drubbing to the visitors. In addition, despite losing the top ranking to South Africa, the present England side is no pushover. Not only is this still the No.2 ranked team in Test cricket - hardly the worst ranking in the game - but it would be no exaggeration to contend that England have not fielded such a strong team to an India tour in recent times. And though it looked for a while that the Pietersen stand-off would restrict KP's role to trying to emulate Chris Gayle's rendition of the Gangnam Style dance number, saner counsel prevailed and England's most effective batsman is now back in the fold - even if the use of fancy terms like "reintegration" appears to be no more than a management-like form of eating humble pie. Pietersen's presence lends England's batting some much needed all-weather strength, something which they seemed so sorely lacking in defeats to Pakistan and Sri Lanka not so long ago, even with KP present.
So, while India appear to be well-armed with the right spin weapons - Ashwin and Ojha, with Yuvraj Singh probably solely in to do his pie-chucker number on Pietersen - they are still up against a challenging England team.
However, India's biggest mistake would be to focus too much on the England series alone. While there is no doubt that beating England would be good - from a cricketing perspective and for putting behind the results of the last series between the two teams - India's Test team has more long-term challenges which could be instrumental in determining the long term future of the Test team.
The England series quickly gives way to the visiting Australians, after which India travel to South Africa, their last good overseas result before the defeats in England and Australia.
In that context the England series is the first of several opportunities which the different contenders for vacant batting slots will get to prove their credentials. And the sooner the young batsmen fit into those roles, the better it will be for Indian cricket.
At the same time, though, this is also the time to embark on what promises to be no less challenging an exercise for Indian cricket, and one which has been pushed to the periphery after the retirements of Dravid and Laxman. The series in England and Australia also demonstrated how dangerously low India's stocks of quality bowling options are running. As the statistics show, in the two series India managed 20 wickets in a match just twice, and picked, on average, 8 wickets per innings. The number of big scores - both team and individual - that india conceded in both series was testimony to a bowling line up which lacked penetration.
Considering that India's most effective bowler in recent times, Zaheer Khan, is not too far away from retirement himself and, of the newer crop of bowlers, only Umesh Yadav has looked consistent home and away, it would seem that India's bowling challenges need more attention than the batting. The success of India's Test teams was built around a strong batting line up backed up by a bowling attack which had enough teeth to be competitive - the bowling was led by Anil Kumble and Zaheer Khan, well supported by the likes of Harbhajan Singh, RP Singh, Sreesanth, Irfan Pathan, Ishant Sharma, and provided enough firepower to give India a realistic shot at wins in home conditions and overseas. However, the recent lack of penetration and the struggle to stem the flow of runs or take wickets should cause much concern among those who run Indian cricket. Some alternatives are already available - R Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha, for instance, have been more than a handful for visiting sides, with both the West Indies and New Zealand teams struggling to play them and India will bank heavily on them if they have to win against England. The spin twins, though, have not had the same degree of success away, with Ashwin having a somewhat poorer Australia series than Umesh Yadav. The trio of them - Yadav, Ashwin and Ojha - appear to be the best placed to build upon the initial promise, though it would be risky to focus too much on just these bowlers without developing a full complement of bowlers to call upon as replacements should the need arise. At the same time the more established names - Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan Singh - will continue to have a role in leading the bowling and guiding the next generation, as long as their form and fitness allow them to command a place in the side, for reasons more valid than sentiment alone.
Cliched as it might sound, the fact is that Indian cricket is in the cusp of major change with a real possibility that the bowling and batting line ups an year from now looking very different from an year back - that change is not going to be easy and the results it will yield will not be early enough for many. But as Australia's experience shows, the transition from a strong team to a new one can often be difficult. It requires time and investment, with liberal doses of patience, all of which Indian cricket can afford. England is just the first of several challenges that the new order has to overcome.
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