Friday, July 25, 2014

3rd Test in England 2014

The pitches of England as we all know assist swing bowling, actually its the English conditions that assist swing bowling. It normally cloudy and cold in England this conditions always favour swing bowling. When India won the world cup in 1983 , Indian team had medium pacers like Roger Binny, Madan Lal, Mohinder Amarnath and Balvinder Singh Sandhu  in addition to the great Kapil Dev . Roger Binny was the highest wicket taker of that world cup with 18 wickets and Madan Lal took 17 wickets infact it was medium pace swing bowling of Mohinder Amarnath that was instrumental in India winning the final against the then mighty team of West Indies . Except for the great Kapil Dev India did not have any other flat out fast bowler. For a long time England had such pitches that favoured medium pace bowling . Sometime in early 2000s they made their pitches more bouncy and after that bowlers like Harmison and James Anderson who were flat out fast came to the fore. 

             The English conditions have highly favoured the swing bowling of Bhuvaneswar Kumar , the swing meter is showing that he is able to swing the new ball by as much as 40 cms and that's why we saw him getting 11 wickets in the ongoing series till now. Indian fast bowlers are bound to do well in English conditions since the have bowled and picked up wickets in difficult Indian conditions. You invariably see Indian fast /fast medium bowlers do wonderfully well in foreign condition especially in Australia, England and South Africa. Although in domestic Ranji matches the groundsmen are now instructed to keep some grass on the pitch. That's why we have so many fast-medium bowlers coming up.

Looking forward to the third test against England one expects India to go with the same pace trio of Bhuvaneswar Kumar, Ishant Sharma and Sami Ahmed. All three have bowled wonderfully well and it makes sense to go with the same successful pace battery. The fourth seamer can be Binny who is a batting allrounder and the seaming conditions of England will help him although he had very little bowling to do till now in this series. 

     The young Indian side which does not have too much experience of playing cricket in foreign conditions is doing pretty well in England. In 2011 far too many experienced Indian batsmen got out chasing balls outside the off stump. In the two test matches played its great to see Indian batsmen actually leave the balls outside off stump and have left or pulled the short ball well. In the second test it was the English batsmen who fell to the short ball tactics of Ishant Sharma.

        
           After watching that the pitch is offering very little assistance to the bowlers Dhoni asked Ishant to use his height and bowl short on the 5th day Lords wicket. In the first session England dominated India the second slip was standing too deep and because of that few catches did not carry to the second slip. But off the last ball of the session which was a short ball that Moeen Ali tried to sway away the ball just struck the bat and went to the close in fielder's hand. 

         The English batting was terrible in the post lunch session all Ishant did was bowl short and the English batsmen got out pulling the ball or just playing at it , all the balls could have been left. 


       Its also great to see the form of Murli Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane and lets hope that Virat Kohli gets some runs in the next test match begining tommorrow. 


      Lets hope we get to see another great test match.


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