***Official*** India in England 2014

[OverratedSanity]

Yes Ishant has been a disappointment but India don't exactly have Garner, Holder and Croft as possible replacements waiting in the wings.
I mean I don't quite get this idea that Bhuvi is India's saviour in tests and far, far superior to Ishant - the guy averages 39 with the ball and we've seen in his career that once the ball stops swinging he's dead easy to play.
The cold, hard truth is Ishant is probably still one of India's better seamers and given he had a reasonable tour of NZ and that with Zaheer out, he's the only seamer with any test experience in England, it's really not the atrocious decision that people are making out.

What an utterly awful attitude that is. Bhuvi is an unproven bowler. He could in all probability be terrible. But Ishant is a proven failure. 5 years of consistent awfulness is enough to get dropped. This is sort of thinking is the reason why we aren't able to get rid of him and get a good attack. Just try the guys waiting in the wings out. If the ****s are worse, go back to Ishant if you're desperate but atleast try them out

 

[Contra]

The question shouldn't be whether the current Indian batting line up is better than the 2011 one, but whether they will put in a better performance across the test series, and it's a easy yes as far as I'm concerned. There is no way this batting line up will get shot out for scores of 300 and below across 8 innings.

Also did someone seriously just say what has Kohli done in test cricket? Hilarious..

 

[Teja.]

Bettered Tendulkar in every series they played together since debut? He's then gone on to do exceedingly well against SA and NZ away from home.

I'd take the Kohli of today over 2011 Sachin easily.

Obviously, you'd expect about three Indian bats to do better than Tendulkar did last time but it's such a massive hindsight call. Tendulkar averaged 82 and scored 1700 runs in 15 games between the beginning of 2010 to before the English series in tests, dominating SA with Steyn at his peak home and away in the process and was the second highest run scorer in the WC (missing highest by 18 runs) heading into the England series. Not only was the the the best batsman in the world but he was in the kind of form that few have ever been in.

It's highly simplistic/errpneous to say Kohli/Sharma/Pujara etc. in 2014 > Tendulkar in that 2011 line up unless you're having an extreme hindsight view which you should not because you're comparing the team going to England in both instances and not whether this team will do better than what the previous batting line-up did with knowledge of how they did, which is an important distinction,

 

[hendrix]

No. Nobody is equal to 2011 Dravid.

And I'm not having Kohli as being better than Tendulkar. What the **** has Kohli done in Test cricket?

Kohli>2011 Tendulkar. It's not even debatable. Runs against Australia in Australia, South Africa in South Africa, and NZ in NZ.

And Pujara is as good as 2011 Dravid. He's already scored centuries against every opposition he's faced, and has scored runs against SA in SA.

 

[hendrix]

Obviously, you'd expect about three Indian bats to do better than Tendulkar did last time but it's such a massive hindsight call.,

Why is it erroneous to make a hindsight call? we know more about the batsmen than we did at that point in time.

We'd expect Kohli, Pujara and Rahane to do better than Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman did on that tour.

Hindsight gives us the best view, not the erroneous one.

 

[91Jmay]

Kohli>2011 Tendulkar. It's not even debatable. Runs against Australia in Australia, South Africa in South Africa, and NZ in NZ.

And Pujara is as good as 2011 Dravid. He's already scored centuries against every opposition he's faced, and has scored runs against SA in SA.

I'd say the stats posted above show on the contrary its been pretty well debated. I will happily bet anyone that Pujara doesn't score >= Dravid's tally in 2011 in the upcoming series.

 

[Flem274*]

Tbf Kohli's average in NZ is boosted by that final innings final day of the series hundred where India had no chance of winning and NZ had a small chance. When the series was live he scored 4, 67, 38.

But I will be...not disappointed because I don't like him but I think he should be expected by Indians to have a reasonable tour of England. He scared the crap out of me when I watched him in South Africa. I thought NZ were going to be toast. If you can do well against the South African attack you're a bloody good player of fast bowling.

 

[hendrix]

OK, so we have here:

Foresight:
Dravid past it
Tendulkar and Laxman godly
Raina and Yuvraj crap.

Hindsight:
Dravid was godly
Tendulkar and Laxman were crap
Raina and Yuvraj were crap



Which one is more correct? Hindsight is more correct because that's what actually happened.

Now it's true that we don't know how good Pujara and Kohli and Rahane will actually be until the series is played, but we can make an educated guess. I'd have to guess that Pujara, Kohli and Rahane will be better than Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman were.

 

[Flem274*]

The biggest improvement is they've gotten rid of the really dead weight in the top six. Raina and Yuvraj were never going to do well in England. Rahane is a good player. Rohit scoring runs in England is more questionable but he's better than Raina and Yuvraj, faint praise as it is.

edit: forgot Dhawan. I have no idea how he scores runs in pace friendly conditions sometimes. He should be dead weight but did score down here. SA did to him what I expected.

his scores in SA and NZ: 13, 15, 29, 19 in SA and then 0, 115, 98, 2 in NZ. So starts in SA and then all or nothing in NZ.

 

[Spark]

OK, so we have here:

Foresight:
Dravid past it
Tendulkar and Laxman godly
Raina and Yuvraj crap.

Hindsight:
Dravid was godly
Tendulkar and Laxman were crap
Raina and Yuvraj were crap



Which one is more correct? Hindsight is more correct because that's what actually happened.

Now it's true that we don't know how good Pujara and Kohli and Rahane will actually be until the series is played, but we can make an educated guess. I'd have to guess that Pujara, Kohli and Rahane will be better than Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman were.

yeah this. no one is saying that Pujara+Kohli+Rohit+Rahane are better than their predecessors overall, just that they'll probably bat better in this tour.

 

[Teja.]

I realize that this is a BS pendantic debate and I'm partly at fault for starting it but my view is - "The current batting lineup touring England will likely perform better than 2011" is something I agree 100% with, however "The current batting lineup touring England is better than the last batting lineup touring England" is a statement by it's phraseology necessarily invoking ability pre-series, IMO, in which case it is not true.

It's the direst of debates anyway and I think we all agree that this batting lineup will almost certainly do better.

 

[Daemon]

I realize that this is a BS pendantic debate and I'm partly at fault for starting it but my view is - "The current batting lineup touring England will likely perform better than 2011" is something I agree 100% with, however "The current batting lineup touring England is better than the last batting lineup touring England" is a statement by it's phraseology necessarily invoking ability pre-series, IMO, in which case it is not true.

It's the direst of debates anyway and I think we all agree that this batting lineup will almost certainly do better.

I took the two as the same thing. Agree with hendrix here completely.

People are also forgetting how a couple of the bats decided they cbf for a while after winning the WC and skipped the tour to WI. It's possible that the long gap they took on which they presumably didn't do anything besides eat naan and butter chicken contributed to an extent to their downfall in England.

 

[GIMH]

People are also forgetting how a couple of the bats decided they cbf for a while after winning the WC and skipped the tour to WI.

Don't remember it ever being mentioned on CW

 

[Spark]

Don't remember it ever being mentioned on CW

Was tantamount to racism IIRC

 

[OverratedSanity]

More than our batting being better than last time I don't think there's a chance in hell that England will bowl as well as they did in 2011. That was Broad, Anderson, Bresnan all at their absolute peak and they were just phenomenal as a unit. Swann too, although less than the others.

Hindsight could change that of course, but I see it as being very unlikely that the current attack will be as good as that one. I was pretty optimistic about how we'd do in both South Africa and New Zealand, and although we didn't win a game, the signs were there. With a slightly better attack we'd have won both Joburg and the McCullum game. Now we do have a better attack, with Zaheer finally being shown the door, so I think we'll probably get atleast one win from somewhere. Predicted the same thing in both SA and NZ, hopefully this time it actually happens

 

[Daemon]

Don't remember it ever being mentioned on CW

don't get it

 

[Daemon]

More than our batting being better than last time I don't think there's a chance in hell that England will bowl as well as they did in 2011. That was Broad, Anderson, Bresnan all at their absolute peak and they were just phenomenal as a unit. Swann too, although less than the others.

Hindsight could change that of course, but I see it as being very unlikely that the current attack will be as good as that one. I was pretty optimistic about how we'd do in both South Africa and New Zealand, and although we didn't win a game, the signs were there. With a slightly better attack we'd have won both Joburg and the McCullum game. Now we do have a better attack, with Zaheer finally being shown the door, so I think we'll probably get atleast one win from somewhere. Predicted the same thing in both SA and NZ, hopefully this time it actually happens

Swann wasn't very effective in that series, he only had the one good match iirc.

Broad is still the same, if not better imo. Every chance he'll **** us up nice and proper. Anderson was disappointing in the away Ashes but he's a fine bowler and I don't think he was so incredibly good in the 2011 series that he can't do that well again. The rest of the attack will be dealt with easily and we'll take the series 3-1.

 

[hendrix]

More than our batting being better than last time I don't think there's a chance in hell that England will bowl as well as they did in 2011. That was Broad, Anderson, Bresnan all at their absolute peak and they were just phenomenal as a unit. Swann too, although less than the others.

Hindsight could change that of course, but I see it as being very unlikely that the current attack will be as good as that one. I was pretty optimistic about how we'd do in both South Africa and New Zealand, and although we didn't win a game, the signs were there. With a slightly better attack we'd have won both Joburg and the McCullum game. Now we do have a better attack, with Zaheer finally being shown the door, so I think we'll probably get atleast one win from somewhere. Predicted the same thing in both SA and NZ, hopefully this time it actually happens

England's attack is similar in quality to NZ's. But the Duke ball will swing for much longer than the Kookaburra.

I really hope they pick Bhuvi.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Swann wasn't very effective in that series, he only had the one good match iirc.

Broad is still the same, if not better imo. Every chance he'll **** us up nice and proper. Anderson was disappointing in the away Ashes but he's a fine bowler and I don't think he was so incredibly good in the 2011 series that he can't do that well again. The rest of the attack will be dealt with easily and we'll take the series 3-1.

Yeah Broad's the one that makes me worried. But I'm just saying that England's bowling in that series gets slightly overlooked because all the attention goes to how our batting failed collectively. There really wasn't any respite for our batsmen in any of the 4 matches. All of their bowlers did their job throughout the series. Broad tore us several new anuses and Anderson and Bresnan were damn good in pretty much every match. And finger spinners suck in general so one really good match per series is enough to make it a successful one.Can't see their whole attack coming to the party again this time. If they do, props to them

 

[Adders]

But I'm just saying that England's bowling in that series gets slightly overlooked because all the attention goes to how our batting failed collectively.

Some might say India were batting in third gear (maybe even second)