Just listened to Atherton and he is spot on when he says England rather than hiding behind the pitch should play better and improve their skills. Spin is part of the game and the fact that England do not have one quality spinner with them is their fault. I remember India used to be the opposite. We used to produce better spinners than fast bowlers and hence used to fall short when touring aus or England or Nz but last 5 odd years we have worked on that and now we have fast bowlers who match our spinners. Maybe time has come for England to develop quality spinners themselves.
England in India 2021
- Thread starter TheGame
- Start date
I agree partially with Pietersen's view though that it was a risky strategy from India that could have backfired but I guess they knew that the English spinners just weren't good enough to rip through India . I always believe though that just like when England play India on seaming tracks if you overdo it then you make it a bit of a lottery which is better for the away team so I wouldn't mind a similar pitch going forward
The state of this wicket was probably unavoidable. Remember they're playing 2 back to back matches on the same pitch, so unless they were dropping in this wicket it was always going to be quite rough (i know its not the same wicket as the first match, but the players were running all over during that match and it was still getting baked out in the heat).
Yet India still lost in New Zealand & England on the last tour so not really that straight forward
It's not the same pitch. The first pitch was red soil, broke up very slowly. This one is black soil, spins from the start.
As someone else said, abandoning the toss would be a good idea to negate home advantage. Groundsmen would soon stop producing 'home pitches' if that happened. You'd still have the seam in England, the spin in Asia, the pace in Australia but it would be a bit more even.
Anyway, no complaints. India have played really well, we've given far too many runs away.
That was not my point but that England don't have quality spinners. We may lose the coming summer tour too but we have quality fast bowlers now. Prepare a seaming track and chances are we might beat you lot just like we did SA in Joburg in a pacey track but in these extremely turning tracks you don't have good spinner/s to beat us.
Yeah we had this conversation recently didn't we. The English game needs to be recalibrated to bring more spinners into the game. The fact that Bess has basically been taken out of county cricket and asked to learn his trade in the international game is a damming indictment.
Taunton gets criticised very heavily for being spin focused.
Cos shockingly the home team made conditions on their own terms, didn't hear the complaints about the pitch lasting for five days when three test matches lasted barely for four days when we last visited there.
India played a total of 200 overs in four innings combined in first two matches during our last series and the focus(rightly) was on technique and rather than pitch.
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Toss would have hardly made much difference. England just have been poor in this match. If they want to hide behind the pitch and chose not to work on their flaws, well that is their call. Rohit, rahane, pant showed how to bat and ashwin, axar showed how to ball.
Rightly so, at times.
Also as a comparison, over the last 10 years, test results for home teams:
England - Played 67, Won 39, Drawn 12, Lost 16
India - Played 45, Won 33, Drawn 7, Lost 4 (I can actually list these wins from memory!)
Australia - Played 53, Won 36, Drawn 9, Lost 8
South Africa - Played 48, Won 31, Drawn 4, Lost 13
New Zealand - Played 41, Won 25, Drawn 12, Lost 4
Draw out of that whatever you like.
England - Played 67, Won 39, Drawn 12, Lost 16
India - Played 45, Won 33, Drawn 7, Lost 4 (I can actually list these wins from memory!)
Australia - Played 53, Won 36, Drawn 9, Lost 8
South Africa - Played 48, Won 31, Drawn 4, Lost 13
New Zealand - Played 41, Won 25, Drawn 12, Lost 4
Draw out of that whatever you like.
India's home advantage is the biggest and New Zealand make too many flat pitches.
Yeah but we need to get more cricket played in the middle of the summer don't we. It's not about developing bunsens (although Leach, Bess, Swann and Panesar all developed at counties with turning pitches), its about putting more matches in June, July and August.
I reckon we either scrap the red-ball County system altogether or we split the red and white-ball squads up, so they can play at the same time.
Pretty much. Virdi has good numbers at the Oval which is not renowned for being a huge turner.
India beat England comprehensively last time on slow turning pitches simply because they are better than England. They followed the same last match and for some reason it didn't work . If India win the third test then they should probably prepare a flat track for the last test rather than something like the second test
I'm gutted I haven't been able to follow this series as much as I'd like with work. The first test was fantastic for England but as a few people predicted we've been brought down to earth in this one. I'm with Andrew Strauss on this pitch; it is by definition a poor pitch for Test cricket as it isn't set up to go five days, that being said England have been poor and India have been better, so there should be no complaints whatsoever from the England camp other than the general point for the game's sake.
India are better than England in Indian conditions yeah.
There's no bigger lie in cricket than seeing a pitch in New Zealand covered with grass.
The last time England played in New Zealand it was two of the absolute flattest pitches I've ever seen yeah .
Yeah, anyone who thinks this pitch is worse than those can do one.
I know the pitch has been criticised but I'm of the opinion that its the home side's prerogative to set the pitch how they see fit and for opposition teams to adapt to whatever is set providing it isn't dangerous whether that is a spinning, seaming or flat wicket. That is the challenge of playing away. Obviously as someone mentioned above, India are taking a gamble with the toss but they probably expect their spinners to out perform England's. England need to do alot better, players have shown if you can grit out the earlier overs, you can make it count with a softer ball. England just haven't been good enough with bat or ball in this test and that's why they are well behind in the game.
This third umpire..... 
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& a 
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, & a .Very well said.
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Spot on from swann.
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Been an exceptional amount of whining from English quarters today. All due respect to the posters in here, most of whom I like.
You won’t ever see this when sub continental teams tour. England’s batting was dreadful and that seems to be a non issue for these people.
To be fair, Simon Hughes has always been a whiney nob.
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Again England not being good enough and the pitch being bad can both be true . India have been by far the better team and deserve to win but it's also true that this wicket is slightly underprepared
Missed it today due to a whisky soaked zoom call. Fairly predictable scorecard, most in here forecasted it.
Not arsed on the pitch, all part of the fun. But you wouldn't want the next two to be over in 3 days spectacle wise.
That said maybe we just batted terribly.
Not arsed on the pitch, all part of the fun. But you wouldn't want the next two to be over in 3 days spectacle wise.
That said maybe we just batted terribly.
I agree. When the ball is going through the top of the wicket on day one it's a poorly-prepared Test wicket. However when India bowl how they bowled, Rohit and Rahane bat how they batted and England play how they played the result of the game is indisputable.
As an English fan I don’t really care too much about the pitch. The difference between day one and two wasn’t as big as the runs suggested, and India showed today that it’s possible anyway.
The only thing I’d suggest is that in England it’s as much to do with the conditions as it is preparing the pitch. We have to live with cloud cover for 90% of the year on the UK, we might as well get some benefit from it
I don’t think it had much to do with the toss, any England could have predicted that we were going to fall apart today, I said the same thing to my dad last night. The batting outside of Root and Stokes is really weak
The only thing I’d suggest is that in England it’s as much to do with the conditions as it is preparing the pitch. We have to live with cloud cover for 90% of the year on the UK, we might as well get some benefit from it
I don’t think it had much to do with the toss, any England could have predicted that we were going to fall apart today, I said the same thing to my dad last night. The batting outside of Root and Stokes is really weak
It's not just an England thing I think. There's been a tremendous amount of whinging from all quarters about pitches, umpires, balls (India weren't happy about this after the first test) and declarations, some of the criticism is warranted but it feels like coverage of the game is now so hard-wired to drama and the protection of self-interest that you end up feeling that the really good cricket, of which there's been a healthy amount of, gets glossed over.
If you make pitches that really suit the home team and then the home team wins easily, people will moan. The home advantage in test cricket is too much and it's one of the things almost every cricket fan moans about.
You're being precious if you take it personally.
You're being precious if you take it personally.
I doubt anyone is taking personally but it is irritating that in all this unnecessary whining about the pitch we forget about the classy innings by rohit or by wonderful bowling by Ash. Talk should be about rohit's innings and not on how crap the pitch.
Like many said we don't see the talk of pitch nonsense when our batsmen get bundled out in english condition, but all the talk is around how amazing Anderson is or how indian batsmen are home track bullies. I know one cannot control the whiners and moaners but this happens too much whenever England or Australia lose matches in India.
The reason we don't talk about the pitch when India lose in England is because it's not the pitch, it's the swing, which is nothing to do with the preparation of the pitch.
last time i remember so much talk about the pitch was this match. it got a poor rating from the match referee.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series...s-south-africa-3rd-test-332913/full-scorecard
1-0 down in a 3-match series at home, 1st match was a dead draw on a flat pitch, steyn and morkel had destroyed us in the 2nd match with slightly green pitch (also no Sachin). 3rd match gets a tailor-made minefield. SA won the toss, but india win.
the interesting thing that game is that while harbhajan and others including part-timers did tons of damage, so did morkel and steyn. bad pitch suited them too. it wasn't until the 3rd innings that it became necessary to bowl all-spin. was it very different this time around? their quicks got 7 wickets in the 2nd innings of the match, england's got 3 in the 1st. surely some of that has to do with the quality of the bowlers too?
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series...s-south-africa-3rd-test-332913/full-scorecard
1-0 down in a 3-match series at home, 1st match was a dead draw on a flat pitch, steyn and morkel had destroyed us in the 2nd match with slightly green pitch (also no Sachin). 3rd match gets a tailor-made minefield. SA won the toss, but india win.
the interesting thing that game is that while harbhajan and others including part-timers did tons of damage, so did morkel and steyn. bad pitch suited them too. it wasn't until the 3rd innings that it became necessary to bowl all-spin. was it very different this time around? their quicks got 7 wickets in the 2nd innings of the match, england's got 3 in the 1st. surely some of that has to do with the quality of the bowlers too?
The green tops are to do with the preparation though. Let us stop acting as if ecb has no control over pitches. I remember even in WC, after losing to SL, Bairstow and some ex English cricketers started moaning about the pitch and we started seeing batting friendly tracks. These things happen. Ultimately one has to tackle them and win matches.
Who is acting as if the ECB has no control over pitches?
The point is home advantage is available to every team and not just India. Just that we see the pitch nonsense talk more when England lose here and not other way around. Green tops are prepared when India tour England.