India vs. England - 1st Test (Lords) Review

I am writing this blog again after almost 4 months. What a pathetic and insipid performance by our so-called Heroes. Let me go over the performance on a day to day basis and analyze at the end.

A good start paves way for a good result. Unfortunately on the first day, we bowled poorly led by Zaheer Khan, who for reasons unknown fails on big stage. By the time we struck back at the end of the day with 2 wickets, England had piled up 250+ runs. We did extremely well to regain lost ground on the second morning, by squeezing them out for less than 300. At one stage they were looking at a total of probably 450+. Zaheer came back well and so did Sreesanth to peg them back. If they had only shown virtues on the first morning things could have been better for us. Add to that a simple dolly catch dropped by Dinesh Karthik off Andre Strauss. A 10 yr old kid would have probably picked it up cleanly.

Time for our batters to do something ? Especially the big three ? Err....big four ?? Well remove all the illusions and get real mate. We had a poor start. Dravid got a peach off a ball from Anderson. It was too good even for Dravid - who in my opinion is the only person with a technique to master these swinging conditions. Tendulkar appeared to be batting decently before he missed the line and became LBW (yet again !!!) to Anderson. How many times have we seen him miss the flick to the leg side and caught plumb in front of the wicket. Clearly, he has forgotten to play straight down the ground, which reduces the chances of LBW. Or....can one even say he has forgotten to play properly at all ?

Jaffer played solid for 50 but he was too slow and that saw him get out towards end of the day. Ganguly and Laxman scratched around. Dhoni went back for nothing. Tail didnt wag and we lost 6 wickets in just under a session. That is poor, pathetic display by our so called Great Batting Line up. How many times have we seen this happen ? And still people claim we have a great batting line up. Unfortunately stats are also stacked against us, the moment we step out of India.

Then, Pietersen took the attack to our bowlers. He is undoubtedly my favorite player and he scored bulk of the team runs in the 2nd essay. He was very aggressive and stamped his authority yet again. India bowled well esp. RP Singh who got 5 wickets and made sure his name went to the honors board at Lords...truely a magnificient achievement. The supposedly bad bowling line up had taken 20 England wickets and removed them for scores less than 300 in both innings.

The onus was now on our much vaunted batting lineup to score 380 runs. The pitch in no way deteriorated and the ball did something only because of swing in the air and nothing really happened off the pitch. Couple with the fact that English bowling attack is very much not experienced, we should have made a good chase.

But our batting let us down once again. Dravid was unlucky to have got a rough decision with the ball striking him outside the line. Tendulkar oh boy, played poorly yet again. How the hell can he keep padding up to spinners esp. left armers. Off late he has been regularly out LBW or caught at slips/keeper - this definitely means "bad technique". Everyone is baffled how bad habits have creeped into his batting. Unless Sachin thinks over this and takes corrective measures quickly, his downward trend is going to go faster.

Ganguly and Laxman played decently. But we need innings of high quality and also in terms of runs from them. There is no consistency in our performances. Everybody expected Dhoni to struggle in these swinging conditions (he did...in the 1st innings) - but he was the one who guided us home and we managed to escape with a draw. He played a very uncharacteristic innings, curbed his natural attacking instincts, fought it out with his determination and played for time.

I feel we are missing the fast starts given by Sehwag. Infact he hasn't performed badly in the tests and he should have been included atleast for the tests alone. Our tail also looks longer and Irfan Pathan could have helped here. But sadly he is just supposedly recovering from his bowling form slump and we might need to wait a bit longer to see him back in the main team.

For the 2nd test, I am almost certain we might go with the same 11. Until our paper tiger batting line up fires, we might be 0-1 down going into the third test.......