England Cricket team should be disappointed for losing the Lords Test

England team are on a high right now. And why now, they have defeated a team much high in confidence and power in the Cricketing world - India. After a rather embarrassing defeat at the Lords, they came back bouncing with 2 back-to-back victories against a now hapless Indians. Hapless because of the following numbers - 205, 178, 152 and 161. Wish these were scores of an Indian batsman. But it turned out to be the total score of all 11 players combined in 4 innings! And now we are left hoping for Ishant Sharma to make a comeback from injury - ironically, the same guy who we ridiculed on social media months ago! Talk of life changing in a matter of few months.

In a 5 test series, England has taken a lead of 2-1 which means they will never lose the series now. Even a draw at "The Oval" will win it for them. Things have finally started looking good for them. Even their Cook has started mixing ingredients needed for success. Their batsmen are performing well, bowlers doing what they are supposed to do to Indian batsmen. Their fielders are catching almost everything that’s been thrown at them. Add to it the lack of application from Indian players and you have found the secret to success. If at all there's anything they rue, it should be the loss at Lords. 

All the criticism post Lords test is now behind them and is being transferred to MS Dhoni. The guy who had Midas touch for most part of his career as captain is now left with nothing but mere touches (read: punches) of defeat. We don’t need an expert to analyze the flaws in our team. Some batsmen don’t know how to apply themselves in alien conditions. Some who know aren’t consistent enough to perform throughout the series. They say, a good start is half the effort done. Our highest opening partnership this series has been 49 runs in the second innings of the first test. Even the experienced Gambhir didn’t make it count when given an opportunity. The ever-reliant Virat Kohli is woefully out of form. Rohit Sharma has his phases of purple patch and obviously this is not one of them. Pujara and Rahane are performing in bits-n-pieces and it’s not helping the team. When your team’s scores are paltry, you can’t expect the bowlers to save you. Even if you do, we don’t have the bowlers who can take 20 wickets in a test match.

India "down under" in England

Make no mistake about it, I am not criticizing this Indian team. This team is in a transitional phase. The big players we once had are being missed big time. But we need to go through this phase and experience defeat till we find some gem(s) within us. In my opinion, five places in the test team are still vacant. These are places belonging to Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, VVS and Kumble. From the current lot, there are players who have potential to occupy these slots – Rahane, Pujara, Kohli, R Sharma, Vijay and Ashwin. Conspicuous by their absence are Dhoni and Gambhir simply because we are talking about the future and not the present. Every team goes through this phase – even the once mighty West Indians and Australians experienced it. The challenge is how early we can move on and start winning (consistently) again. 

There’s still one more test to go at “The Oval”. The least we need to expect from this transitional team is to step up and fight. Result should not matter at this point. What matters is – if we can find someone in this team who can make it count and be the next God, if at all that’s possible?