India’s performance in the West Indies will be followed quite avidly by the England team’s strategy makers as they prepare plans to tackle the Indians when they tour England next month.
Today with the technology development, every single ball played anywhere in the world is available on a laptop and those players who want to be better informed about the opposition can spend their time looking at the footage for strengths and weaknesses of the players they will take on.
The gamesmanship has already begun with some English players taking India to task for their stand on the decision review system (DRS) but what happened in Barbados where Dhoni’s dismissal was referred to the third umpire and the wrong delivery was shown just augments India’s position that when technology is in human hands mistakes can happen. It was a genuine error alright, but it still shows that with the best of technology errors are possible. All that the BCCI has been insisting on is a foolproof technology and not being stubborn for stubbornness sake. Of course the Brit media is only too happy to slip the knife in and attribute an ulterior motive but then that is nothing new.
What was interesting was to read one of their recent successes – and remember success is relative – asking for pacy pitches to be made for the Test series. This man made his debut on the last Indian tour of England in 2007 where it looked as if he was trembling at the thought of bowling to the Indians and now that he has got a couple of ‘five fors’ in Tests he has found his voice. It really is amusing to find that the Indian batting is still looked at as being vulnerable to pace when it has shown over the years that it can battle any conditions. Sure they will, like all other teams, have a bad Test, but that doesn’t mean that stereotyping can be done. If India cannot play pace, what about the England team that caved in so miserably to the Australians on a pacy pitch at Perth last year. Fact is that nobody, just nobody, is comfortable against good sustained short bowling and not just the Indians. The Australians were rattled by the pace of Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel. The South Africans were uncomfortable against the Australian speedsters and England with their forward lunge are sitting ducks on a pitch that has carry and bounce.
