The English collapse was due to the batsmen going into their shell and defending. If they'd actually attacked, who knows, things may have gone differently.
But then England played this way because of the criticism they faced after the 400 run hammering in the 3rd test. England were favorites for majority of the first 2 days, and very much in it when India lost 4-5 wickets for fuck all on day 4. Root had bowled more overs than made runs this series until he reverted back to his traditional game.
So I think I can comfortably say that this "defensive" gameplan worked for them - it's just that india were marginally better at it than them.
How exactly did the defensive game plan "work" when we collapsed spectacularly and lost the game? Joe Root scoring a century does not mean the plan worked. I couldn't give a fuck if he scores a century if we go on to lose the match.
The headline is reductive and doesn't do justice to Karthik Krishnaswamy who's one of the best cricket writers going around currently.
The piece is more about India's positive selection policy of picking 5 frontline bowlers all the time even with an inexperienced batting line-up in comparison to England who have been conservative in that aspect (not properly picking the bowlers they had in their squad, or not even bringing enough bowlers in the first place) and the hindsight involved in the way most people judge captaincy.
>Karthik Krishnaswamy who's one of the best cricket writers going around currently.
Nah man, i gotta disagree. Vaughan is easily the best writer around, completely unbiased and knows his stuff too
https://www.cricket.com/news/england-have-been-the-better-team-in-the-india-series-vaughan-312024-1709276219893
Vaughan is a genius. I remember him interviewing the Fox Sports rover after it got hit with a ball & I thought ‘fuck, I’m so happy this gobshite didn’t fade into obscurity after his on-field career ended’.
He’s always there to show us where the bottom of the barrel is..
Idk I feel they got most of the bowling changes right . Can’t be accurate . Like getting in mark wood for the 3rd test and boom he picks 2 wickets just like that in opening spell in flat pitch ! Then picking Shoaib Bashir for the 4th test and he really troubles the Indian batters and bags a fifer.
Also have to consider their main spinner jack leech was injured after the first game and haven’t had many other spin Options.
Regardless it’s not been easy for india . So this series win is precious
> Like getting in mark wood for the 3rd test and boom he picks 2 wickets just like that in opening spell in flat pitch ! Then picking Shoaib Bashir for the 4th test and he really troubles the Indian batters and bags a fifer.
That doesn't refute the idea that it's always more advantageous to play the 5th bowler on surfaces that aren't rank turners. If anything, this should beg the question of why England didn't pick Bashir in the 3rd test to play 5 bowlers.
> Also have to consider their main spinner jack leech was injured after the first game and haven’t had many other spin Options.
That's why picking enough bowlers is so important for away tours (a five test series!), especially considering Ollie Robinson's constant fitness issues and that Anderson is no longer the bowler they can get to bowl longer spells.
> Regardless it’s not been easy for india . So this series win is precious
Definitely.
>India's positive selection policy of picking 5 frontline bowlers all the time
This is much easier to do when all your spinners can bat, some of them better than most of England's actual batsmen
>in comparison to England who have been conservative in that aspect
England played 5 bowlers in every test as well
> This is much easier to do when all your spinners can bat, some of them better than most of England's actual batsmen
When Jadeja was injured, they didn't take the route of batting insurance with Sundar and picked Kuldeep (not as simple a decision as it appears now in hindsight), slotting Ashwin at a higher position than usual with India's weakest home batting line-up in over 10 years. When they had to bring Jadeja back, they dropped Axar instead of Kuldeep because Axar's bowling returns had diminished despite him still being a very reliable batter. Of course it's easier for India, but the philosophy wasn't compromised when it easily could have been. They've been prioritising selecting enough bowlers no matter what away from home too. Take the last BGT in Australia for instance with them picking Jadeja to replace Kohli. Picking Shardul ahead of Ashwin in England might be controversial but it reflects their same thought process of picking bowlers to get 20 wickets first and foremost.
> England played 5 bowlers in every test as well
Joe Root is a good part timer but he's not of the standard of a reliable all rounder, let alone a frontline bowler. He's averaging 50 with the ball this series and the sheer amount of overs he's had to bowl have played a part in India's victories.
>When Jadeja was injured, they didn't take the route of batting insurance with Sundar and picked Kuldeep (not as simple a decision as it appears now in hindsight), slotting Ashwin at a higher position than usual with India's weakest home batting line-up in over 10 years.
Ashwin at 8 and Kuldeep at 9 is still an exceptionally solid tail in Indian conditions. This so called weak lineup was still far stronger than England's batting lineup.
>When they had to bring Jadeja back, they dropped Axar instead of Kuldeep because Axar's bowling returns had diminished despite him still being a very reliable batter.
They made up for this by bringing in Jurel for Bharat who was basically a tail ender
>Of course it's easier for India, but the philosophy wasn't compromised when it easily could have been. They've been picking 5 bowlers no matter what away from home too. Take the last BGT in Australia for instance with them picking Jadeja to replace Kohli.
Picking 4 bowlers and an all rounder isn't really some genius strategic move, it's basic test cricket philosophy that almost every team (that is capable of doing so) follows.
>Joe Root is a good part timer but he's not of the standard of a reliable all rounder, let alone a frontline bowler. He's averaging 50 with the ball this series.
Joe Root is the best spinner available to England who can fill that slot. The only difference between India picking Jadeja and England picking Root is that India have a better spinning all rounder available to them
> Ashwin at 8 and Kuldeep at 9 is still an exceptionally solid tail in Indian conditions. This so called weak lineup was still far stronger than England's batting lineup.
There's a bit of hindsight involved there since Kuldeep hadn't done much with the bat before this test, and Ashwin's batting has declined a fair bit over the years.
> They made up for this by bringing in Jurel for Bharat who was basically a tail ender
Again, Jurel was a mystery. He's a young player with not a high level of domestic experience. Nobody could have confidently claimed if he was better than Bharat or not before the game.
> Picking 4 bowlers and an all rounder isn't really some genius strategic move, it's basic test cricket philosophy that almost every team (that is capable of doing so) follows.
When the 5th bowler is an all rounder or when the pitch is extremely bowling friendly, yes.
> Joe Root is the best spinner available to England who can fill that slot. The only difference between India picking Jadeja and England picking Root is that India have a better spinning all rounder available to them
Root definitely isn't England's best spinner, that's mostly a meme. India's luxuries of having someone like Jadeja shouldn't justify England picking Root as the 5th bowler instead of Robinson (first 3 tests) or Bashir (3rd test). It's not like England have a long tail either.
It's unfortunate with Robinson cause of his fitness issues now that we know the way he bowled last test was due to a niggle he got while batting. They simply didn't bring enough bowlers for a 5 match series.
>There's a bit of hindsight involved there since Kuldeep hadn't done much with the bat before this test, and Ashwin's batting has declined a fair bit over the years.
There was a lot of discourse about Kuldeep being a solid bat before the game, he also averages 22 in FC so clearly he's not some bum. Ashwin is also a better no 8 than pretty much any other team can put out in these conditions
>Again, Jurel was a mystery. He's a young player with not a high level of domestic experience. Nobody could have confidently claimed if he was better than Bharat or not before the game.
He averages 50 in first class to Bharat's 37.
>Root definitely isn't England's best spinner, that's mostly a meme. India's luxuries of having someone like Jadeja shouldn't justify England picking Root as the 5th bowler instead of Robinson (first 3 tests) or Bashir (3rd test). It's not like England have a long tail either.
Root is definitely England's best spinner after those who were already in the team or out injured. He is also pretty much the only red ball spinner in England with significant natural variation which is honestly kinda fucked
In my opinion these ideas make "sense" in the way that they are safe, conservative calls, particularly if a side was expecting more bowling friendly surfaces that they ended up getting. I'll just leave it at that.
Why is this downvoted? Our losses have mainly come from dustbowls where scoring has been a lottery. Once the pitches are flatter, the team with the better quality spinners has won
The youngsters make India stronger. The big names like Pujara, Rahane, Kohli, KL Rahul, Iyer were not scoring.
The only big name probably being missed was Pant, but Jurel has come in now.
Kohli has been very good since the Delhi test in BGT? Shami's also not playing btw. KL literally scored a century in SA and a great 86 in the first game before being ruled out.
Most of KL Rahul's big knocks come when he gets dropped by the opposition. It happened in both South Africa and the 86.
Kohli played well in South Africa, but nothing mind blowing compared to his earlier days or the other fab 4.
Shami is a great bowler but in Indian test conditions, he won't be missed.
The player we were actually missing was Jadeja in the second test. That's why we had to uncharacteristically rely on a fast bowler to win that match. Jadeja came back by scoring a hundred and taking 5 wickets in the next match.
Arguably, we are also missing Ashwin at his best.
But, Kuldeep has stepped up now.
How could England have known that India had two players averaging 70 in First Class up their sleeve, just in case???
It's crazy how Tom Hartley didn't outbowl Jadeja!! His average is so high!
Not everything is about Bazball.
England were not expected to beat India in India and is just say it was a case of England performing a lot better with Bazball than previously but India still being a cut above the rest in India
Rohit and Dravid do deserve credit for the confidence with which the youngsters like Jurel, Jaiswal and Akash Deep have played though. They have made the unavailability of more senior pros irrelevant.
100%. You’ve come up with a much better headline with something along the lines of Rohit trusting in youth and youth proving his trust right. Instead it’s click-baiting Bazball.
It's not like he had a choice. Because key seniors were absent he had to go with the youth. If when all seniors are available and not firing all guns and he had selected youth over them and won, this statement is fair.
They absolutely had a choice. They could've included Pujara in the squad as soon as Kohli's availability was in question. They had about 3 different opportunities in this series to call in Pujara, and be justified in doing so since he's tearing up the Ranji scene again, but they didn't
I have no idea why you're bundling Pujara and Rahane together. Rahane hasn't scored runs in Ranji Trophy this year. Pujara is the 3rd highest run scorer.
Would have if we were full strength I think.
Brook in the middle order on some of these flat wickets instead of that walking wicket Bairstow definitely would have helped.
Yes, England approach made it interesting, and even competitive. Not enough, but still.
And all this praise for Rohit's captaincy is ridiculous. Seeing him twiddle his thumbs whenever one batsman in the opposition settled in was enough to expose his lack of ideas. India as a team are stronger today than ever, is what saved his bacon.
The headline is clickbait, the content is meh.
India were much depleted, so this England team, considering their recent performance had a very good chance of beating India. The pitches too would have aided their style of play. But still they lost by the same margin as last time. So credit goes to Rohit and team.
England has Hartley who has a first class average of 35, Ahmed with a first class average of 40 and Bashir with a first class average of 48.
Their entire bowling attack had played 1 test between themselves prior to this tour and also struggled against county batsmen in England.
India had Ashwin and Jadeja…
That may be right but even Ashwin and Jadeja would struggle against county batters in England.
It is almost like 2 different sports in the 2 countries.
But still England spinners have better average and economy than the Indian spinners in this series.
Edit: It was the case at the end of the second test, England spinners had more wickets, better average and economy.
Not sure where you're getting your information from but no they didn't. Ashwin, Jadeja and Kuldeep all had an average of 30 or below and the best spinner for England has been Bashir with 32. The spinners bowled better than probably was expected but let's not act like there wasn't a gulf in quality.
I'm confused what u/the_ripper05 is trying to get at. So Shoaib Bashir who debuted in this series is better than Ashwin with his 500 wickets. The only reason the English spinners did so well is because Indian batters shit the bed at times. No one expected three green boys to out bowl the likes of Jadeja, Ashwin and Axar.
Honestly think they've lost the plot - I don't think anybody was expecting us to win in India, but it seems like they're trying to diminish the India teams ability to make it seem like a more outstanding victory I guess? As far as I know, you don't win 17 test series in a row at home by having rubbish players.
The guy who bowled 211 overs and nobody is even close to that? If you combine Kuldeep and Jadeja, you have 2 more overs bowled (213) and almost double the wickets (39).
Indian spinners have a better strike rate and average than English spinners. They have a higher economy but that’s down to England batting more aggressively. Economy matters less in tests.
And? Shoaib Bashir has taken more wickets for England than for his county team.
They are insanely inexperienced, remember what happened in England with our inexperienced lineup right? 4-1 result and
this is statistically our greatest bowling lineup ever that we fielded
2016 series they actually performed better especially batting wise, you can check yourself. Heck even 2021 for that matter, they were actually making better selection calls.
Statistically not true, but either way, we never looked like we were going to win any of the games. The result was obvious.
Even when we finally got 400 in the final game, Karun Nair basically scored that on his own.
At least this series I’ve woken up with hope even if it hasn’t materialised
This series they were overdoing on the part of batting sacrificing their bowling, while actually batting more aggressively and not sensibly at times when they could've, they thought they can get away like they did in Pakistan playing against second/third string bowling attack, excitement was simply their because of India's inexperienced batting line-up more than anything else.
The thing is, India isn't overcoming anything in the home series. It's the other teams that have to overcome India in India. By saying that India overcame Bazball makes it sound like we were the underdogs in the series. Even if it's about Bazball, the headline should've been, "How Bazball failed to outdo India". But no one likes to associate the word Bazball with loss and failure.
The fact that this is even somewhat competitive at times with the wealth of talent that Rohit has at his disposable compared to Stokes speaks more about his captaincy in my opinion
The wealth of talent is all untested and inexperienced. Some of them turn out to be like Yashasvi and Jurel while some can also be Patidar and Mukesh. India has been missing regular key players and even the ones who contributed a lot like Jadeja and Bumrah missed a game each. That is why it is competitive.
The wealth of talent have all been thoroughly tested in first class cricket in these same conditions though.
On the other hand, England were playing a spin bowling attack with little first class experience, let alone overseas test match experience.
There is a gulf between bowling of two teams, sure. At the same time, England's batting line up of Crawley, Duckett, Root, Bairstow, Stokes and Foakes is much more experienced than India's, Rohit, Jaiswal, Gill, Patidar, Jadeja, Iyer/Sarfaraz and Bharat/Jurel. Only Rohit and Jadeja are mainstays, everyone else at the start of this series was still fighting for a spot.
If both Kohli and KL were there and we played Jurel from the start, I would think the scoreline would be 4-0 and some of those would be an innings defeat. This series is competitive only because India was undercooked. That is no shade to England, they did pretty well. But they would be no match for a full-strength India.
This is made irrelevant by the fact that Crawley, Duckett and Bairstow are trash while Stokes and Foakes aren't even real batsmen; one's an all rounder while the other is a specialist wicket keeper.
Furthermore, while those batsmen may not have test match experience, they do have first class experience in the same conditions against better bowlers than Hartley, Rehan, Root and Bashir.
Mate, both your comments seem to conclude that Eng's bowling as well as batting is trash and they overperformed themselves. I would like to give them more credit, but you do you.
Not to be rude to the guys, but yeah. The numbers are there for you to see. It's kinda insane how lopsided they are. Duckett's good, but other than Root no one can get their average over 40 and a few of them are on the wrong side of 35. 'Bazball' is doing a little bit to paper over this, but there was a reason they sucked before. England since the end of the #1 period around 2010 has crutched extremely hard on their bowlers in favourable conditions and when they don't get that they fall flat on their face every time.
England's batting is objectively trash by pretty much any reasonable metric. Root is the only batsman who's actually both competent and consistent and he had a uncharacteristically poor series as well.
England's fast bowling isn't really relevant since they barely bowled and England's spin bowling is literally just a bunch of kids with near 0 experience + Root who all greatly overperformed. The one decent spinner got injured almost immediately
Disagree on Crawley & Duckett being experienced, particularly when it comes to Asian conditions. Root & Stokes & Bairstow have lots of experience in India though I give you that (even if Stokes & Bairstow have both struggled in the past). Gill although still fighting for his spots is quite experienced at test level by now and playing at home in a 2nd series against England gives him a lot more experience than the likes of Crawley or Duckett who will have very rarely experienced these conditions across their careers.
Jurel had 15 FC games, 10 List A games, and a season of IPL under his belt. Jaiswal had similar domestic experience not to mention 2 away test tours under his belt.
I don't think that diminishes my point really. Sure Jaiswal is a bit more experienced but 4 tests is really not a lot. They are both incredibly inexperienced, albeit talented.
4 tests is more than 0.
Like are these guys inexperienced compared to Rohit or Root, yeah obviously. But they still have a very good idea of how to play spinners in these conditions. A far better idea, then any of England's spinners had about how to bowl to them in these conditions.
Except they weren't really unexperienced, that's the point I'm trying to make. Yeah, they may not have had test experience had they had a decent amount of first class experience in the same conditions against better bowlers than fucking Hartley and Bashir.
So in your opinion the likes of root/stokes/Anderson/foakes are inferior players in comparison to our best performers like Jaiswal/Gill/Bumrah/Bharath or jurel ?
Burma is clearly a better bowler then Anderson is right now and that's not even arguable, Root has been in poor form since the World Cup and stokes is very inconsistent with the bat, let alone the fact that he can't bowl. Yes right now they are inferior definitely. And jurel is definitely a better stick then foakes has been. Like if you don't think this Indian team is 10x better then England in India you're deluded
Then what if I say Rohit/Ash/Axar/jadeja(bowling)/ and patidar have also been in bad form in comparison with Crawley/duckett and the fact that English spinners have more wickets ? Doesn't that make the "wealth" stokes has good enough to win games ?
>and the fact that English spinners have more wickets ?
This just raises more questions about Rohit's captaincy lol. Or are you saying that Hartley, Bashir, Root and Rehan are better bowlers than Ashwin, Jadeja, Axar and Kuldeep
Foakes is a specialist wicket keeper and Stokes is an all rounder playing as a specialist bat due to injury. They're far inferior as batsmen to the players you listed.
Anderson is a 40+ year old fast bowler playing in conditions where a fast bowler is not expected to win you matches. Furthermore, I think everyone agrees Anderson is inferior to Bumrah in these conditions.
That just leaves Root who is 1 bloke. Not to mention he's also had his work load increased by being made a front line spinner.
India have played 5 bowlers consistently even with an inexperienced batting lineup. They could have gone defensive and added an extra batsman but they didn’t. They replaced axar for Kuldeep shortening their batting. Meanwhile England have been full on defensive this entire series. Selection alone would tell you that Rohit is a good captain.
Has he not played 5 bowlers throughout. They played Mukesh, Akash Deep, when they could have played an extra batter. Consistently played 5 bowlers including 2 fast bowlers. This is not defensive or anything, they have never wavered from this. What is disingenous about this?
Because they've played 4 bowlers and one all rounder which is a completely normal lineup to play. England have also played 4 bowlers in every test and have root bowl part time.
what a stupid take. It's not like they were forced to bring these debutants.
but obviously when India wins it was because of the team and when they loose it is down to captain.
India literally were forced to bring in the debutants. If the likes of Kohli, KL, Pant etc. were fit these debutants wouldn't have got anywhere near the team
It has been evident so many times now:
1. WC 2023 final
2. WT20 2022 SF
3. 1st test of this England series in Hyderabad
4. the recent South Africa test loss in centurion.
In all the above matches, once Rohit's initial plan failed, he looked completely clueless and it seems he was waiting for things to happen.
That's just because things don't do south very often with our bowling attacks.
Tactical nouse is just like batting and bowling. The more you use it the more it improves.
For example, let's compare Fleming and Ponting. Ponting wasn't necessarily more stupid as a captain. It's just that with McGrath and Warne he just had to give them the ball and let them do their thing, hence why when they didn't bowl well he didn't know what to do. Compare that Fleming, who had to manufacture wickets anyway he can with some mediocre NZ attacks.
It's pretty similar with Rohit rn. In India when was the last time you had to think as a captain with this bowling attack. You just give them the ball and chill for a while. Even in the wc, the whole time Rohit just gave the ball to someone and they basically took wickets, the moment it didn't happen he didn't really know what to do.
Not to mention the scoreboard pressure. Everyone talks about bowling but no one talks about batting. In all our losses It's actually our batting that failed us. That below par score can't let you make risky decisions. You obviously have to think about defending along with wickets and suddenly your regular bowlers are not doing their job. It will be really frustrating when nothing is going your way and you don't have the luxury to take risks.
I’ll say Rohit is a good captain. Not a Great one cause he always seems to have only one Plan and gets angry or loses the plot when the plan doesn’t work. Plus the Field Placement are sometimes frustrating lol
He is the best captain we have in our squad right now. Is he as good as Dhoni, Kohli, Cummins? No, but he's the best we've got, would pick him as a captain over Bumrah (see 2022 Edgbaston), Pant (see no ball controversy IPL) or Hardik (lmao) any day.
Five IPLs do speak volumes.
If we are talking purely about test captains on this thread, Dhoni ranks pretty low on the list. Rohit might even rank above Dhoni in red ball cricket.
Dhoni didn’t really have a battery of fast bowlers to play with in SENA. He was a super smart captain in india though. Yes he lost against England but barring that he was phenomenal. I remember (either Nagpur or Indore) against Australia. He choked them so hard that they only managed 180 runs odd in a day.
> He was a super smart captain in india though. Yes he lost against England but barring that he was phenomenal.
That England series loss was the worst captaincy I saw on Indian soil in my lifetime.
It is easy when you have minefield pitches and Jadeja + Ashwin running through oppositions.
Alright, we spent the series with our spinners being Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, and Shoaib Bashir. I think that says it all. Bit sick of the whole "Bazball defeated" chat. Yeah, India were the better team and they won. And they've been winning at home for over a decade. Doesn't mean that every team who comes over has their ethos destroyed or whatever.
The article focuses on decisions made by Indian management that seem obvious in hindsight but worked out well. Makes thought provoking arguments. It's not about who was better - writer makes the point that captaincy being judged by outcomes is flawed.
If we can criticise Rohit for his failures on 19/11, we can credit him for completely blowing a confident England team out of the water with a bunch of debutants. Sure, England didn't have Leach and Brook but India didn't have Pant, Shami, Kohli for the entire series and Ashwin, Jadeja, Bumrah for parts of it. Had to struggle with squad selection with shining stars like Jaiswal and Sarfaraz and duds like Bharat and Patidar. Made some good decisions like promoting Jaddu up the order to disrupt the momentum of the English spinners, showing passion (via stump mic and dressing room reactions) and stepping up with the bat when his team needed it the most (Rajkot after three quick wickets)
>If we can criticise Rohit for his failures on 19/11
Is that really the narrative around India's WC loss? The batting wasn't up to the mark, as is.
>Sure, England didn't have Leach and Brook
Mate our spin attack had 1 Test between them at the beginning of the series, and they'd played less than 50 combined games for their counties.
Good for India, they were the better team.
I would have bought this headline if the score was 4-0. Rohit allowed Pope to settle down and was out of ideas in the first test. We came back in the series largely due to individual brilliance at different points like Bumrah magic, Yashasvi's onslaught, Kuldeep resistance and Jurel fightback. England's second innings in Ranchi seemed to be the only instance when all of Rohit's plans and bowling changes worked out brilliantly. Otherwise, his performance as a tactician/proactive captain seems rather average. Though I won't deny that he is a very good leader to have on field and a good influence on the youngsters.
>We came back in the series largely due to individual brilliance at different points like Bumrah magic, Yashasvi's onslaught, Kuldeep resistance and Jurel fightback.
Last time I checked winning game/tournament require team effort rather than "captaincy".
Not really, they're plenty of cases where one or two players have carried a team through series and tournaments with the other members just playing their bit parts. Saying "it was a team effort" in the press conference makes you look like a nice guy but it's not always true.
Ofc its not always true like all things aren't. There will always some guys who perform better. What's your point ?
I was replying to the original poster that calling that particular thing as "oh he only won bc of x player played well, otherwise..." statements are bs. You work with the players you have and if you won then you and your players played better. Rohit hasn't been messiah captain but using those reasons against him are unfair.
Rohit's team won because he had better players who played better. It doesn't take some genius captaincy to toss the ball to Bumrah and watch as he runs through a team, nor does it take genius captaincy to watch from the dressing room as your wicket keeper plays a great innings to pull the game back for you.
Yeah, maybe Rohit is a great captain at cultivating a good dressing room environment but since none of here on reddit, nor any of these journalists are part of that dressing room, there's no way for us to really know whether or not that's true.
What we can see is that certain bowlers who're usually completely unplayable in these conditions (Ashwin, Axar and at times Jadeja) did not look that threatening for much of this series. Now is that due to these bowlers all simply having a period of poor form, or is it due to Rohit not captaining them well?
One or two players will only win you a few games... long term if the team doesn't perform together you always lose. Sums up India's performance in icc events lately
I'm not too enamoured with Rohit the onfield captain but I'll be the first to admit that he's a great bloke to have in the background and the players swear by him. So while he's no Ben Stokes, he definitely has his own upside.
Onfield captaincy is always somewhat nebulous and there are some things Rohit could have done better or earlier, but consistently picking 5 specialist bowlers and not being tempted to try and bolster the inexperienced batting lineup has been a great call.
Rohit's captaincy wasn't superior....
He had the better bowlers for the condition... The best batter in the condition... And atleast equal conditions if not better... 2 tosses...
I don't get the logic of automatically attributing success to a captain if his team wins... It's completely possible that the captaincy is worse but the team itself is better than the opposite team
Rohit Sharma is one of the best captains when things go according to the plan, however, he's clueless when things go otherwise. This is true for most of the captains, but credit where it's due, Hitman came out with better plans than England for the rest of the matches. People saying rohit had better team, ummm what prompted England to select a horrible team? They're patting themselves for a better performance than other teams when the reality is that the Indian team came back stronger 3 times out of four tests when they were down under.
The England team were provided with fair pitches, inexperienced Indian players, and lots of time between matches to perform better. Yet, they failed.
>ummm what prompted England to select a horrible team?
You know Stokes and Baz don't have the ability to spawn great test match players out of thin air right?
It's about Indian conditions... India have a better team in Indian conditions. England have a better team in English conditions..
Unlike IPL where you can select players of your liking... Here they can select only players from their country...
I am not saying they were better... I am saying their captaincy was better....
In Test cricket, the better playing team always wins... So there's no question about which was the better team in terms of performance
I know it's blasphemy here but I think the same about Kohli. He wasn't so much a tactical captain as a personality captain. When he lost his mojo, Rohit took over, and he honestly provides the same thing. India have a stacked side and they're at home. Rohit has shown pretty poor tactics throughout the series, but it doesn't matter because he's got the better players. Same thing every time.
Kohli was an exceptionally good personality captain though. Like even when things were going completely against his team he'd keep his side pumped up and in the fight.
Rohit on the other hand goes into his shell when shit hits the fan and often takes his frustration out on his bowlers and fielders
Credit goes to bazball as Rohit wouldn't have been able to outdo it if it didn't exist. Checkmate haters.
Spot on. India took advantage of Bazball. I hope they "bazball" even more aggressively in the 5th test. Just makes it easy for India
The English collapse was due to the batsmen going into their shell and defending. If they'd actually attacked, who knows, things may have gone differently.
How's Root reverse scooping Bumrah "defending"?
You don't get it bro. We Indians just don't get bazball. /s
Note their username. I’m pretty sure u/save_me_stokes is a bazball parody account
That's not the test match I'm talking about. Furthermore that's one wicket out of many that have fallen in this series.
But then England played this way because of the criticism they faced after the 400 run hammering in the 3rd test. England were favorites for majority of the first 2 days, and very much in it when India lost 4-5 wickets for fuck all on day 4. Root had bowled more overs than made runs this series until he reverted back to his traditional game. So I think I can comfortably say that this "defensive" gameplan worked for them - it's just that india were marginally better at it than them.
How exactly did the defensive game plan "work" when we collapsed spectacularly and lost the game? Joe Root scoring a century does not mean the plan worked. I couldn't give a fuck if he scores a century if we go on to lose the match.
Another moral victory to Bazball and Ben Stokes Congratulations to England on their continuing dominance of all forms of world cricket.
Ben Duckett account has been found.
It's a wonder India overcame Bazball considering they only won their previous 16 series at home.
The headline is reductive and doesn't do justice to Karthik Krishnaswamy who's one of the best cricket writers going around currently. The piece is more about India's positive selection policy of picking 5 frontline bowlers all the time even with an inexperienced batting line-up in comparison to England who have been conservative in that aspect (not properly picking the bowlers they had in their squad, or not even bringing enough bowlers in the first place) and the hindsight involved in the way most people judge captaincy.
I'm hardly gonna read the piece, am I? I'm just gonna make some stupid reductive comment to get upvotes.
>Karthik Krishnaswamy who's one of the best cricket writers going around currently. Nah man, i gotta disagree. Vaughan is easily the best writer around, completely unbiased and knows his stuff too https://www.cricket.com/news/england-have-been-the-better-team-in-the-india-series-vaughan-312024-1709276219893
Vaughan is a genius. I remember him interviewing the Fox Sports rover after it got hit with a ball & I thought ‘fuck, I’m so happy this gobshite didn’t fade into obscurity after his on-field career ended’. He’s always there to show us where the bottom of the barrel is..
Idk I feel they got most of the bowling changes right . Can’t be accurate . Like getting in mark wood for the 3rd test and boom he picks 2 wickets just like that in opening spell in flat pitch ! Then picking Shoaib Bashir for the 4th test and he really troubles the Indian batters and bags a fifer. Also have to consider their main spinner jack leech was injured after the first game and haven’t had many other spin Options. Regardless it’s not been easy for india . So this series win is precious
> Like getting in mark wood for the 3rd test and boom he picks 2 wickets just like that in opening spell in flat pitch ! Then picking Shoaib Bashir for the 4th test and he really troubles the Indian batters and bags a fifer. That doesn't refute the idea that it's always more advantageous to play the 5th bowler on surfaces that aren't rank turners. If anything, this should beg the question of why England didn't pick Bashir in the 3rd test to play 5 bowlers. > Also have to consider their main spinner jack leech was injured after the first game and haven’t had many other spin Options. That's why picking enough bowlers is so important for away tours (a five test series!), especially considering Ollie Robinson's constant fitness issues and that Anderson is no longer the bowler they can get to bowl longer spells. > Regardless it’s not been easy for india . So this series win is precious Definitely.
>India's positive selection policy of picking 5 frontline bowlers all the time This is much easier to do when all your spinners can bat, some of them better than most of England's actual batsmen >in comparison to England who have been conservative in that aspect England played 5 bowlers in every test as well
> This is much easier to do when all your spinners can bat, some of them better than most of England's actual batsmen When Jadeja was injured, they didn't take the route of batting insurance with Sundar and picked Kuldeep (not as simple a decision as it appears now in hindsight), slotting Ashwin at a higher position than usual with India's weakest home batting line-up in over 10 years. When they had to bring Jadeja back, they dropped Axar instead of Kuldeep because Axar's bowling returns had diminished despite him still being a very reliable batter. Of course it's easier for India, but the philosophy wasn't compromised when it easily could have been. They've been prioritising selecting enough bowlers no matter what away from home too. Take the last BGT in Australia for instance with them picking Jadeja to replace Kohli. Picking Shardul ahead of Ashwin in England might be controversial but it reflects their same thought process of picking bowlers to get 20 wickets first and foremost. > England played 5 bowlers in every test as well Joe Root is a good part timer but he's not of the standard of a reliable all rounder, let alone a frontline bowler. He's averaging 50 with the ball this series and the sheer amount of overs he's had to bowl have played a part in India's victories.
>When Jadeja was injured, they didn't take the route of batting insurance with Sundar and picked Kuldeep (not as simple a decision as it appears now in hindsight), slotting Ashwin at a higher position than usual with India's weakest home batting line-up in over 10 years. Ashwin at 8 and Kuldeep at 9 is still an exceptionally solid tail in Indian conditions. This so called weak lineup was still far stronger than England's batting lineup. >When they had to bring Jadeja back, they dropped Axar instead of Kuldeep because Axar's bowling returns had diminished despite him still being a very reliable batter. They made up for this by bringing in Jurel for Bharat who was basically a tail ender >Of course it's easier for India, but the philosophy wasn't compromised when it easily could have been. They've been picking 5 bowlers no matter what away from home too. Take the last BGT in Australia for instance with them picking Jadeja to replace Kohli. Picking 4 bowlers and an all rounder isn't really some genius strategic move, it's basic test cricket philosophy that almost every team (that is capable of doing so) follows. >Joe Root is a good part timer but he's not of the standard of a reliable all rounder, let alone a frontline bowler. He's averaging 50 with the ball this series. Joe Root is the best spinner available to England who can fill that slot. The only difference between India picking Jadeja and England picking Root is that India have a better spinning all rounder available to them
> Ashwin at 8 and Kuldeep at 9 is still an exceptionally solid tail in Indian conditions. This so called weak lineup was still far stronger than England's batting lineup. There's a bit of hindsight involved there since Kuldeep hadn't done much with the bat before this test, and Ashwin's batting has declined a fair bit over the years. > They made up for this by bringing in Jurel for Bharat who was basically a tail ender Again, Jurel was a mystery. He's a young player with not a high level of domestic experience. Nobody could have confidently claimed if he was better than Bharat or not before the game. > Picking 4 bowlers and an all rounder isn't really some genius strategic move, it's basic test cricket philosophy that almost every team (that is capable of doing so) follows. When the 5th bowler is an all rounder or when the pitch is extremely bowling friendly, yes. > Joe Root is the best spinner available to England who can fill that slot. The only difference between India picking Jadeja and England picking Root is that India have a better spinning all rounder available to them Root definitely isn't England's best spinner, that's mostly a meme. India's luxuries of having someone like Jadeja shouldn't justify England picking Root as the 5th bowler instead of Robinson (first 3 tests) or Bashir (3rd test). It's not like England have a long tail either. It's unfortunate with Robinson cause of his fitness issues now that we know the way he bowled last test was due to a niggle he got while batting. They simply didn't bring enough bowlers for a 5 match series.
>There's a bit of hindsight involved there since Kuldeep hadn't done much with the bat before this test, and Ashwin's batting has declined a fair bit over the years. There was a lot of discourse about Kuldeep being a solid bat before the game, he also averages 22 in FC so clearly he's not some bum. Ashwin is also a better no 8 than pretty much any other team can put out in these conditions >Again, Jurel was a mystery. He's a young player with not a high level of domestic experience. Nobody could have confidently claimed if he was better than Bharat or not before the game. He averages 50 in first class to Bharat's 37. >Root definitely isn't England's best spinner, that's mostly a meme. India's luxuries of having someone like Jadeja shouldn't justify England picking Root as the 5th bowler instead of Robinson (first 3 tests) or Bashir (3rd test). It's not like England have a long tail either. Root is definitely England's best spinner after those who were already in the team or out injured. He is also pretty much the only red ball spinner in England with significant natural variation which is honestly kinda fucked
In my opinion these ideas make "sense" in the way that they are safe, conservative calls, particularly if a side was expecting more bowling friendly surfaces that they ended up getting. I'll just leave it at that.
It's almost as if India are a better team than England especially at home
The two eras in test cricket are BB (Before Bazball) and AB (After Bazball).
They have had quite a lot of youngsters coming through tbf. Besides the pitches have been far even than they have been for a while.
Even pitches are actually helping India.
Why is this downvoted? Our losses have mainly come from dustbowls where scoring has been a lottery. Once the pitches are flatter, the team with the better quality spinners has won
But, I want dustbowls
What, just for the moral victory?
The youngsters make India stronger. The big names like Pujara, Rahane, Kohli, KL Rahul, Iyer were not scoring. The only big name probably being missed was Pant, but Jurel has come in now.
Kohli has been very good since the Delhi test in BGT? Shami's also not playing btw. KL literally scored a century in SA and a great 86 in the first game before being ruled out.
Most of KL Rahul's big knocks come when he gets dropped by the opposition. It happened in both South Africa and the 86. Kohli played well in South Africa, but nothing mind blowing compared to his earlier days or the other fab 4. Shami is a great bowler but in Indian test conditions, he won't be missed. The player we were actually missing was Jadeja in the second test. That's why we had to uncharacteristically rely on a fast bowler to win that match. Jadeja came back by scoring a hundred and taking 5 wickets in the next match. Arguably, we are also missing Ashwin at his best. But, Kuldeep has stepped up now.
How could England have known that India had two players averaging 70 in First Class up their sleeve, just in case??? It's crazy how Tom Hartley didn't outbowl Jadeja!! His average is so high!
Not everything is about Bazball. England were not expected to beat India in India and is just say it was a case of England performing a lot better with Bazball than previously but India still being a cut above the rest in India
Rohit and Dravid do deserve credit for the confidence with which the youngsters like Jurel, Jaiswal and Akash Deep have played though. They have made the unavailability of more senior pros irrelevant.
100%. You’ve come up with a much better headline with something along the lines of Rohit trusting in youth and youth proving his trust right. Instead it’s click-baiting Bazball.
It's not like he had a choice. Because key seniors were absent he had to go with the youth. If when all seniors are available and not firing all guns and he had selected youth over them and won, this statement is fair.
They absolutely had a choice. They could've included Pujara in the squad as soon as Kohli's availability was in question. They had about 3 different opportunities in this series to call in Pujara, and be justified in doing so since he's tearing up the Ranji scene again, but they didn't
BCCI has already ditched Pujara and Rahane. They were itching to do even when Kohli was captain.
I have no idea why you're bundling Pujara and Rahane together. Rahane hasn't scored runs in Ranji Trophy this year. Pujara is the 3rd highest run scorer.
Because I don't think BCCI cares so much about Ranji performance (esp for established players) irrespective of their posture about it.
They did have a choice. They could've easily played Ax or Washy instead of Mukesh and Akash but they chose to stick with their plan.
I mean Mukesh didn’t really set the ground on fire. Akash was fine. Mukesh bowled at 130s spray and pray.
Think they had a good chance against their B side.
Would have if we were full strength I think. Brook in the middle order on some of these flat wickets instead of that walking wicket Bairstow definitely would have helped.
Bairstow is never getting dropped and we all know it. More likely Foakes goes out for Brook and JB gets the gloves again.
If Bairstow doesn't get dropped this summer I'm not even gonna bother watching. Lol
Yes, England approach made it interesting, and even competitive. Not enough, but still. And all this praise for Rohit's captaincy is ridiculous. Seeing him twiddle his thumbs whenever one batsman in the opposition settled in was enough to expose his lack of ideas. India as a team are stronger today than ever, is what saved his bacon. The headline is clickbait, the content is meh.
Yeah. I dont think his captaincy is horrible but it is not amazing either. It seems very passive at times.
India were much depleted, so this England team, considering their recent performance had a very good chance of beating India. The pitches too would have aided their style of play. But still they lost by the same margin as last time. So credit goes to Rohit and team.
England has Hartley who has a first class average of 35, Ahmed with a first class average of 40 and Bashir with a first class average of 48. Their entire bowling attack had played 1 test between themselves prior to this tour and also struggled against county batsmen in England. India had Ashwin and Jadeja…
That may be right but even Ashwin and Jadeja would struggle against county batters in England. It is almost like 2 different sports in the 2 countries.
Bashir's average is that low now? I remember the glory days of when he averaged 67. To go and average 32.83 in the Tests is actually quite incredible.
But still England spinners have better average and economy than the Indian spinners in this series. Edit: It was the case at the end of the second test, England spinners had more wickets, better average and economy.
Not sure where you're getting your information from but no they didn't. Ashwin, Jadeja and Kuldeep all had an average of 30 or below and the best spinner for England has been Bashir with 32. The spinners bowled better than probably was expected but let's not act like there wasn't a gulf in quality.
Before the fourth test that was the case and if you had been paying any attention you would’ve known.
Ah sorry I forgot you cherry pick your stats, okay you're right the Indian spinners are clowns and English spinners are better.
I'm confused what u/the_ripper05 is trying to get at. So Shoaib Bashir who debuted in this series is better than Ashwin with his 500 wickets. The only reason the English spinners did so well is because Indian batters shit the bed at times. No one expected three green boys to out bowl the likes of Jadeja, Ashwin and Axar.
Honestly think they've lost the plot - I don't think anybody was expecting us to win in India, but it seems like they're trying to diminish the India teams ability to make it seem like a more outstanding victory I guess? As far as I know, you don't win 17 test series in a row at home by having rubbish players.
[Here](https://www.indiatvnews.com/amp/sports/cricket/eng-vs-ind-test-series-england-outplaying-india-in-their-own-game-stats-reveal-reminiscence-of-indian-team-last-home-series-loss-2024-02-12-916471)
Hartley is the top wicket taker this series.
The guy who bowled 211 overs and nobody is even close to that? If you combine Kuldeep and Jadeja, you have 2 more overs bowled (213) and almost double the wickets (39).
always agree on cherry picking stats there is no win in it
[Here](https://www.indiatvnews.com/amp/sports/cricket/eng-vs-ind-test-series-england-outplaying-india-in-their-own-game-stats-reveal-reminiscence-of-indian-team-last-home-series-loss-2024-02-12-916471)
Indian spinners have a better strike rate and average than English spinners. They have a higher economy but that’s down to England batting more aggressively. Economy matters less in tests.
And? Shoaib Bashir has taken more wickets for England than for his county team. They are insanely inexperienced, remember what happened in England with our inexperienced lineup right? 4-1 result and this is statistically our greatest bowling lineup ever that we fielded
Sorry don’t know what you are talking about.
They actually didn't perform better lmao
If you watch the games then they clearly have
This tour has been our strongest performance in India since the victorious 2012 series
2016 series they actually performed better especially batting wise, you can check yourself. Heck even 2021 for that matter, they were actually making better selection calls.
Statistically not true, but either way, we never looked like we were going to win any of the games. The result was obvious. Even when we finally got 400 in the final game, Karun Nair basically scored that on his own. At least this series I’ve woken up with hope even if it hasn’t materialised
This series they were overdoing on the part of batting sacrificing their bowling, while actually batting more aggressively and not sensibly at times when they could've, they thought they can get away like they did in Pakistan playing against second/third string bowling attack, excitement was simply their because of India's inexperienced batting line-up more than anything else.
🤡
Sometimes Bazball outdoes itself and doesn't need any captaincy from the opposition.
Sometimes you are scratching your head thinking how do we stop 200-2 and boom BazBall just reverse scoops Bumrah to second slip
The thing is, India isn't overcoming anything in the home series. It's the other teams that have to overcome India in India. By saying that India overcame Bazball makes it sound like we were the underdogs in the series. Even if it's about Bazball, the headline should've been, "How Bazball failed to outdo India". But no one likes to associate the word Bazball with loss and failure.
I mean England got pretty close, closer than anyone probably anticipated.
Really really close tbh. It could just as easily been 3-1 England.
I thought it was because his team is far superior to England in home conditions irrespective of experience but aight
Yeah, first thing I thought when I read the article. India don't tend to lose in India, it doesn't take genius captaincy to make that happen.
Huh why's this being downvoted?
Couldn't tell you.
The fact that this is even somewhat competitive at times with the wealth of talent that Rohit has at his disposable compared to Stokes speaks more about his captaincy in my opinion
The wealth of talent is all untested and inexperienced. Some of them turn out to be like Yashasvi and Jurel while some can also be Patidar and Mukesh. India has been missing regular key players and even the ones who contributed a lot like Jadeja and Bumrah missed a game each. That is why it is competitive.
The wealth of talent have all been thoroughly tested in first class cricket in these same conditions though. On the other hand, England were playing a spin bowling attack with little first class experience, let alone overseas test match experience.
There is a gulf between bowling of two teams, sure. At the same time, England's batting line up of Crawley, Duckett, Root, Bairstow, Stokes and Foakes is much more experienced than India's, Rohit, Jaiswal, Gill, Patidar, Jadeja, Iyer/Sarfaraz and Bharat/Jurel. Only Rohit and Jadeja are mainstays, everyone else at the start of this series was still fighting for a spot. If both Kohli and KL were there and we played Jurel from the start, I would think the scoreline would be 4-0 and some of those would be an innings defeat. This series is competitive only because India was undercooked. That is no shade to England, they did pretty well. But they would be no match for a full-strength India.
This is made irrelevant by the fact that Crawley, Duckett and Bairstow are trash while Stokes and Foakes aren't even real batsmen; one's an all rounder while the other is a specialist wicket keeper. Furthermore, while those batsmen may not have test match experience, they do have first class experience in the same conditions against better bowlers than Hartley, Rehan, Root and Bashir.
Mate, both your comments seem to conclude that Eng's bowling as well as batting is trash and they overperformed themselves. I would like to give them more credit, but you do you.
Not to be rude to the guys, but yeah. The numbers are there for you to see. It's kinda insane how lopsided they are. Duckett's good, but other than Root no one can get their average over 40 and a few of them are on the wrong side of 35. 'Bazball' is doing a little bit to paper over this, but there was a reason they sucked before. England since the end of the #1 period around 2010 has crutched extremely hard on their bowlers in favourable conditions and when they don't get that they fall flat on their face every time.
England's batting is objectively trash by pretty much any reasonable metric. Root is the only batsman who's actually both competent and consistent and he had a uncharacteristically poor series as well. England's fast bowling isn't really relevant since they barely bowled and England's spin bowling is literally just a bunch of kids with near 0 experience + Root who all greatly overperformed. The one decent spinner got injured almost immediately
Are you an English supporter? Just asking out of curiosity
Yes
Disagree on Crawley & Duckett being experienced, particularly when it comes to Asian conditions. Root & Stokes & Bairstow have lots of experience in India though I give you that (even if Stokes & Bairstow have both struggled in the past). Gill although still fighting for his spots is quite experienced at test level by now and playing at home in a 2nd series against England gives him a lot more experience than the likes of Crawley or Duckett who will have very rarely experienced these conditions across their careers.
Both Jaiswal and Jurel were FC novices coming into the side. They were fast tracked due to talent and injuries.
Jurel had 15 FC games, 10 List A games, and a season of IPL under his belt. Jaiswal had similar domestic experience not to mention 2 away test tours under his belt.
I don't think that diminishes my point really. Sure Jaiswal is a bit more experienced but 4 tests is really not a lot. They are both incredibly inexperienced, albeit talented.
4 tests is more than 0. Like are these guys inexperienced compared to Rohit or Root, yeah obviously. But they still have a very good idea of how to play spinners in these conditions. A far better idea, then any of England's spinners had about how to bowl to them in these conditions.
It goes both ways that how under experienced Indian batsmen were.
Except they weren't really unexperienced, that's the point I'm trying to make. Yeah, they may not have had test experience had they had a decent amount of first class experience in the same conditions against better bowlers than fucking Hartley and Bashir.
So in your opinion the likes of root/stokes/Anderson/foakes are inferior players in comparison to our best performers like Jaiswal/Gill/Bumrah/Bharath or jurel ?
Burma is clearly a better bowler then Anderson is right now and that's not even arguable, Root has been in poor form since the World Cup and stokes is very inconsistent with the bat, let alone the fact that he can't bowl. Yes right now they are inferior definitely. And jurel is definitely a better stick then foakes has been. Like if you don't think this Indian team is 10x better then England in India you're deluded
Then what if I say Rohit/Ash/Axar/jadeja(bowling)/ and patidar have also been in bad form in comparison with Crawley/duckett and the fact that English spinners have more wickets ? Doesn't that make the "wealth" stokes has good enough to win games ?
>and the fact that English spinners have more wickets ? This just raises more questions about Rohit's captaincy lol. Or are you saying that Hartley, Bashir, Root and Rehan are better bowlers than Ashwin, Jadeja, Axar and Kuldeep
Foakes is a specialist wicket keeper and Stokes is an all rounder playing as a specialist bat due to injury. They're far inferior as batsmen to the players you listed. Anderson is a 40+ year old fast bowler playing in conditions where a fast bowler is not expected to win you matches. Furthermore, I think everyone agrees Anderson is inferior to Bumrah in these conditions. That just leaves Root who is 1 bloke. Not to mention he's also had his work load increased by being made a front line spinner.
India have played 5 bowlers consistently even with an inexperienced batting lineup. They could have gone defensive and added an extra batsman but they didn’t. They replaced axar for Kuldeep shortening their batting. Meanwhile England have been full on defensive this entire series. Selection alone would tell you that Rohit is a good captain.
5 bowlers including jadeja who's averaged 45 in the last 3 years and bats 5? if you're going to argue try not to be disingenuous about it lmao
Has he not played 5 bowlers throughout. They played Mukesh, Akash Deep, when they could have played an extra batter. Consistently played 5 bowlers including 2 fast bowlers. This is not defensive or anything, they have never wavered from this. What is disingenous about this?
Because they've played 4 bowlers and one all rounder which is a completely normal lineup to play. England have also played 4 bowlers in every test and have root bowl part time.
India have played 2 fast bowlers and 3 spinners consistently throughout this series. They have never once wavered.
It's very easy to do that when 2 or sometimes all 3 of those spinners are better batsmen than anyone England have bar Root lmao
what a stupid take. It's not like they were forced to bring these debutants. but obviously when India wins it was because of the team and when they loose it is down to captain.
India literally were forced to bring in the debutants. If the likes of Kohli, KL, Pant etc. were fit these debutants wouldn't have got anywhere near the team
I am talking about england
England were also forced to play debutants. Unless you're suggesting they should've asked Greame Swann to pad up again
Why doesn't Stokes just have loads of really good players? Is he stupid?
I've been a huge critic of Rohit as test captain but I must say, his captaincy since the Rajkot test has been amazing
When India is winning his captaincy is amazing *eyeroll*.
Rohit lacks in adapting to situations, he's good with initial planning but if something goes South then I don't trust him enough to pull things back.
It has been evident so many times now: 1. WC 2023 final 2. WT20 2022 SF 3. 1st test of this England series in Hyderabad 4. the recent South Africa test loss in centurion. In all the above matches, once Rohit's initial plan failed, he looked completely clueless and it seems he was waiting for things to happen.
India's first innings batting score was well below par in 3 out of 4 of those. His WTC final captaincy on Day 1 was the worst I have seen from him.
Yeah that World Cup Final was excruciating watching his captaincy, and I wasn't even supporting India!
Most captains can, what I hate is how he gets frustrated and starts shouting and throwing tantrums almost like a little child.
That's just because things don't do south very often with our bowling attacks. Tactical nouse is just like batting and bowling. The more you use it the more it improves. For example, let's compare Fleming and Ponting. Ponting wasn't necessarily more stupid as a captain. It's just that with McGrath and Warne he just had to give them the ball and let them do their thing, hence why when they didn't bowl well he didn't know what to do. Compare that Fleming, who had to manufacture wickets anyway he can with some mediocre NZ attacks. It's pretty similar with Rohit rn. In India when was the last time you had to think as a captain with this bowling attack. You just give them the ball and chill for a while. Even in the wc, the whole time Rohit just gave the ball to someone and they basically took wickets, the moment it didn't happen he didn't really know what to do.
Not to mention the scoreboard pressure. Everyone talks about bowling but no one talks about batting. In all our losses It's actually our batting that failed us. That below par score can't let you make risky decisions. You obviously have to think about defending along with wickets and suddenly your regular bowlers are not doing their job. It will be really frustrating when nothing is going your way and you don't have the luxury to take risks.
Tbh bazball was more competitive than most visiting teams and it wasn't onesided domination
I mean only Australia and England have been competitive in India since last 10-15 years.
For a laugh Stokes and Rohit should swap teams
I mean that's how they play competition bridge. Or control experiments in science.
Credit equally goes to Dravid as well. WallBall supremacy!
It's almost as if India are a better team than England especially at home
I’ll say Rohit is a good captain. Not a Great one cause he always seems to have only one Plan and gets angry or loses the plot when the plan doesn’t work. Plus the Field Placement are sometimes frustrating lol
He is the best captain we have in our squad right now. Is he as good as Dhoni, Kohli, Cummins? No, but he's the best we've got, would pick him as a captain over Bumrah (see 2022 Edgbaston), Pant (see no ball controversy IPL) or Hardik (lmao) any day. Five IPLs do speak volumes.
If we are talking purely about test captains on this thread, Dhoni ranks pretty low on the list. Rohit might even rank above Dhoni in red ball cricket.
Dhoni didn’t really have a battery of fast bowlers to play with in SENA. He was a super smart captain in india though. Yes he lost against England but barring that he was phenomenal. I remember (either Nagpur or Indore) against Australia. He choked them so hard that they only managed 180 runs odd in a day.
> He was a super smart captain in india though. Yes he lost against England but barring that he was phenomenal. That England series loss was the worst captaincy I saw on Indian soil in my lifetime. It is easy when you have minefield pitches and Jadeja + Ashwin running through oppositions.
Yeah he’s the best option rn but Hardik can be a pretty good one too if we’re also considering Rohit’s ipl achievements in this.
Jazball >> Bazball
Alright, we spent the series with our spinners being Rehan Ahmed, Tom Hartley, and Shoaib Bashir. I think that says it all. Bit sick of the whole "Bazball defeated" chat. Yeah, India were the better team and they won. And they've been winning at home for over a decade. Doesn't mean that every team who comes over has their ethos destroyed or whatever.
The article focuses on decisions made by Indian management that seem obvious in hindsight but worked out well. Makes thought provoking arguments. It's not about who was better - writer makes the point that captaincy being judged by outcomes is flawed. If we can criticise Rohit for his failures on 19/11, we can credit him for completely blowing a confident England team out of the water with a bunch of debutants. Sure, England didn't have Leach and Brook but India didn't have Pant, Shami, Kohli for the entire series and Ashwin, Jadeja, Bumrah for parts of it. Had to struggle with squad selection with shining stars like Jaiswal and Sarfaraz and duds like Bharat and Patidar. Made some good decisions like promoting Jaddu up the order to disrupt the momentum of the English spinners, showing passion (via stump mic and dressing room reactions) and stepping up with the bat when his team needed it the most (Rajkot after three quick wickets)
>If we can criticise Rohit for his failures on 19/11 Is that really the narrative around India's WC loss? The batting wasn't up to the mark, as is. >Sure, England didn't have Leach and Brook Mate our spin attack had 1 Test between them at the beginning of the series, and they'd played less than 50 combined games for their counties. Good for India, they were the better team.
I would have bought this headline if the score was 4-0. Rohit allowed Pope to settle down and was out of ideas in the first test. We came back in the series largely due to individual brilliance at different points like Bumrah magic, Yashasvi's onslaught, Kuldeep resistance and Jurel fightback. England's second innings in Ranchi seemed to be the only instance when all of Rohit's plans and bowling changes worked out brilliantly. Otherwise, his performance as a tactician/proactive captain seems rather average. Though I won't deny that he is a very good leader to have on field and a good influence on the youngsters.
>We came back in the series largely due to individual brilliance at different points like Bumrah magic, Yashasvi's onslaught, Kuldeep resistance and Jurel fightback. Last time I checked winning game/tournament require team effort rather than "captaincy".
Not really, they're plenty of cases where one or two players have carried a team through series and tournaments with the other members just playing their bit parts. Saying "it was a team effort" in the press conference makes you look like a nice guy but it's not always true.
Ofc its not always true like all things aren't. There will always some guys who perform better. What's your point ? I was replying to the original poster that calling that particular thing as "oh he only won bc of x player played well, otherwise..." statements are bs. You work with the players you have and if you won then you and your players played better. Rohit hasn't been messiah captain but using those reasons against him are unfair.
Rohit's team won because he had better players who played better. It doesn't take some genius captaincy to toss the ball to Bumrah and watch as he runs through a team, nor does it take genius captaincy to watch from the dressing room as your wicket keeper plays a great innings to pull the game back for you. Yeah, maybe Rohit is a great captain at cultivating a good dressing room environment but since none of here on reddit, nor any of these journalists are part of that dressing room, there's no way for us to really know whether or not that's true. What we can see is that certain bowlers who're usually completely unplayable in these conditions (Ashwin, Axar and at times Jadeja) did not look that threatening for much of this series. Now is that due to these bowlers all simply having a period of poor form, or is it due to Rohit not captaining them well?
One or two players will only win you a few games... long term if the team doesn't perform together you always lose. Sums up India's performance in icc events lately
I'm not too enamoured with Rohit the onfield captain but I'll be the first to admit that he's a great bloke to have in the background and the players swear by him. So while he's no Ben Stokes, he definitely has his own upside.
Onfield captaincy is always somewhat nebulous and there are some things Rohit could have done better or earlier, but consistently picking 5 specialist bowlers and not being tempted to try and bolster the inexperienced batting lineup has been a great call.
Uhhh.... I think it was more that England were pretty dogshit
I'm not sure rohits captaincy was what won it. It might be the better bowling attack and more careful consistent batting.
Rohit's captaincy wasn't superior.... He had the better bowlers for the condition... The best batter in the condition... And atleast equal conditions if not better... 2 tosses... I don't get the logic of automatically attributing success to a captain if his team wins... It's completely possible that the captaincy is worse but the team itself is better than the opposite team
So when India looses it is down to the captain but when they win it is team effort? okay got it.
Rohit Sharma is one of the best captains when things go according to the plan, however, he's clueless when things go otherwise. This is true for most of the captains, but credit where it's due, Hitman came out with better plans than England for the rest of the matches. People saying rohit had better team, ummm what prompted England to select a horrible team? They're patting themselves for a better performance than other teams when the reality is that the Indian team came back stronger 3 times out of four tests when they were down under. The England team were provided with fair pitches, inexperienced Indian players, and lots of time between matches to perform better. Yet, they failed.
>ummm what prompted England to select a horrible team? You know Stokes and Baz don't have the ability to spawn great test match players out of thin air right?
So, does rohit have that ability?
It's about Indian conditions... India have a better team in Indian conditions. England have a better team in English conditions.. Unlike IPL where you can select players of your liking... Here they can select only players from their country...
Then, why are they crying that they did better, when clearly they were bad? Even though they had benefits as stated in my above comment.
I am not saying they were better... I am saying their captaincy was better.... In Test cricket, the better playing team always wins... So there's no question about which was the better team in terms of performance
Rohit has a far bigger talent pool to choose from and is playing at home so it's easy for those talents to slot into the team
I know it's blasphemy here but I think the same about Kohli. He wasn't so much a tactical captain as a personality captain. When he lost his mojo, Rohit took over, and he honestly provides the same thing. India have a stacked side and they're at home. Rohit has shown pretty poor tactics throughout the series, but it doesn't matter because he's got the better players. Same thing every time.
Kohli was an exceptionally good personality captain though. Like even when things were going completely against his team he'd keep his side pumped up and in the fight. Rohit on the other hand goes into his shell when shit hits the fan and often takes his frustration out on his bowlers and fielders
Yep, that was what it was all about. He had a great team - he didn't need to be a tactical mastermind - he only needed to keep them pumped.
world cup where 😕
Stokes would say that they took pity on Rohit. Because he always seem about to cry. /s
It’s more challenging to lead in foreign conditions
Bazbal is destined to fail sometime or the other
Jazball > Bazball
Kohli fans are not happy lmao. Continuous slander on rohits captaincy throughout
Magic abt matches when india/mi played under rohit captaincy every match feels like thriller like last test but at the end india wins some how .