Neither Anil Kumble nor Kohli would call up any curator and tell him to lay slow pitches for Test matches.
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“Nobody is demanding anything”. Yes the formats are different, but I am hoping we can build on from those experiences. With Harbhajan Singh’s form fading quickly, Ashwin was just finding his feet as the leader of the spin attack. That, a score of 400-plus runs, will shut up quite a lot of mouths waiting to cry foul and force the visiting teams to look for options to improve their ability to play spin.
The world’s richest cricket board has always been accused of ignoring the game’s longest format, a wrong they made a decision to right in June by scheduling a whopping 13 Tests in the 2016-2017 calendar.
“According to me, it is a typical Kanpur wicket”. Play fearless cricket, that’s one thing which stood out for me in their mentality. In the team meetings, we have discussed this only.
He said: “We need to adapt to whatever we’re confronted with”.
But New Zealand seem to have done their homework and have included a trio of specialist spinners – Ish Sodhi, Mitchell Santner and Mark Craig – in their squad with a reasonable chance of all three playing in the series opener in Kanpur. Ajinkya Rahane was impressive against West Indies, and he would be raring to justify his caliber against New Zealand. They are a very potent team, not just in the spin department, but all-round as well. New Zealand will be hoping for the best, since the last time it won a Test in India was way back in 1988. “There was so much focus on playing overseas that we kept focussing on (playing) pace bowling and didn’t pay too much attention to spin”. The Indian team then had so many good looking men that women began to flock to the ground to see them rather than their game. While Virat Kohli has ably replaced MS Dhoni as Test skipper, his counterpart Kane Williamson has endured a mixed start as Kiwis’ skipper in the longest format of the game. Equally the same for the home team as well. I certainly feel that this team has what it takes to be the best in the world.
“I think they have been able to detach themselves from those pressures and that’s why they have got successful in last couple of years”. His captaincy is the issue in focus that we are talking about. So that is something we will keep an eye on. “You do want to go into the matches to try and apply your plans”. Addressing the press at Green Park, Kanpur ahead of the first Test, Kohli hinted at going in with just four bowlers in these conditions. And just as its losses soar overseas, India’s win-percentage dips when playing away to a paltry 16.73%. Some seven months down the line, the same man would run amok in uncharacteristic fashion as he raced his way to a career-first hundred in One-Day Internationals (ODIs), the last tournament of his career. Traditionally known to be batting powerhouses, that aspect of the game has undergone change in recent times.
“For example, they were good players of seam bowling in the previous year but they struggled on a seaming track (the following season) because of what the modern day batsman encounters”. “One area we have tapped into is belief”.
One would also like to believe that India will want to play two seamers in the line-up even if they play four bowlers given the chances of the ball reversing as the ball gets old.
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With little experience and a modest past record, New Zealand will need a few special performances to deny India winning its 500th Test. However, a victory in it will give a much-anticipated sense of completion, satisfaction, joy and happiness to the hearts of a billion Indian fans who have stood by the team through thick and thin. Starting from 1932 till today, there have been great players who have contributed this great legacy of 499 Tests. The Parsis toiled hard for several years and finally brought people from different sects and religions of the country to play a quadrangular tournament between them, the Muslims, the Sikhs and the Europeans. All of us should celebrate this milestone and recollect the memories provided by the former players.
