Kohli's final frontier

On Friday, five days before the first England-India Test gets underway in Birmingham, temperatures at Chelmsford, where the Indian team is playing a tour game, touched 31 degrees Celsius. It was the hottest day of the English summer, which is turning out to be quite Indian in more ways than one, as both sides get ready for five gruelling back-to-back Test matches. 

A summer of spin

When the sun shines, drying up the air, and all moisture is sucked out of English pitches, there is no swing. The new ball will do something for a session or two, but spin is definitely on the mind of both the English and Indian team managements. 

India have picked three spinners in their squad, which is odd given that this is an overseas tour. England, too, have responded by recalling Moeen Ali — who picked up 19 wickets as India lost 1-3 here in 2014 — and Adil Rashid, who quit red-ball cricket earlier this year but is now back in the mix. While the hosts are prepared to field two spinners, the same cannot be assuredly said about the visitors. It must be remembered that in Centurion against South Africa earlier in the season, India, on a sub-continent-type wicket, went in with Ravichandran Ashwin as the lone spinner and played the extra batsman instead. It cost them the game — and the series. 

The Kuldeep Yadav conundrum

England have bought into Rashid’s “leg-spin” hype (18 wickets in eight ODIs against Australia and India this summer) and off-loaded Dominic Bess and Jack Leach, the two spinners fielded in their last two Test assignments, against Pakistan and New Zealand. 

For India, there is the contentious issue of choosing between Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Kuldeep Yadav. The former two are not only among the top-five ranked spinners in the world, but are also among the best all-rounders in the official ICC rankings. Yadav, on the other hand, bamboozled the English batsmen during the recently concluded T20 and ODI series. There is a school of thought that Joe Root started to pick him during the second half of the ODI series, as he smacked back-to-back hundreds in England’s 2-1 win. Even so, the hosts’ batting line-up in the longer format is completely different, and they haven’t really come up against someone with  Yadav quality. 

There was perhaps a hint of things to come in Chelmsford this past week. England opener Alastair Cook was in line to turn out for Essex in the practice game against India but pulled out when the match was declassified from first-class status. Yadav didn’t bowl a single ball in the game, shielded from prying eyes and cameras. Will he be spotted next at Edgbaston straight on August 1 now? 

Virat Kohli’s big test

For four years, only one question has haunted the Indian captain: what about the 2014 tour of England, where he managed only 134 runs in 10 Test innings? On his arrival here, Kohli (pictured above) shrugged off suggestions that he needed to score runs to prove his mettle. “I am here to enjoy the tour. It doesn’t matter if I score runs; if India wins and I can contribute (in some way), then that is enough,” he had said in Manchester.

His words were quite statesman-like, sitting well with his ever-growing stature in Indian cricket. The key word here is “stature”, for it does matter whether he scores runs or not. “For India to win, he has to score runs, as you would expect from the captain and one of the best batsmen in the world,” said England pacer James Anderson, who got Kohli out four times during that 2014 tour. Mind games, anyone? 

The Bhuvneshwar Kumar factor

In 2011, as India lost 0-4 in England, Praveen Kumar bent his back in three of those matches to return with 15 wickets at 29.53. Swing has always been a crucial factor when touring here, but when it is of the medium pace variety, it acquires a lethal degree. 

Mahendra Singh Dhoni led India through that embarrassing series defeat, and then again in 2014, where Bhuvneshwar Kumar was his bowler of choice. He picked up 19 wickets in five Tests at 26.63, unfortunately getting injured in the process. Kumar subsequently missed a year of international cricket. Since his return to full fitness in the 2016-17 season, though, this is the first time he is missing an overseas Test series. 

His absence is down to shoddy bowler management from the Indian team think-tank. Over-bowled in the limited-overs cricket throughout 2017, Kumar is now undergoing rehabilitation back home to see if he could be fit in time for the last two Tests in this series. While the batsmen are expected to make merry and spin will be a huge factor given the dry weather, Kumar’s absence means that India have already lost an advantage as far as the swinging ball is concerned.