The Indian cricket team is in England for the fifth and final Test of a five-match series that began in 2021 but could not be completed due to Covid-19. The Indian team bowed out of the series after leading 2-1. The fifth and final Test of the series was rescheduled and shifted from Manchester to Birmingham. The Test begins on July 1.
India is now led by Rohit Sharma across all formats (though he will not be playing this fifth Test due to injury), and England has Ben Stokes as captain, instead of Joe Root. Stokes has started in a brilliant manner defeating the reigning World Test Champions New Zealand 3-0 at home.
Though the series was tightly contested between England and New Zealand, yet, the Kiwis lost the plot at crucial junctures in all three games. Thus, India needs to learn from the mistakes of Blackcaps to make sure that they are able to tackle the English in a better way
Blossoming of partnerships
The main reason why New Zealand was not able to get past England in any game was the lack of partnerships. Apart from Daryl Mitchell and Tom Blundell, the two batters who always tried their level best to arrest the downfall of the Kiwi batting, no other batter was able to get a partnership going.
Indian batters need to make sure that they create partnerships. Even if the partnerships are not big ones of 200 or more runs, there should be at least 3-4 partnerships of even 90-80 runs to tire out the English bowlers.
Application in the middle
It binds with the idea of having many partnerships. Even as Mitchell created the world record for most runs scored in a three-match Test series against England in England (538 runs in six innings) and Blundell scored 383 runs, the rest of the Kiwi batters couldn’t even get past 151 runs individually. On the other hand, five English batters scored more than 150 runs to bolster their team’s chances.
It was this lack of effort and application from other batters that eventually downed the Kiwi ship. Thus Indian batters need to make sure that they are applying themselves in the middle.
Handling Jonny Bairstow
Jonny Bairstow scored briskly in the last two Tests. His strike rate of 120 in the series with 394 runs at an average of 78 makes him more dangerous than Joe Root. He can be the vital cog in the wheel if England are chasing a total. Bairstow will also have the support of the likes of Sam Billings and Ben Stokes down the order, which could make him score even more freely and Indian spinners, even pace bowlers could come under his radar.
The dangers of Jimmy Anderson’s swing
Anderson looked threatening with the red cherry in his hand in the first two games against New Zealand. He averaged below 20 and picked 11 wickets with a best of 4/66. India’s Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli and even Cheteshwar Pujara like to poke outside off and Anderson can swing the ball from off and middle even if someone wakes him up in the middle of the night and asks him to bowl. Thus he becomes an extremely dangerous bowler against the current Indian batting.
Understanding the tactics of Ben Stokes
Ben Stokes showed his captaincy potential in the series against New Zealand as not only was he tactical in his approach to play spinner Jack Leach in all three games, but he also made sure that he was extracting the best out of his old war horses Anderson and Stuart Broad.
It was not only in the field, but with the bat too, Stokes showed that he has the confidence to chase down anything even in Test cricket. He himself scored 194 runs in five innings and took three wickets as well.
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