England swing the hammer

Tony Becca, Contributor

When Andrew Strauss of England and Mahendra Singh Dhoni of India walked out on to the hallowed turf of Lord's on Thursday, July 21, to flip the coin for the start of the contest for the Pataudi Trophy, every man, woman and child was ready for a gripping, bruising and exciting showdown.

The Pataudi Trophy, named in memory of the Nawab of Pataudi, Iftikhar Ali Khan, representative of both England and India, and father of former Indian captain, the Nawab of Pataudi, Mansur Ali Khan, was expected to be the start of a heavyweight clash between India, the number one-ranked Test team in the world and the World Cup champions, and England, sitting in the number-three position and riding high.

That first assignment was, in fact, more than that: the occasion marked the 100th Test between the two teams and it was also Test match number 2,000 among all teams.

Those two things, along with the fact that Sachin Tendulkar, arguably the second greatest batsman of all time behind Don Bradman, was on 99 international centuries - 51 in Test matches and 48 in one-day internationals - and needing one more to complete 100 international centuries, contributed significantly to the romance of the contest.

When Dhoni won the toss and sent England to bat, India seemed to be on to something, something big and glorious.

Series of nightmares

However, that was Dhoni and India's only success in a series of disasters and nightmares, a summer when everything came tumbling down on the tourists like one huge landslide.

England needed to win by two Test matches to go to the top of the rankings and they did so in style.

They not only won two, they won all four matches to register a stunning whitewash victory and they won with time to spare in every Test match, including the third Test which finished in three days.

England won the first Test by 196 runs after they were sent to bat and declared twice; the second by 319 runs after they were 117 for seven on their way to a first-innings score of 221. They won the third by an innings and 242 runs after dismissing India for 224 and replying with 710 for seven declared; and they won the fourth and final Test by an innings and eight runs after scoring 591 for six declared.

India fell without a fight, without even the semblance of a fight.

After starting confidently, 63 without loss and 158 for two and then 131 for two in the first Test; India slipped up to 117 for seven and 107 for seven in the second Test; 117 for seven and 89 for six and 130 for seven in the third Test; and 137 for six in the first innings of the fourth Test.

In the last Test when they appeared to be getting over the disaster of their batting, after they had reached 262 for three with Tendulkar looking set for his historic century, India lost five wickets for seven runs in the twinkling of an eye to fall to 269 for eight, on their way to losing their last seven wickets for an embarrassing 21 runs.

England's victory was so emphatic that they batted only six times out of eight and declared their innings closed four times. And, as huge as those scores were, they could have been bigger had they not been pushing towards declarations.

In the first innings at Lord's when they scored 479 for eight declared, England were 273 for three at one stage; in their 544 at Trent Bridge they were 323 for three earlier on; in their 710 for seven declared at Edgbaston, they were 252 for one and 596 for three; and in their 591 for six declared at The Oval after rain had washed out almost an entire day's play, they were 447 for two before going for quick runs.

To top it all, India scored 300 only once throughout the summer. They scored exactly 300 all out in the first innings in the final Test.

With England scoring 2,807 runs while losing 27 wickets and India scoring 2,033 while losing 80 wickets; with England scoring seven centuries - including three double centuries - and India three; with the England bowlers dominating the action and taking wickets at will, they took only three five-wicket hauls and India, with their bowlers on the run throughout the summer, managing one solitary five-wicket haul.

Poor batting

To make matters worse, with Stuart Broad claiming a table-topping 25 wickets at an average of 13.84, Tim Bresnan 16 at 16.31 and James Anderson 21 at 25.21 for England, India's best were Praveen Kumar, 15 at 29.53 and Ishant Sharma, 11 at 58.18.

And the Indian batting was not any better.

With Kevin Pietersen heading the batting with 533 runs and two centuries, including a double - at an average of 106.20; and with Ian Bell behind him with 504 runs - two centuries and an average of 84.00; India's best, apart from Rahul Dravid, was leg-spinner Amrit Mishra with a batting average of 38.25.

With India blessed with so many fine batsmen and with both teams fighting for such high stakes, this was probably the most one-sided Test series of all time.

The saving grace for India was the batting of Dravid. Amidst the wreckage of India's cricket from Lord's to Trent Bridge, to Edgbaston and to The Oval, Dravid stood out like a giant.

Dravid, the man they call 'The Wall', scored 461 runs at an average of 76.83 with three centuries.

At Lord's, Dravid batted at number three and scored 103 not out, batting to the end of the first innings. At Trent Bridge, he opened the innings and was the ninth batsman dismissed in the first innings after he had scored 117; and at The Oval, he opened the innings again and batted undefeated until the end while scoring 146 not out.

The question is what happened to India, what happened to their usual battery of competent bowlers, what happened to their sometimes brilliant fielding and what happened to their usually awesome batsmen, which included, apart from Dravid, the likes of Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag, VVS Laxman and Tendulkar himself?

Atrocious fielding

The answer seems to be that their bowling, but for fast bowler Zaheer Khan and off-spinner Harbhajan Singh who were injured, was no better than ordinary, their fielding was atrocious, their captaincy and wicketkeeping, and their batting, as far as I am concerned, were exposed to good fast bowling on responsive pitches and in kind conditions.

Another thing I believe is that they believed in their own public relations.

India believed after winning the World Cup that they were the best team in the world; that they were so much better than the West Indies, which was true, and since they were going to play England for the title immediately after coming here, they did not need to have sent their best team to the West Indies.

Some may have been injured, but I do not believe that seven of their better players were injured and could not tour the West Indies.

That is asking too much to believe.

India, apart from the obvious weakness in their bowling, may have paid the penalty for turning up their nose at sport, for ignoring the unwritten rules of sport in snubbing the West Indies.

Their own stupidity, however, may also have been the reason for their down fall. When India, the only team to do so, refused to go along with the Decision Review System to refer leg before wicket appeals to the third umpire, and when they backed off their original stance on the appeal against Ian Bell for run-out in the second Test, they may well have cooked their goose.