Kit Harris looks back on England’s unsuccessful Test tours of India
Sports fans are a curious breed. They are capricious, yet utterly predictable. When they win, they summon more jubilation than for Christmas or childbirth. When they lose, bitterness turns quickly to blame.
So it is with cricket, as we saw last week, when England completed a 1–4 series defeat by India. After seven unbeaten, Bazball-fuelled series, England lost. The fans were exercised. The knives were out.
And somehow, Bazball has made the blades sharper. “Bazball is dead,” cry the Indian zealots – and many an England supporter appears to agree. It seems a strange standpoint. If Tottenham began a Premier League season by accumulating 17 points in a seven-game unbeaten run, and then lost to Liverpool, would that be the death knell for Postecoglou? Sure, fans of the Reds would crow and contemn, but if the Spurs faithful did likewise, it would be mystifying.
Perhaps it’s a sign of how far England have come. Perhaps their supporters are now so accustomed to success that defeat by a superior team feels like the end of the world. When England were hammered in the 1990s, no one batted an eyelid. It was expected. England were rubbish.
But this defeat was by the best team in the world, in the second-most impenetrable fortress in the history of Test cricket. Anyone using it as a stick to beat Bazball with at least warrants polite inquisition as to motive.
The most critical voices appear to subscribe to one of three agendas. The first, unsurprisingly, is wishing ill on a team who have recently beaten your own. India were ahead in their last series in England: their fans celebrated wildly and prematurely, then were quietened when Bazball ultimately cost them victory. The same happened to Australia. Over and over, the axiom has been: it won’t work against us. At the eighth time of asking – against India, in India – that turned out to be true. Why wouldn’t hardcore Australia and India fans bury Bazball?
A more nuanced view, not wedded to national loyalties, is to see hubris in an England team with an unfortunate habit of presenting themselves as the saviours of Test cricket. They were even at it when India were shoeing them: Ben Duckett suggested Yashasvi Jaiswal’s success might be inspired by Bazball. No one likes a tall poppy.
A second agenda derives from an objection to the idea that England might be pioneering something that works. Will you colonials stop insisting you have anything positive to contribute to the game? You didn’t invent this! Gilchrist did it. Sehwag did it. Pant did it. Bazball is nothing new.
To adopt this position is to misunderstand what England are doing. In Dharamsala, Rohit Sharma said: “There was a guy called Rishabh Pant in our team. Probably Ben Duckett hasn’t seen him play.” But Pant did it alone. England are trying to do it as one. This whole-team approach is new – and the run-rate records back that up.
A core of English traditionalists have their own agenda: The Hundred is to blame. It has pushed the County Championship to the margins of the season, they say, when conditions are not conducive to slow bowling. England thus have no chance of success when bowling or facing spin. The trouble with this point is that it rather relies on the interlocutor not having seen much cricket before 2021.
Stereotyped cricket against seam bowling is no kind of preparation for bowlers who bounce top-spinners and googlies towards the leg trap, or flight the ball through a defence so gently he will hardly know he has been bowled. Constant playing of seam bowling produces only good players of seam bowling. That is how limited English cricket has become.
Sounds about right? Clive Taylor wrote it in Wisden 1974, after England had lost 2–1 in India. Similar sentiments can be found in the Almanack over the last five decades. Since 1980 – the last year of uncovered pitches in county cricket – England’s spinners in India have been out-spun by their hosts nine tours out of ten. Their batters have bested their Indian counterparts twice. It’s always been about spin. Blaming The Hundred may be convenient, but it is specious.
The last time England were called upon to make wholesale changes was when they returned from the West Indies in 2021-22. And they changed. They brought in Key, McCullum and Stokes. The improvements were immediate, and immense.
Eight series later, England have shown they are not the best team in the world. At best, they are equal-second, alongside Australia. Everybody expected England to lose.
For more than a decade, no other team have beaten India in India. But no other team have left India amid clamour to reinvent themselves. England went to India with four defeats from their last 18 games. Australia went with three from their last 18. They lost – then it was business as usual.
The World Test Championship table tells only half the story. England are currently eighth. India are rightly top. But England’s series results against second, third, fifth and seventh are (respectively) drew, drew, won, won. They will play sixth and ninth this summer.
After that, England play Pakistan, New Zealand and Zimbabwe. They should expect to win all five series. If they don’t, then perhaps Bazball needs fixing. But losing in India? One blip should not mean a burial.
ENGLAND’S DEFEATS IN INDIA: WHAT WISDEN SAID
1961-62 “England were not represented by their full-scale side. Players like Cowdrey, Statham and Trueman would have made a big difference. This business of leading players declining certain tours needs consideration by the authorities.”
1972-73 “Years of stereotyped cricket against seam bowling is no kind of preparation for taking on bowlers like Chandrasekhar, bouncing top-spinners and googlies towards the leg trap, or Bedi who will flight the ball through a man’s defence so gently he will hardly know he has been bowled. Constant playing of seam bowling produces only good players of seam bowling. That is how limited English cricket has become.”
1981-82 “Botham’s ineffectiveness with the ball was a telling blow to England’s chance of levelling the series, as was Fletcher’s misplaced confidence that India could be overcome by pace.”
1992-93 “England somehow came to the conclusion that the attack best suited to a bare, dry pitch should contain four seamers. Then, to ensure balance, they chose Salisbury, who had only recently been elevated in status from net bowler to full member of the squad, at the expense of the two spinners, Tufnell and Emburey, they had originally selected ahead of him.”
2001-02 “It was with sadly predictable timing that the request came from two England players with little inclination to immerse themselves in Indian ways or endure dead Indian pitches. The withdrawal of Alec Stewart and Darren Gough left a bitter taste in the mouth.”
2008-09 “The best England spin bowler since Derek Underwood was a downcast figure. Moores’s regular insistence that ‘Monty Panesar is eager to learn’ was by now inviting the rejoinder ‘Why doesn’t someone teach him then?’”
2016-17 “England were regularly tossing away their wickets, unsure how to balance aggression with adhesion on slow turners, not the fizzing, spitting surfaces many had expected. Their spin bowling was alarmingly ineffective, and the glory days of Anderson’s new-ball partnership with Broad seemed to be drawing to a close.”
2020-21 “Debates thought to have been consigned to the past were raging once more. They included doubts about the ability of the County Championship to prepare players for such challenges, and concerns over the apparent prioritising of T20 – especially the IPL – over Test cricket.”
Kit Harris is Assistant Editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
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