These 5 coincidences were instrumental for India's success in England on previous tours
The limited overs series provided us with glimpses of how competitive India and England can be on the field. The England team began the tour as favorites considering their brutal form. However, India withered the storm with some amazing all-around skills in the T20I series, winning-1. it 2
Unfortunately, they couldn't replicate their performance in ODI series owing to injuries and middle-order conundrum. England capitalized on such issues and bagged the series 2-1 from being 0-1 down.
Without the services of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Jasprit Bumrah, the Indian new ball bowlers struggled against the hard-hitting England batsmen, ultimately mounting the pressure on the spin-twins.
The Real Test Awaits
With the series scoreline being 1-1, the most awaited test series starts on 1 Aug 2018 at Edgbaston, Birmingham.
After attaining the test status, India made their test debut against England in 1932. Since then, the Indian team has toured to this esteemed cricketing nation for 17 times, managing to conquer it only on 3 occasions (1971, 1986 and 2007).
The reason behind such poor success rate is the lack of suitable bowling line-up for the conditions and Indian batsman's struggle against lateral movement. As Virat Kohli and his men are geared up for the test series, let's have a look at some stats which were instrumental in India's successful tour of England.
#5: Never lose a match at Lord's
Lord's cricket ground has been one of the weirdest arenas in cricket history, having an 8-ft slope from one end to another. The overseas teams have found it difficult to contemplate and effectively lose in the match.
The Indian team managed to win one (1986) and drew two (1971, 2007) matches in those victorious series, which obviously didn't work out in the 2014 England tour (one of India's famous overseas victory). It seems that the England team tend to get demoralized when they don't achieve the desired result at the home of cricket.
#4: Best bowling figures in a match (Indian Bowler)
Normally, when it is the longest format, the home team's bowling attack will always have the upper hand over the opposition's bowling attack because of familiar conditions.
To the contrary, an Indian bowler finished with best figures for a match in each of those successful tours, thereby single-handedly won crucial matches for India.
1971- B S Chandrasekhar: 42.1-9-114-8
1986- Chetan Sharma: 53.3-6-188-10
2007- Zaheer Khan: 48-15-134-9