Lessons from India's tour of England 2018
The same story of 2011, echoed in 2014 and again on the display in 2018.
Overseas victory, especially outside the subcontinent, has been a rarity for the Indian cricket team. With the advent of IPL and considering the relative ease of the limited overs format, the Indian team has done really well to be a top-notch side in colored clothing.
However, things turn a bit dismal, when we analyze test cricket in overseas conditions. The Indian team does not possess a great record specifically in the SENA(South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia) countries.
This Indian team had the opportunity to change the fortunes starting from the South African tour earlier this year. They lost that series 2-1. Sadly, the same errors have been committed again in the Test matches against England.
There are a few factors on which the stakeholders of Indian cricket must ponder about:
1. Scheduling of Practice Games
With the change in format, weather, nature of the pitch and ball type, there must be adequate practice games in place so that the players can get acclimatized to the playing conditions. A full 4-day game always helps in preparation as compared to playing in the nets. However, we observed the team had long breaks without playing any practice games.
In the hindsight, we witnessed a few decent performances from Pujara and Ishant, who played county cricket earlier.