"Results remain the most important currency" - Nasser Hussain expresses concern with current England Test side ahead of 5th India Test
Former England captain Nasser Hussain has emphasized the importance of the current Test side needing to produce results to be among the best in the world despite their exciting brand of play.
While England have revolutionized Test cricket and brought fans back in the stands with their attacking style of play, the results have been sub-par recently. After winning 10 of their first 11 Tests since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes took over as coach and captain in mid-2022, they have only triumphed in four of their next 11 red-ball outings.
It included a drawn home Ashes series last year and trailing the ongoing India series by a 1-3 margin with one game left.
In his column for the Daily Mail, Hussain wrote:
"For all the good things that this England team have done in making people want to watch their matches, right now they sit second bottom in the World Test Championship table and results remain the most important currency. In the end, all sports teams are judged on their statistics. How they end up at the end of a season or a series. In cricket, how many runs you scored, the wickets you took."
"Yes, you will inevitably get people talking about the style in which you played the game and rightly so, and that is where the likes of Shane Warne, Ian Botham and Brian Lara come into the conversation. This England side have provided great viewing over the past two years, too, but the win-loss ratio is the most important thing," he added
England stunned Team India in the series opener in Hyderabad before succumbing to defeats in the next three matches to surrender the five-match rubber.
Despite winning 14 of their previous 22 Tests since the Stokes-McCullum partnership took over, they still sit in the penultimate position on the 2023-25 World Test Championship (WTC) points table.
"They must get the scoreline versus India back to 3-2 in Dharamsala this week" - Nasser Hussain
Nasser Hussain felt England winning the final Test against India in Dharamsala will be crucial for the side to avoid re-opening past demons from previous tours.
Despite all the hoopla surrounding England's playing style, they find themselves in familiar territory as they lost their previous two Test tours to India 0-4 and 1-3, respectively.
"They must get the scoreline versus India back to 3-2 in Dharamsala this week. Of course, they’ll still have lost the series, but they can then point to the third days of the third and fourth Tests, when they let things slip on each occasion, as a justification that they were competitive across the entire five-match tour. That they simply failed to take their opportunities," wrote Hussain.
"Come home with a 4-1 defeat, though, and the gulf between the sides looks huge. Inevitably, it will feel like the same old story for England in India," he concluded.
While the India series loss is England's first since mid-2022, they will look to capture crucial WTC points in the finale in Dharamsala, starting on Thursday, March 7.