England vs India 2018: Positives for Team India so far in the Test series
India have had their moments in every test match barring Lord's. But moments don't win series and it is back now to introspection - Harsha Bhogle tweeted.
India have had their moments in the Test series and had they cashed in those moments then it would have been India leading the series 3-1 instead of England. India showed the ability to fight back after the great Lord's debacle. After the Lord's test people started to assume that India would go down 5-0 in the series but they came back to thump England with a 203-run victory.
India's tour of England is coming to its finale. It is great to see that this 5 match test series has been given the most importance instead of the T20 series or the ODI series by the fans and the media. Although India has already lost the series, still there have been some positives we can relish on.
Virat Kohli scored big in England
The big million dollar question before the series started was "Will Virat Kohli score runs in England?" And boy did he score. From the first match itself, the King started his rule. He scored a brilliant 149 out of India's total of 274, followed by a 51 in the second innings - 200 runs in the first match of the series. All the critics and doubters were silenced.
Now at the end of the 4 matches, he has scored 544 runs at an average of 68.00 with 3 fifties and 2 hundreds and still one more match to go. Virat Kohli scoring runs shouldn't be considered as a positive achievement these days because it's a common thing to happen but still considering the dismal show in 2014, it has to be one of the biggest positives of the tour so far.
Indian fast bowlers
After the tour of South Africa, the world started to acknowledge the Indian fast bowlers. Still, they needed to shine in England to maintain the reputation of being a good pace unit. They did shine pretty brightly in England. They were fast, maybe faster than the English bowlers. The likes of Ishant, Shami, and Bumrah didn't allow the English batsmen to dominate like the previous tours.
After so many years finally, Ishant Sharma was looking like a threatening bowler. He was quick, accurate and swinging the bowl. So far he has picked up 15 wickets in the 4 tests with the best figure of 5/51 at Edgbaston.
Bumrah has been the find for Indian cricket in the white jersey. He bowls fast and most importantly swings it. If he can improve on the no-ball issue he's gonna be the world's best very soon. Shami has always been dependable as far as pace attack is concerned. He has picked up 14 wickets so far in the series.
Slip catching
This is controversial. Some people will disagree and may come up with stats of India dropping catches. Yes, they dropped some in the first couple of matches but since the Nottingham test, India have been brilliant.
KL Rahul and Virat Kohli have been superb in the slip cordon. Rahul has grabbed 11 catches, joint highest along with Cook so far in the series. Some of the catches that Rahul took were of the top draw. Nothing hurts a bowler more than to see a catch being dropped. Indian fast bowlers got a real boost due to some quality catching at the slips. I would pick Rahul in the playing 11 just for the slip catching.
Strong middle order
By strong middle order, I mean the trio of Kohli, Pujara and Rahane. Rest of them have not been good enough in the series to count them as positives. The Indian batting line up is held together by this trio. Although Rahane averages 27.50 in the series, he had played some crucial innings and is the 5th highest run-getter in the series with 220 runs.
When Pujara was not picked for the first test everyone got a shock. He's a specialist test batsmen in the team and is a class act. His knock of 132 at Southampton proved it. Virat Kohli has taken his game to a whole new unmatchable level. So this trio getting runs was surely a positive for the Indian team from these 4 test matches of the series so far.