England vs India 2018: Why MS Dhoni was the missing piece of the puzzle for the visitors
Everything is still the same. Once again we travelled to England with high hopes. Once again we thought that maybe this is the time. And once again we find our hopes lying in shambles.
India trail England by one game to three, with a dead rubber still to go. One might argue that this Indian team did run England close like no other Indian team ever has. But being the best and still going down the way we did is even more of a bitter truth to swallow.
Does that mean that even with the likes of a batsman who is batting as beautifully as anyone ever has and a bowling attack that is the best India has ever produced, we simply aren't good enough to win a test series in England?
The batting is a bit topsy-turvy, the bowling attack is pretty much bowling rockets (except when a 20-year-old Curran takes strike) and fielding well is almost ingrained in the modern Indian players. For a change, we even outdid the hosts in slip catching. Everything seems to be in place. Everything seems to tell that the scoreline must be in favour of the Indians. What's the final piece of the jigsaw that everyone seems to be missing?
18, 0, 1, 24, 0, 1, 20, 0 are the scores of Indian wicketkeepers in this series so far. Since the retirement of MS Dhoni, India has been on the lookout for a permanent wicketkeeper. While Wriddhiman Saha undoubtedly is the best gloveman currently in the country, his tentativeness against the moving ball was well documented in South Africa. Dinesh Karthik's resurgence since the Nidahas Trophy final offered a glimmer of hope, but that too died pretty soon.
Parthiv Patel was given a chance too in the midst, and now we are back to Rishabh Pant, who probably thinks the only way to bat is hit your way out of trouble. It's a problem which India need to find answers to very quickly if they are to live up to their expectations of being the best travelling team in the world.
Ah! How good were those days seeing a certain MS Dhoni behind the stumps, getting the best out of the resources he had at his disposal. How good it felt when there was somebody who despite not being suited to five-day games technique-wise would come out and do all it took for his teams. During the last tour of England in 2014, he was the second highest run-getter for India, only behind Murali Vijay. Four fifties in five games isn't too bad for someone with that unorthodox a technique.
It's not just batting and wicketkeeping that Dhoni contributes in. On a pitch where Moeen Ali gave nightmares to the Indian batsmen, it was surprising to see the inefficiency of R Ashwin. Who would have been better than a wicket-keeper to tell Ashwin at what pace he should bowl? No offences to Pant, he is an excellent prospect for the team. But when it comes to understanding a situation, no one beats the cool-headed Dhoni.
The bowling attack which simply blew away the Cooks and the Roots suddenly were found wanting against a lower order one-test old Sam Curran. Make no mistake, the kid can bat. And Virat Kohli is a mighty fine captain as well, but maybe Dhoni is what India needed.
And just to prove my point, India gave away 33 runs as extras, most of which were byes. An excellent gloveman probably could have helped save most of those.
It's so fun watching Dhoni shouting instructions to the spin twins in the ODI side, almost narrating to them where to bowl the next ball. Only if it were same in the whites, who knows we might have been seeing a deserving decider to the series which has enthralled every single cricket lover.
Maybe it's MS Dhoni who was the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.