Cricket 2014
India’s Strange Warm-up Continues
July 2nd 2014
A feature
of Duncan Fletcher’s management of England was the preference for playing 14 v
14 warm-ups instead of First Class matches. With India the technique has been
refined such that both matches have been played as 18 v 14/12. India are
allowed to bat or bowl anyone from their squad, while Derbyshire and
Leicestershire have been allowed to bat and bowl any 11 of 14 (at Grace Road)
and 12 (at Derby). It means getting more players involved, important when you
have only two matches before the Tests, but tends to reduce the intensity
because runs and wickets do not count, so there is less incentive to do well
and, when you can play nine front-line batsmen, an individual failure or two
means little.
Having
played a weak Leicestershire team who are, again, favourites for the wooden
spoon, India are now playing a Derbyshire team, who are their main challengers
for the “honour”. However, in 155 overs with the ball, the Indian bowlers have
only dismissed 8 batsmen at a cost of 675 runs, against what is little better
than a Division 1 2nd XI. Having used ten bowlers at Grace Road,
nine were used on Day 1 at Derby. It
means that the overs are thinly spread – Jadeja and Pankaj Singh got 11 overs
at Leicester. Here, six bowlers have had between 11 and 14 overs each and, with
25 overs so far, Pankaj Singh has had the heaviest workload of the tour.
These
days, warm-ups mean little and are often used as no more than an extended net
session. It is hard to assess the state of the Indian bowlers but, when a
player such as Billy Godleman, who had hardly had a game even for the
Derbyshire 2nd XI since early April, makes his highest score in
three months, you suspect that the bowlers may be a little underdone.
However,
such is the belief that England are in a hopeless mess and about to have a
change of captain, that the Indian fans are totally unconcerned about their
side and licking their lips at the prospect of revenge for the 4-0 drubbing in
2011. The sad truth is that they may be right too. At least Michael Clarke was
making big runs during the difficult year that Australia had in 2012/13: in 14
Tests against South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and England he made five
centuries, including a 187 and a 259*, with at least one century in each series.
Alistair Cook does not have that consolation. With each Test that passes
without victory and with each Test that passes without a century, the pressure
on Alistair Cook increases a little more. The Indians know that, if they can
increase his miserable sequence, they will have the series more than half won.
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