All too easy for India against Sri Lanka but that’s not ideal preparation for South Africa tour

Ajit Vijaykumar 08:04 03/12/2017
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  • All too easy: Plain sailing for India.

    The Test series against Sri Lanka was less about results and more about preparing the India team for the tour of South Africa that begins early next year. Test cricket is hardly the place to ‘prepare’ for future assignments but the packed calendar and the absence of substantial warm-up matches in South Africa meant the team had to improvise at home and ‘create’ conditions that would test the players.

    It doesn’t reflect too well on the Sri Lanka team that their opposition were willing to play around with team combination and nature of the wickets. Even the fact the Sri Lankans had just beaten Pakistan 2-0 in the UAE had failed to stop Virat Kohli and Co from experimenting. India’s 9-0 win across formats in Sri Lanka earlier in the year was probably the deciding factor in their thought process.

    However, as the third Test started in Delhi it became clear the Indians were not going to get the preparation they had hoped for.

    The first Test in Kolkata was, as coach Ravi Shastri would say, just what the doctor ordered. The pitch was injected with as much grass and life as it could possibly hold and the hosts found the going tough in the first innings. They were shot out for 172 and conceded a massive 122-run lead.

    But once the initial shock dissipated, and captain Kohli hit back with a second innings century, the Indians regained their touch and never let go the initiative. India were about an hour away from a stunning win in the first Test where rain took away nearly two days’ worth of play.

    The second Test in Nagpur didn’t pose such issues and despite attempts to spice up the pitch, it turned out to be a walk in the park for the Indian batsmen. They piled on 610 with four batsmen smashing tons, an innings win becoming a formality.

    Nagpur wasn’t quite Newlands, Cape Town – the venue of the New Year’s Test. And if the team management did send instructions to prepare a green track, the memo surely didn’t reach the Delhi curator.

    It was a typically flat Kotla deck that allowed the Indians to score at more than four runs an over throughout the day with only a couple of stumping dismissals close to the end providing the Sri Lankans something to cheer about.

    The management wanted the batsmen to be tested against the moving ball but that scenario played out only in the first innings of the first Test. Since then, the Indians have batted whichever way they have wanted, pumping up their batting averages. The fifty scored by Cheteshwar Pujara in the first innings in Kolkata is the only real ‘success’ for the Indians this series when considering the targets they had set for themselves.

    Admittedly, Sri Lanka aren’t the most challenging bowling unit in five-day cricket and you can’t blame the batsmen if there are cheap runs – despite it being Test cricket – to be had.

    However, that’s exactly the situation the Indians wanted to avoid and if the target at the beginning of the series was to have a line-up ready for the South African challenge, the Indians have missed the mark, so to speak, despite being outstanding in every department.

    The Indians wanted to put themselves in uncomfortable positions during the series but the pitches in Nagpur and especially Delhi have prevented them from simulating anything remotely as nasty as what awaits in the Rainbow nation. It looks they will have to cross that bridge when they reach there.

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