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We’re a great fan of home advantage. It’s a key part of cricket. If matches between two teams were likely to have the same outcome both home and away then the sport would lose a significant quality.
It also means that away wins are even more significant. England’s victory in Australia this year and India’s in England in 2007 were both more admirable for the fact that not only did those tourists beat the opposition, but they also conquered foreign conditions. Australia were far and away the best team in every format of cricket for an age, but it still took them several attempts to win in India. You never have a full-house of succcess in cricket – there’s always another challenge.
Away losses
So home victories are pretty much the norm. They should be expected. Great respect should therefore be given to any touring team that defies that expectation.
Does that mean that away defeats should be shrugged off? No, does it bollocks. We can state with some confidence that both England and India have utterly embarrassed themselves in the last few months. Their tours gained downwards momentum early on and neither side had the capacity to reverse that.
We’re no stranger to disappointment and only in that regard have both England and India delivered.
At several times in this tour England have needed wristy players to hold the batting together and rotate the strike. They haven’t had them, even though Ian Bell is and was in the squad he wasn’t played until the meaningless final game.
England’s best batsman was, coincidentally, Pietersen who is wristy but still gets flak for “not pushing on” in games where he top scores.
In my view Collingwood should have been taken, he is wristy, has always done well in India and has been in decent nick for Durham in CB40 cricket.
But what’s done is done. Something more worrying is Swann being dropped in the 4th game, showing something of a lack of faith for the Number 1 ranked ODI bowler in the game.
I don’t think Swann was dropped – didn’t they just want to have a look at Borthwick?
I can’t understand why Bell didn’t play though.
They could have had Borthwick in as well, given India’s somewhat known for being good to the spinners.
Trying to find out the longest unbeaten “home” run of test matches in Cricket. I thought a quick google search would throw up the answer, but alas….