Villains of Chennai

With its first defeat at home after four years and that too on the ground which is believed to be one of the luckiest one for team India, some questions awaits for Virat and company as the next match standing just 72 hours away. With star players still not in their best shape, it would a grueling situation for team after being on the field for almost 3 days in the heat of Chennai.

We the fans in India chastise every failure and forget them very early too. We forgot the 36 all-out in Adelaide and filled with the joy of drawing the match in Melbourne. When the team Won at Sydney and Brisbane we were on cloud nine. But as soon as the we failed in the first innings against the lesser known bowing lineup, fans found a new reason to blame the team.

Do Indian Players Still Play Spinners Well

This defeat reminds us of the loss against the Australia at Pune four years back when our mighty batting lineup fell miserably against relatively less experienced spin bowling attack. Same happened in this match as well. Jack Leach and Dominic Bess might be big names for England cricket today for Indian fans and for the world they are lesser known players who are trying to make a name in international cricket.



What surprised more was even their fast bowlers were testing our batters on spinning friendly pitch and their batting lineup looked at no discomfort against our bowling. Apart from James Anderson all the bowlers are relatively new to the international cricket but their performance in this match have confirmed one thing that it will not be a easy going for team India in upcoming 3 matches.



Fans who were hoping for team to play in the ICC Test Championship’s final at Lords, will be rethinking after this performance. Momentum is now with England and even if they could draw the series, we might see the finalists of World Cup one more time playing for the pride at the same place.



This I am writing not on the basis of this one match but look at the form their captain is in. With this “Avatar” Root will pose challenges in next 3 games as well. Age is just a number for Anderson and he is looking younger day by day and showing this with his bowling. Archer is still a mystery for most of the batters. Bowlers are helpless against the power hitting of Stokes and Buttler.



For India the positives of this match were 6-fer of Ashwin, 85 from Sunder in first innings and Pant’s 97 in first innings. If we talk about the villains of this match there will be several contenders. Here we have listed three players who fans believe are responsible for this loss.



1. Rohit Sharma – With failures in both the innings and missed chances in slips he is first one to be blamed for India’s failure in first test.

2. Virat Kohli – Its been more then a year now that the world has witnessed a century from Indian Run Machine’s bat and his failure in first innings saw the collapse of the middle order. Team selection is another issue which raised the eyebrows of several experts.

3. Shahbaz Nadeem – He is playing just his second game and it would be hard to blame him for the defeat but his ineffectiveness on a spin friendly pitch hurt the team a lot.

As a true Indian fan we will hope for a fight and comeback from team India in next match but the way things have gone in this match, road to the next matches looks difficult for team India. Whatever be the result we will keep cheering and hoping for a win in the series.

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