Batting great Sunil Gavaskar says England's ‘final frontier’ could prove to be just a small hurdle as they bid for a first Test series win against ‘vulnerable’ India in almost three decades. Gavaskar said the home side were going into the four-Test series against the world's number two team with a ‘wobbly’ batting line-up and a weak-looking pace attack, with spin being the lone encouraging factor.
‘Amazingly the situation is eerily similar to the tours of England and Australia last year,’ Gavaskar wrote in his column in a Mumbai-based newspaper, referring to two humiliating 4-0 routs suffered by the Indians. ‘Both England and Australia were vulnerable and there for the taking, but India messed it up and after the first Test of both the series just did not look as if they would win a day leave alone five days of a Test match. India today are in the same vulnerable position that England and particularly Australia were in 2011.’
India ceded the world number one Test ranking to England in 2011, losing 4-0, with Australia repeating the dose in the series that started in December last year and ended in January 2012. With England and Australia touring in a busy home season, Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men are hoping to make amends for their embarrassing reverses now they are playing in familiar conditions.
But Gavaskar said the retirement of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, and Sachin Tendulkar's recent poor form, had weakened the famed Indian middle-order. ‘With the openers too not quite in form, the batting is looking wobbly,’ wrote Gavaskar, the first batsman in history to score 10,000 Test runs.
‘Amazingly the situation is eerily similar to the tours of England and Australia last year,’ Gavaskar wrote in his column in a Mumbai-based newspaper, referring to two humiliating 4-0 routs suffered by the Indians. ‘Both England and Australia were vulnerable and there for the taking, but India messed it up and after the first Test of both the series just did not look as if they would win a day leave alone five days of a Test match. India today are in the same vulnerable position that England and particularly Australia were in 2011.’
India ceded the world number one Test ranking to England in 2011, losing 4-0, with Australia repeating the dose in the series that started in December last year and ended in January 2012. With England and Australia touring in a busy home season, Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men are hoping to make amends for their embarrassing reverses now they are playing in familiar conditions.
But Gavaskar said the retirement of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, and Sachin Tendulkar's recent poor form, had weakened the famed Indian middle-order. ‘With the openers too not quite in form, the batting is looking wobbly,’ wrote Gavaskar, the first batsman in history to score 10,000 Test runs.