NZ tour of India, Oct 16 - Nov 5

[alfie]

Was a remarkable series for NZ - winning first an actual Test in India for the first time in 36 years...then a series win - their first ever ; and capping it off as the first team from anywhere to 3-0 India on their own turf... Indian fans will rightly be aghast that their team seems to have decayed so rapidly ; but congratulations to NZ have to be the main feature. After some pretty mouldy recent form of their own , doing all this (without their best batsman too !) was a fantastic achievement.

What does it mean for India ? Could it be just a bit of an outlier - normal service likely to be resumed soon ? Or are too many players ageing and no longer able to produce at once ? The fact that they lost all three suggests the latter : they've already apparently "moved on" from Rahane and Pujara , confident the younger replacements were up to the task ; but with Rohit and Kohli not firing the batting simply wasn't good enough as a group. The fact that usually handy late order players like Jadeja and Ashwin were also off the boil meant the tail couldn't cover for the top six either. And that those two bowlers - excepting Jadeja in this last match - also underwhelmed with the ball was another blow. Washington might be stepping into the role of lead spinner sooner rather than later...

Still plenty of talent there , of course. Jaiswal couldn't be expected to outdo Bradman indefinitely but is obviously a major talent going forward , Pant has come back brilliantly after his recovery , Bumrah is Bumrah (probably missed the assistance of Shami this series ; which leads one to wonder why the latter has been ruled out of the Australian tour so early ?) And there is promise in the likes of Gill , with others around the side ready to step in. But certainly appear to be a few more gaps than were apparent even a few months ago.

What happens on that Australian tour may dictate the immediate direction of India in Tests - and the ending or otherwise of one or more distinguished careers...

Meanwhile NZ can celebrate and look forward to a rare three match home series with England : they might be fairly confident of keeping their recent excellent home record in such contests unblemished.

Couple of interesting series coming up !

[sussexpob]

Obviously cricket is such a huge deal in India, there is an element of politics in picking the team. So the idea that you can simply drop a guy like Kohli might be out of the equation, because he has powerful friends and lobbyists in the media. Really though, Virat needs to step aside. He is an all time great of the game, but he has fallen off a cliff... and who can really blame him? Carrying the weight of being India's poster boy of the game over 3 formats and the IPL comes at a toll. You can feel that he's ran some really hard yards, and has nothing left in the tank. Someone needs to take him aside and tell him he's doing his legacy no favours by continuing to play at this level. He looks pretty finished.

Maybe India will save the huge rebuild job till after Australia, but I would be inclined to rip it up and burn it. Rohit, Ashwin, Jadeja, Kohli, finally get rid of some of the players like Rahul that havent done the job. I don't see the point of gradually bleeding players away from the team, just take a year or two in a strong rebuild phase.

I guess it doesnt help that Safraz Khan played one innings in the series when the match was pretty much dead and got a score, then scored about 10 runs in the next 5 innings combined. Not the sort of form that sends declining legends into retirement and install confidence in the next generation.

Shubman Gill didn't take kindly to being questioned about his form. On paper he's had a good year, but his test career still feels a little fragile, and while he has all the shots in the book, his technique defensively is not that water-tight.

[andy]

Dare I say they're missing pujara who is still banging out the runs domestically in India and england