What a common man wants from the English tour

MS Dhoni and Co. will do well to put up a fight

I, as a common man or rather a common fan, do not want India to boss the series, thrashing England 5-0. I do not want Pankaj Singh doing a Mitchell Johnson or Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara scoring centuries in every game. I do not want Rahul Dravid to come in and become the best coach. I do not want Ravindra Jadeja to play like a 'Sir'. I do not want English batsmen to dance against Ravichandran Ashwin's spin.

All I want is a good fight and a great resistance. I want Indian players to go there and die, if not win, fighting for their pride, showing that they belong to that level, showing that they are there to win. I want them to believe in themselves. I want them to step up, play good cricket, and make us smile.

We haven't had good days in Test cricket for more than a year; if you count foreign Tests, then there is nothing to write home about for 4 years now. We deserve at least something to keep believing in Test cricket: if not a great win, then an admirable fight.

I want something like the 2007 tour to England, where we won 1-0, or a sheer showcase of how to play like it's your life on the line, similar to what we did during the 2008 tour to Australia. We won only 1 Test in each of the tours, but the impact of those was too high that it reignited the interest levels in me to watch the longer format of the game, again.

I want the likes of Pujara, Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane to play with determination on the fast and bouncy pitches, stay there for hours, get a gritty 30-40 in the morning session of a fresh pitch, play for 50 overs on the last day to save a Test, if not hooking then ducking to the chin music with confidence, resist the on-the-up shots, which they play naturally on the sub-continent pitches, guide the tailenders to stitch together a match-changing partnership, and show how to handle alien conditions to the young ones watching them up from here.

I want the likes of Pankaj, Mohammed Shami and Bhuvneshwar Kumar to find a way to exploit the conditions, give the dose back to the England camp by breaking the helmet for at least a couple of times in each Test, learn the art of the fast bowling by watching James Anderson operate, not let the batsmen think like they are playing against a bowling machine, swing the ball like a banana, make a couple of English batsmen their bunny and think twice before they come on the front foot, do what the spinners do on Indian pitches, and take 20 wickets.

I will be happy if a batsman doesn't get a 100 but plays 250/300 balls. I will be happy if a bowler doesn't get a 5-wicket haul but all of them work together to keep the opposition on the back-foot. I will be happy if India loses the series but wins 2 matches and fights till the last day, last hour in the other 3 games.

I want them to come back to India with something that we can show to the next generation.

You can more of CricketFun’s works here.