England v India 2014: 6 Reasons why India lost the series

The torture has ended, with the completion of the 5-match series3-1 in favour toEngland.With performances at Old Trafford and The Oval being so miserable,the victory at Lords seems a distant memory.Like MS Dhoni puts it, Last three Tests, we were not up to the mark. We never really competed. The home teamoutplayed India in all departments.While Dhoni will talk about the process and the positives of the series, we take a look at the actualreasonswhy India lost.

#1 Jadeja dropping Cook on 15

We have often heard that ‘catches make matches’, but this one dropped catch decided the entire series in England’s favour. In the first two matches, Cook was not scoring runs, and the stress was evident on his captaincy; Sir Jadeja, though, decided to shower his blessings on him, and India had to bear the brunt of it. With runs in his kitty, the 29-year-old grew in confidence and outplayed India with his “funky” captaincy.

The Indian slip fielding, in general, was a horror show with more catches being dropped than caught.

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#2 Team Selection

Throughout the series, India were clueless with respect to their team selection. The first match called for two spinners to be played, but they went ahead with Stuart Binny. In the 4th match, when an additional pacer could have been helpful, they picked both Ravichandran Ashwin and Jadeja. The Saurashtra spinner was given undue chances only for Ashwin to prove later – in one match – that he is a better bet both as a batsman and a bowler. Also, cough *brain fade Rohit Sharma* cough.

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#3 Ishant Sharmas injury

After winning the match at Lord’s single-handedly, unfortunately for the visitors, Ishant Sharma was declared unfit for the next two matches. And, in a squad comprising of 6 pacers, we couldn’t find a replacement for him. Pankaj Singh tried hard, but his luck seemed to have deserted him, which left India gasping for breath. Did the selectors miss a trick by not taking Umesh Yadav in the squad? The stories of ifs and buts.

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#4 Ego wickets to Moeen Ali

Moeen Ali, the part-time spinner, took 19 wickets in the series, which is equivalent to India’s most successful bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar. The Indian batsmen looked to hit big as soon as he came on to bowl and, in the process, gifted their wicket away. If the Indian bowlers can bring any batsman to form, the same holds true for their counterparts.

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#5 Bhuvneshwar Kumars form

It was all fine for India till Bhuvneshwar was scoring runs, whose technique could have put some proper batsmen to shame. The team’s downslide coincides with him starting to fail with the bat. His scores of 19, 0, 0, 10, 5 in the last 3 Tests being an indicator.

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#6 N Srinivasan

Umm..I don’t know why I am blaming him, but, in India, it is a fair to blame the 69-year-old for everything that is wrong with Indian cricket. He could have made this a two-match series, and India could have escaped with a historic Test series triumph, with MS Dhoni being hailed as a master strategist.

P.S. This pie chart was made keeping in mind that Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli are too precious to be blamed for anything. Already everyone has started comparing their stats in this series to Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar’s worst series. Sigh..

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