Will Virat Kohli's pre-season county stint be enough for India's success in England

Will Virat Kohli's pre-season county stint be enough for India's success in England

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While Twitter wasted no time in hailing Virat Kohli’s decision to play county for Surrey ahead of India’s tour of England series for self-improvement, one would still remain highly skeptical as to how far would these county stints actually help India rectify their dismal record on the English turf.

Playing county stints in England to get ‘acclamatized’ to the conditions before an away series has been nothing new for India. They have been touring England since as early as 1932 and till now has developed a rich pedigree of players, who have had a big mark in England’s domestic league.

Nawab Pataudi was the first to play for English club Worcestershire back in the 1930s. He played 33 matches for them between 1932-1938, and once the trend started, a series of players joined the bandwagon with Farokh Engineer playing the longest. The wicket-keeper batsman, who played 46 Tests for India, played as many as 164 matches for Lancashire, where he scored 5549 runs, taking 406 catches and effecting 31 stumpings.

It was further extended by the likes of Mohammad Azharuddin, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and many more, and while some getting success, others remained mediocre on the spicy turfs. Former Indian skipper Azharuddin played for Derbyshire, amassing 2485 runs in 29 matches at an average of 51.77 with eight centuries. Laxman, also from Hyderabad, used to play for Lancashire in the late 2000s where he scored 1237 runs in 16 matches at an average of 61.85.

The wall of Indian cricket, Rahul Dravid, is also on this elite list as he plied his trade for Kent Cricket Club where he played 16 matches at an average of 49.47, scoring over 1000 runs. A young master blaster also played for Yorkshire where he scored 1000+ runs at an average of 46.52. 

However, despite some of India’s best Test players spending considerable time in England, India could manage to win only thrice in the country in the last 86 years - 1971, 1986, 2007. And India could well argue that their first success in England back in 1971 should be credited more to the Kanga League that was initiated by Vijay Merchant in order to compete with the Britishers back in 1948.

It was in many ways the perfect solution for India’s woes in England. The early summers, during which India mostly visited England, saw cloudy skies that helped the ball swing more. Hence, Bombay Cricket Association started the Kanga League for their players during the monsoon months that saw similar conditions. After the rain, the turf would turn damp and the ball came slowly. But, as it slowly started drying, the pitch was at its lethal best as the ball could come in any manner - skid fast, get slow, cut or seam after hitting the pitch.  

Even totals of 50-60 runs would become a mammoth task to chase in Kanga League matches and playing in such conditions made the Indian batsmen all the more persistent. Under the new captaincy of Ajit Wadekar who had just succeeded Pataudi back then, India had managed to shock the world in 1971 with a stunning win at the Oval. Though it is largely remembered for the spinners’ delight, the likes of Wadekar, Dillip Sardesai and Engineer in the middle-order played a crucial role.

India’s last win in 2007, however, saw a brilliant batting display as the likes of Dinesh Karthik, Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman - all contributed significantly to cause before Zaheer Khan’s fifer proving to be the icing on the cake. India have visited England twice since then, playing eight Tests and losing seven of them. And India’s ever-growing problem to deal with the ball moving away from the batsman was at the core of most of those defeats. While Kohli has surely subdued the trend of India struggling on spicy pitches with a fighting loss in the Test series in South Africa, it hardly showed any signs of improvement.

While his Surrey stint could improve his stats in England at the most, where he has scored only 134 runs in five games so far at an average 13.40 with the highest being 39, India’s perennial problem with other batsmen still remains the biggest concern. And in Tests, unlike in the limited-overs format, Kohli’s solo brilliance would hardly work. It was reflected in South Africa’s massive 135-run win over India in the Centurion, where Kohli’s stupendous 153-run knock felt insufficient.

There are already apprehensions of a repeat of it during the England tour. Apart from Kohli, only Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravichandran Ashwin have proper experience as it is and if BCCI doesn’t arrange pre-match fixtures,  their dismal trend is bound to continue.

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