Bat and ball / Frank Gregan / 19 September 2011 /

Not many would have predicted that the great India would have lost every single one of their matches on their long tour of England. But lose them they did. How exactly did this aberration happen, asks Frank Gregan.

It's been a mixed year of cricket thus far. The Ashes and the ICC World Cup lived up to expectations but the much anticipated Indian tour of England turned out to be a non-contest. It was such a pity.

India have plenty of fans in England, not only those who have ancestral links to the country but thousands of others that love to see good cricket. And good cricket is exactly what MS Dhoni and his men have been dishing up in recent years, bucketloads of it. It's very difficult to fathom out how they could suddenly have gone from invincible to inept, almost overnight.

The Indian Premier League is taking most of the blame on its wealthy shoulders. The arguments about the merits of allowing centrally contracted players to participate go on and on. The Indian worry was that one of their bowlers would suffer from playing too much cricket because despite having a tremendous batting line up (in the past and on paper at least!) the Indian bowling attack looked short of quality.

Zaheer Khan was the exception, he was the bowler that the English feared the most and to lose him during the first Test was a hammer blow to their chances. With their main strike bowler out of the series an attack which had looked thin, suddenly looked about as ferocious as the Teletubbies.

The IPL got the blame for the Khan injury which is cited as one of the main reasons that India were unable to compete. But let's get real here, would India have won the series had Khan stayed fit? No, not a chance. But they would have had a much more potent bowling attack which might have been able to have seen them through the series with a bit of dignity.

The sub-plot throughout was when would Sachin Tendulkar score his 100th ton and every time he took to the crease both sets of supporters and cricket fans around the world were willing him to succeed. He reached the nineties at the Oval during the fourth Test and looked set to reach the milestone only to be undone by the guile of Tim Bresnan. That just about summed up the tour - an abundance of hope cruelly extinguished.

Sometimes in sport, as in life, there are periods when nothing seems to go your way and India didn't seem to be able to catch a break when it mattered. Every time they got a foothold in any of the formats something extraordinary seemed to happen which seized the initiative from them.

Every team needs a little luck but the only luck India seemed to possess was bad! A classic example was that they never won a single toss during the five match one-day series. The toss mightn't be vital during one-dayers but winning it sets the tone and gives everyone a little lift.

Far more importantly though, they just never clicked, their greats didn't produce en masse which is what's needed to win over in England. Cricket is a team sport but individual battles have to be won. If a team wins seven out of the eleven individual battles the chances are they will win the match. Sadly for India and everyone throughout the world who had looked forward to this tour, it never looked like happening.

But it's over and India have to put the series behind them and move on. They have an opportunity to pick up some revenge on home soil when England visit to play five ODIs and one T20 match next month. It will be a great chance to get some pride back..

England are back in T20 action this week when Graeme Swann gets the opportunity to lead his country for the first time in a two match series against the West Indies which gets underway on Friday at the Oval. England are [1.4] with the West Indians [3.5] but a much more tempting price is England at [1.9] to win 2-0 in the Series Score market. Anyone who saw the Windies in England last time around at this time of year will know that they don't do English autumns!

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