India vs England: File photo of Sunil Gavaskar© AFP
The Indian cricket team just finished a 4-1 rout of England in a five-Test series. Rohit Sharma marshalled a young Indian cricket team with absolute control as the side consolidated its place on top of the World Test Championship standings. The loss was a first for the Bazaball era in England Test cricket. There was much hype surrounding England’s aggressive brand of Test cricket under coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes. They won the first Test too but later could not stop India.
Former Indian cricket team captain Sunil Gavaskar commented on the sledging Incidents between the two teams during the series.
“That is also the reason why the England and Indian players get into verbal skirmishes so often when they are playing against each other. Not a lot of England players are picked in the IPL, mainly because they can be withdrawn by their Board anytime for a preparation camp or something, which leaves the franchises in a lurch,” Sunil Gavaskar wrote in a column for Sportstar.
“Some of them can’t stomach the fees for which some of the Indian players are bought and compare their achievements at the international level when the IPL auction dynamics can be so volatile and hard to explain or even understand. So you see more lip in the India-England encounters than in any other India match. That’s why the pleasure of beating England is always greater.”
Sunil Gavaskar also gave his take on England’s Bazball.
“When Ben Stokes’ team came to India, there was a buzz around it as they had started to play a brand of aggressive batting that the British media dubbed ‘Bazball’. This was because the new coach Brendon McCullum’s nickname is ‘Baz’. He encouraged the players to always go in with a positive mindset and to keep at it, irrespective of the result. The batting thus became ultra-aggressive, with players encouraged to hit sixes and fours with a dot ball as the least preferred option. Stokes wanted his players to play like rock stars, whatever that means, and with England beginning to win games, the fans and the media were euphoric,” he wrote.
“There’s no doubt that the batting was exciting to watch with the way the scoreboard rattled along. They even scored more than 500 runs in a day in Pakistan and then went on to win all the Test matches played there.
“However, all this batting frenzy was on good batting pitches against opposition attacks that weren’t quite threatening.”
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