This is going to get spicy!
The last time we met India two players ended up in front of a judge — now they are ramping up the revenge talk...
WE have arrived in India a little bit under the radar but it is very clear there is a mood for revenge on their part after three consecutive Test series defeats by us. There are adverts everywhere you look, talking about India taking their revenge and we know they’re going to be pumped up for the series.
The last time we played against India, Jimmy Anderson and Ravi Jadeja ended up in front of a judge — which was pretty bizarre — following their on-field set-to and I expect this to be a highlycompetitive series as well.
There has been some feistiness down the years between the two teams but you expect that between two groups of players who don’t like backing down.
You only make it as a professional cricketer if you are a fierce competitor. Look at the greats of the game: Ricky Ponting, Glenn McGrath, Brian Lara. They were tough competitors who would look you in the eye when the going got tough. This series will be no different, I’m sure. You expect that fight and passion.
The key for us will be not to feel too intimated by having fielders around the bat the whole time and being able to stick to our gameplans and not let anything detract from that. India are normally pretty vocal but I don’t see that as a negative thing. We have characters like Ben Stokes and Alastair Cook who thrive on that. I certainly do.
It’s vital we work out how to avert the sort of disastrous last session we had in Dhaka. With five Tests to play on what will most likely be turning and dry wickets, it’s inevitable we’ll experience a batting collapse again. Losing 10 wickets in a session is unacceptable so we have to limit the damage to three or four wickets when acollapse begins.
Apart from Cooky and Joe Root we’ve got a young top six fairly inexperienced in terms of playing on the subcontinent. The key thing for them to remember is to stay true to the methods that earned them an England shirt. Ben Duckett did that beautifully in the fourth innings at Dhaka, really taking the attack to Bangladesh’s bowlers.
Everyone has to find his own method and realise the game can happen quite slowly for a couple of days out here and then, when the pitch deteriorates, can turn quickly in the bowlers’ favour. When you’re in, you must cash in with big runs.
Home advantage is becoming more important and not many teams lose home series these days. When you look at Jadeja’s figures he has something like 21 wickets at 41.8 outside India and in India he has 64 wickets at 17.5.
The spinners are going to be the dangermen in the series and as seamers our job will be to give them control and look to strike when the ball starts reversing.
We’ll unquestionably be going into this series as massive underdogs but English sports teams seem to thrive in those situations and we believe we can repeat what we did here under Cooky in 2012. Even though the result of the last Test against Bangladesh didn’t go our way, the tour was still an invaluable bonding experience for the team because we spent so much time together.
We had an amazing welcome in Bangladesh and were brilliantly looked after while we there. The fans seemed really grateful that we’d gone out with all the security concerns, even it was one of the strangest experiences imaginable having all the presidential style security and not being able to leave the hotel.