India tour of England: The dogdays are here

Graeme Swann of England celebrates the wicket of Gautam Gambhir of India during day five of the 4th npower Test Match between England and India at The Kia Oval on August 22, 2011 in London, England.

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Let us skip Bangladesh and focus on England. Who scheduled the Bangladesh tour anyway? The way they are going about their business these days, the Bangladeshis should know better than to indulge in hollow and useless rants about them not being taken seriously by the “big boys”.

Had Cricket Ireland done the honors of scheduling a tournament with them, the Irish team could easily have been spotted debating the veracity of the saying “the luck of the Irish” during the practice sessions and diving deep into the archives to extract parchments titled “The Tudor conquest of the Ireland”, “How Ireland became the go-to adventure Island for the Vikings?”, “6 maladies plaguing red heads”, and many more to support their baleful views on the subject.

Surely, video analyzing their Bangldeshi counterparts and laying down sinister plans to get their already wobbly batsmen out would have been at the bottom of their agenda, and so is it with India. But, strangely, this has irked their diminutive captain into letting out a full-blooded snarl in public. Apparently, no one noticed, which seems to have irked him further. Let’s ignore all that, though, and focus on the English.

So, nearly a month from now when the Indians would find themselves unpacking their suitcases to carefully shelve the homemade pickles, papads and khakharas, the chills of the memories of three years ago would make a few of them quiver. The few are only 3 in this case, though: Ishant Sharma, MS Dhoni and Gautam Gambhir.

One can speculate whether the concussions that plagued Gambhir towards the end of that Test match series had something to do with the dizzying and nauseating confusion caused by the bamboozling Graeme Swann. He would, however, be thankful to the Australians to have taken the Swann conundrum out of the equation forever.

The Australians, by the way, broke Jonathan Trott, as well, who had to return home mid series during last year’s Ashes series citing excessive stress as the reason. And what more? They don’t even have Kevin Pietersen in their set-up any longer. Surely, Indians, who three years ago kept springing up and down like frogs thrown in hot water throughout the tour, would be mildly amused by these facts .

Though, there is nothing amusing about the memories they possess right now. Prophecies have an uncanny way of coming true in sports: be it the burly Merv Hughes snapping at Alan Border with the words, ”A B, this little prick’s going to get more runs than you”, after Tendulkar reduced their fiercest bowler of the time Craig McDermott to shreds in Melbourne, or the much beloved Octopus Paul whose dangling tentacles decided which team’s way the tide would turn, or the doom-ridden words of Ian Botham who predicted India would be whitewashed in their last Test series in England after the team succumbed to its lowest total of the tournament in the second Test.

The last one was met with a few guffaws; after all India were the No. 1 Test side in the world, and the side had a lot of credentials. But it lacked credibility. Heavens save the current squad that doesn’t even have the always existent credentials.

Hence, keeping with the tradition of prophesying, I challenge any Nasser Hussain-cricket-brain-sized-bipedal-mammal (might belong to the genus homo if it wishes to ) to debate the certainty of the Indian side circulating amongst their batsmen glossy leaflets printed with bulleted points on “how to read the instructions written at the back of the bat correctly”, “4 easy steps to avoid getting embarrassed against swing bowling” , “how to keep everyone from knowing your inability against Anderson and Co.” followed by a section dedicated for writing the following line 20 times till they get it: “It is red, round and weighs about five ounces” (in the hope that this Pollock-Mantra might do the trick for their batsmen).

As for the result of the series, seriously, should anything be said?