I just think that this is the best thing happened for the indian team. I am sure youngsters will be getting more chances now.

Hmm... After all I'm not a lone sailor!!! Exactly I remember my dreams of an Indian team win with the same way as it happened in reverse. And I would say someone changed the scorecard... Hahahaha... But the reality is Dhoni is the real gift to INDIA U could call him a MIDAS / Golden Egg Duck / common man with great Cricketing common sense - Either way we should make proper use of his potentials and not break open it sooner as does the BCCI greedy fools...

I suggest that everyone look at the scores made by Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting in the last test series of Australia agsint England and see our great compare against them I personally think they are the yardstick to compare to or even Mcihael Clarke. Dravid easily will compare very favorably. Where do the youngsters Gambhir, Yuvraj fit in spite of the catching practice he gave.

The best batting line up and the best bowling unit (minus perennially unfit Zaheer, out form Harbhajan) played in the 3rd test and Ind still suffered their biggest loss of the series thus far. Mind you, Eng scored 700+ runs and blew Ind away for less than 250 in both innings. What does that tell you?. Massive changes are needed to change team's chances in the near future. The schedules will not get any less crowded or else various cricket boards will go bankrupt, so people should stop making that an issue any longer. The simple fact is Eng is ascent (like Ind was 3 yrs ago) and Ind on descent due to aging team. It's just an inevitable cycle we all know.

The Indians are still in the IPL mood.Even the experienced players do not like to play a patient knock.They try to be cool for some time but suddenly play a poor shot.

On the next tour to eng,ind batting would be; vijay,gambhir,pujara,kohli,rohit,raina.i wonder wht will happen?

Guys, this cannot be happening! S**5, u know, i wanted to commit suicide the start of this year, but didn't, just to see India win the world cup once again, a grand glory that they achieved a year after i was born! I know u guys would just be sarcastic and i wouldn't go into personal what-lead-to-what, but here, i can't digest Indians losing to effin Brits! I know sports transcend color, creed, caste and nations, but hell no, we don't fall like this, not like this in front of anybody but the Brits, and hell no, not like this! I know teams have highs and lows, but Indians going down like this without even a decent fight in front of the Brits who darn near destroyed our country, time passes and has past, but no, not like this! What don't u guys have, money, popularity, g***s, whatever, i for one, with my one eye blinded could show a looooot more guts than Sachin to Sreeshanth in this series! ESPNCRICINFO's not gonna publish my emotions, but at least they'll know what i felt n my folk!

India needs PAKI fast bowlers. There should be a mutual exchange of cricketers between the two nations. Junaid Khan can go to India (very promising young fast bowler), in return Virat Kohli should go to Pakistan. This would be ideal. A loss of a good young batsman is less than the gain of a good young fast bowler for India. The exchange can be made at the Lahore border post.

This I believe will also help the peace process or something... whatever.

Samir's 'regional division of tasks' (Punjabi fast bowlers, Maharashtrian slip fielders, etc.) raises an interest question: does it hold water? The Punjabi paceman, in particular, is a sort of holy grail of Indian cricket, but ironically, with the exception of Balwinder Singh Sandhu, I can't think of too many. R.I.P. Singh, perhaps. (I refuse to concede Kapil to Punjab.) If we look at the backgrounds of the men who have taken the cherry for India lately, it's a pretty eclectic mix: Baroda, Bombay, Karnataka, Kerala. After Amar Singh, the great Punjabi quicks are all Pakistani! And yet Punjab has produced two of India's great spinners.

@Abbascheema: They definitely can't do worst than current batsmen mate.

The only thing that BCCI will do is to set a few series at home on flat pitches. The Indian players will score more centuries and all will be forgotten. That's how we fix problems in Indian Cricket. Fans will also forget and the money will keep rolling in. When cricket is run by politicians, nothing is considered broken as long as the $$$ keeps coming.

Abbascheema, your batting line up for the next tour of England (vijay,gambhir,pujara,kohli,rohit,rainaine)sounds eerily prophetic and I can only pray that God help India! And who will do the bowling?
Gals and guys, just accept the fact that every team goes through triumphs and tribulations and all good things must come to pass. Our Big three gave us enough thrills to last us all a life time and let us cherish the memories. RIP - Indian test cricket! You lived a very good life!

Even an average team will not face such huge defeat. I donno what made India, who won in all kind of pitches earlier, to perform like this. This performance is less than that of below average team's. Definitely they are talented but very very low in confidence.

Too much has been said abt india not performing well outside subcontinent. Let's not forget that eng have done terribly on the subcontinent. The next series they play in India will be a 5 match series. It will be payback time then and a chance to grab the no 1 ranking back.

i am watching the cricket since the time when india used to literally rely on only one i.e. sachin , from the time of '96...since then time has changed , team has changed and most impotently reliance sachin has gone down...but the mind of old fans has'nt changed yet , still whenever the team loose it is sachin who is blamed first ...fans always expect him to perform in each match he plays as they consider him their deity in cricket ...but the reality is he too is nervous like other batsman each time when he starts his innings...he too feels the anxiety to play well...after all he too is human...guys do not always pull his legs whenever the team loose...try to leave him alone for some moment , he has made us proud in various moments in cricket now its our time to make him feel proud of us by showing our love and support to him which he and team really needs at this time .....love and respect for sachin and my team india u have made us proud time and time again...jai hind!!!!!

Bcci"s greed for money to push our players to excesscricket is the main reason.hope they may wake up.IPL is another villan

Very well said in first part , you had given words to every Indian's Fantasy since 1980s. I will say Indian Team and BCCI had fulfilled our dream upto some extent. I will not give much importance to this loss as its a part of game, we had lost 3 match in a row after 12 years. The first thing missing from India is the ruthlessness while winning as they won in no. of series by 1-0 or 2-1 instead of 3-0 or 4-0. The other thing they doesn't shown enough fight while loosing some Test matches as they lost by various matches even in this decade by innings or 100s of runs. Since this game of cricket is growing towards perfection, India should go for specialist cricketer for each form of cricket or even go for fast pitch and slow pitch specialist. Amount of cricket can't be decrease that's for sure. You can't play just 5 test and 10 one days a year. You have to develop specialist teams for each form and pitch. I believe India have great talent and potential.....Happy Independence Day

@Andyzaltman Well thats an interesting idea but I dont think pakistani people would want to lend India a decent enough bowler. They are not even happy with wasim making some money there for actually doing nothing LOL

I think the Indian team deserves this loss. No, no, I am not talking about the incompetence of the team. I am talking about the need to alter the current system run by the BCCI. People like Kris Srikkanth don't want the public to hear the truth. They keep beating around the bush and tell us the obvious. We all know the team failed in the batting and the bowling departments. We don't need to hear that. What we need is HOW the BCCI are going to address this problem. Strong measures need to be put in place. We need a complete revamp of the domestic structure in India. A good beginning would be to prepare pacy wickets for our batsmen. This would also encourage our bowlers to alter their lengths. More A tours to SA, Aus and Eng should be arranged like the England Lions tours. We also need to groom allrounders. This is a serious area of concern. Lastly, the IPL should be cut down to 3 weeks and should have only 1 round robin. Scrap all meaningless tours and fixtures.

For all those who think it ws bcs of Dhoni that we achieved no#1 ranking, here r his stats to ponder on.

Dhoni's Scores

SL vs Ind(July 10) 1st innings 2nd innings Result
1st test 33 4 SL won by 10wickets
2nd test 76, DNB Draw
3rd test 15, DNB Ind won by 5 wickets

Ind v Aus(Oct 10)
1st Test 14, 2 Ind won by 1 wicket
2nd Test 30 DNB Ind won by 7 wicket

Ind vs NZ(Nov 10)
1st test 10, 22 Match drawn
2nd test 98 DNB India won

SA vs Ind(Dec 10)
1st test 33 90 SA won by an innings and 25 runs
2nd test 35 21 Ind won by 87 runs
3rd test 0 DNB Match drawn

WI Vs Ind
1st test 0 16 Ind won by 63 runs
2nd test 2 5 Draw
3rd test 74 DNB Draw

Eng Vs Ind
1st test 28 16 Eng won by 196 runs
2nd test 5 0 Eng won by 319 runs

Its always been laxman,dravid and the bowlers who won/saved the test matches for us in the recent past and Dhoni is taking all the credit

Samir, I understand how you feel, with all the irony involved :) Ironic, isn't it that such a fall has come right after such a high (WC2011)? I guess the problem began when the players themselves actually started believing in their own hype (fans and media are wont to, but the players??).
@Kichaa....mate its been 64 years..do get that chip surgically removed off your shoulder please. Quite frankly I'm a bit bemused as to how such a post has been allowed to come through on such a forum.

i doubt whether india wd hv won the world cup if it were not played on flat dead tracks.....

The Lankans accounted themselves much better than our Indian team against this good english attack. Barring a brainfreeze in a single session, they matched the english everytime. How so?

Sans Pravin kumar there was absolutely no healthy aggression in the Indian side. Dravid"s gesture or rather a non-gesture showed it all when he went out without being really out. Just pathetic! Sport is not for a veganist nation. You can not have muscle power from Idli and Dhosa let stand aggression. We go Mahtma"s way. Peace ...shanti,,,dum maro dum! Hallo! bye! Gone to sleep.

But Rohit how will the India bowl out england on Flat pitches with this set of bowlers. England have declared in every game so far on helpful wickets for the bowlers. On flat wickets the scores would be unbelievable. I have mixed feelings about this series if been fun teasing indian friends about the scores but its lacked excitement of a close run game. I kept thinking ooh these batsmens are some the best to every pick up a bat maybe they with give us a game but each time they have lamely fallen apart.

Shri that is a good point about Ponting and Clarke (both 50+ avg batsmen) they had terrible averages when they played Englands bowling attack in the last series.

india can win only at home grounds. india was always a very dangerous team at their home ground since azaharuddin's time , ganguly . dhoni was lucky that india played so many matches in their home ground. now it's the time to realise that they cannot bat on fast and swinging pitches . they just want to play on flat and dead pitches to better their batting figures .

The author being too melodramatic!
MS Dhoni and india are the hottest ticket in town!
They won the world cup that can be cherished for next 4 years! I rather live with world cup win than a unimportant test series with the pomps!

The test cricket has no meaning these days! The rankings are totally bogus! The audience are shrinking all over the world. Except england and australia who watch test cricket more due to nostalgia and a seasonal reasons than anything else( they cant play cricket for nearly 9 months in a year!).

The drubbing was expected after non stop cricket aust,sout,srila india, srlianka in srilanka, championship league, south africa in south africa, world cup, ipl, west indies all with hardly 2 months gap! And now england tour!

We are lucky to see indians holding bat and bowl, forget about winning!
Had india arrived 3 weeks early and prepared for conditions. The story would have been totally different!
Test cricket is not on BCCI priority list and also sponsorers list!

continuing from previous post!
Test cricket is not bcci's list! It is a non profit organisation! And nearly a couple of billion dollars are needed to over haul indian set up! The stands are still quite dirty and not up to top australian grounds! The facilities at grass root level is still pathetic!
And indian board doesn't know how to prepare swing and bouncy pitches! The only way to do this is lift the pitch from perth,south africa and some england ground and place it in india!

A world cup in test cricket is the only answer to salvage this format with virtually empty grounds all over the world!
And just couple of teams who are good in their home ground( england cant win in subcontinent forget it! we saw what happened in world cup! James anderson was a canon fodder here!)

A 2 months tournament with straight knock out involving top 8 is the answer! These series used to be good in 70's when there was no
Internet!
Now kids spend time on face book and mobile phone! Unlike us who used

Unlike me who used to wake up at 4 am to watch india play aus in australia and get walloped to the bone( well they won world championship there).
So all in all this 4-0 drubbing was expected! Indian board is still not that sophisticated by any stretch of imagination!
So they really cant plan properly!

There management skills are terrible! Those with some management skills are bought by glitz, glamour and corruption( like MODI).
Well they were dying to get a taste of it anyway!

Indian cricket team has won lot of laurels! They have given a lot compared to the disappointing effort of 80's and 90's teams!

I would take 2007 t-20, aus one day win, aus series win, one day wins! And mother load world cup win any day!
Let the english keep the no 1 ranking for now!
Dhoni needs to learn aggressive captain skills and planning!
After 30! Just going by instincts wont work!
Even marlon brando found out!

Tendulkars 100 century is coming up! Let us hail the champion there!

Dig it?

Indian is giving poor Schacin a chance all the time to make his record more good. Think about India. not for Mr. Tendulkar. He is old fellow. he should retire now. Don'tact like a superman.

There is a biological problem that faces Indians when they travel to England. Coming as they do from more sunny countries, they have darker skins and as such their retinas are less sensitive to light (The reduced sensitivity is a protection against the harsh sunlight of the tropics). This means that they can see the ball clearly only in bright conditions. In England, especially with cludy weather, the Indian eye fails to see the ball as clarly as the lighter skinned Brits can. So if you add speed as well as swing to this handicap, it becomes even worse.

Remember the ligher skin allows the Brits to absorb all the sun they can during the few months of sunlight they have every year and are able to respond to and absorb radiation even during the cloudy days. However, in Australia and South Africa, the brightness of sun is comparable to some Indian cities - so the Indian handicap is not that bad. New Zealand conditions are similar to England and can be as troublesome for the Indians.

'aal ij well aal ij well aal ij well...' take heart fr the dialogue of the movie 3 idiots and we will see young aspiring aggresive cricketers replacing the mahatmas and the om shanti oms

India have always had a problem when the pressure has been applied, the difference this time is that it has been relentless, they have not been given time to draw breath and have not been given a way back into the tests. India's ageing batsmen and ineffective bowling have not been able to turn the tables on what is the best England side I have ever seen. That is a tribute to England more than a comdemnation of India, but India must now look to the future and get the BCCI to put an effective system in place to bring them up to the standards England are setting, just like England did when the Australians were dominant. As for Mr Kichaa saying that Britain nearly destroyed India, there was no such country as India before the Raj, and as it didn't exist, it could not have been destroyed by Britain.

exactly thats going to happen when the poms tour here next here . remember azza's team demolishing them 3/0 .if we falter there its the same when they tour here .please stop making a noise of it

@Pinak: SL survived maily because of the trerrible whether, In T1 England were able to declare with a 96 run first innings advantage, in T2 things were fairly equal on first innings but England were able to declare on the second, in the third test England yet again declared with a 200 run advantage - England were in winning positions in all 3 tests but run out of time in the second 2, the second test lost 86 overs to rain, the third a massive 190 overs.

Now everyone is against Sachin, Dravid & Laxman. Few months back people were praising that India had yound ones and old experience. And now people r firing at senior players. What if younger players fall too. We need to be behind our team all the time. They need our supports. We talk about money, what about millions of curses on them when they don't perform. Thinking about future, that's really harsh becoz its not necessary that all young ones play for minimum 15 years. They can have dip in form too. Lets support India and accept the defeat and move on. Cheers for next match and ODI's.

Vikram your theory should be applicable to all sports men and women around the world.To the best of my knowledge no sports person has blamed weather as a factor for his failure in the field.Cricketers from cold regions of the world come to India during peak summer and play good cricket but never utter a word about weather.It is a real shame to see our crickters blaming every thing except their commitment.Every cricket team in the world has potential talent and are capable of attaining great victories.It is not that we only have the talent,capacity etc.We should know and lear to respect the opponents first.No team can remain No-1 all the time.

@Rohit- Very True. Thats what will happen. We will play tonnes of matches in India and think England was just an aberration. In fact Dhoni was hinting at that when he said, we anyway play 70-80% matches in India, so an England tour loss is fine..

Why Dhoni could not replace Raina? becausehe plays with him in IPL and I saw Dhoni's confidence going down in WestIndies last test.That match in India's hands and he called back the batsmen(Laxman and Dravid)withpoutputting up any fight.During England test series he did not open with Sharma.So if youcan not put confidence in your teamates how can you command.He should have takenMunaf patel instead of spinner in place of Bhajji's place

Test cricket remains the zenith of a player's skill and this series has left no doubt that England is the best and should be for some time; I don't recall as complete an English team as this. To the individuals who have mentioned the Indian team's inability of playing on seaming and "swinging wickets" (I thought swing was due to atmospheric conditions and the skill of the bowler) I suggest that you look at recent history. The team got to no. 1 beacuse of overseas wins. Prior to the England series, the Indian team's inability to score in the West Indies was a red flag; I take the flogging from England as a positive although the BCCI is focused on the greed accrued from T20 and ODIs rather than tests. The focus on SRT's 100th 100 should stop; the team needs to get back the aggression it picked up post 2000 when Ganguly took the captaincy. The turning point of this series was when England were 120 for 8 on day 1 of the 2nd Test and they fought back.

I still support india, only 1 test series they have lost against Dhoni's captaincy. we have to support india in this situation as they will come back good in ODI series and T20 Vande Madaram India Wins

I believe if there is any merit in countries like india, pakistan, west indies, or may be srilanka they can be the top four in the world, but as there is no merit system in these countries there is no chance they can be real champions, as well indivisual performance can not make you champion, it include a lot i.e coach, physio,psych as well more improtantly dicipline, which we don't have at all.

strange to see indians defending dhoni still. he is not a test cricket player. he is completely uninterested. only indians can keep such a person as their representative. india's no.1 test ranking was not because of him ... it was inspite of him. anyways a country deserves what it gets.

Test cricket is overrated man especially in the modern world after dot.com revolution!
you are in no hurry to score! The real pressure in any competition is when you perform under pressure!
Take all the exams in the world! Do you write 5 day exam?
you write few 3 hour exams per semester!
Each exam is at most 3 hours or 3.5 hours max!
you write bunch of such exams to get a result!
A test series is totally useless without any proper competition!
The rankings are totally bogus and indians are blindly sold out as they do not have any other sports to fall back( india sucks in all other sports period.).

If a batman is allowed to bat 7 days like rahul dravid or cook does than we can have plenty of draws! What about bowler can bowl any number of bouncers?
That is not real test!
Those people who are saying test cricket is real test of skills and character are still living in bygone era!Have no sense of competition in the world!

your skills are tested in limited time period.

compared to the draw back of test cricket!
End less time, life less pitches, lop sided home advantage, no sense of competition, meaningless draws,timid audience!
One day cricket has is real competition where you have to get maximum out of limited bowls to bat and bowl just like any real exam in life( you need to come prepared! there is no time to ease in to exams here! you don't do well in GMAT,CAT,GRE in one shot you are going home buddy!).
I demand the ICC to strip all the bilateral test series'es and come up with proper once in 2 years tournament to decide the champion!

Or every year have knock out tournament to decide the champion!
Best of 3 series quarter final, semi and final( so top test get 9 matches to show there skills).

3 to 4 months competition would suffice!
Or test cricket would die in modern era!
None of my cousins watch cricket anymore! They spend tonne of time on social sites!

And stop this cliche terms like test cricket is the pinnacle of testing skills,zenith of that, character of this jargon! blah blah! NO body remembers these matches 20 years from now! But they would remember world cup wins!
Can you imagine the agony had india lost world cup again despite having the home advantage? They lost previous 2 times?
The pain and the wait would have been unberable! That would have meant 2 back to back flops and 2003 agony! And next world cup is in australia and we know how we did there previously!

Thank dhoni and his team 1000 times that they have given something big to cherish for long time to come!
Are there any other world championship india has in any other sports to cherish?

Nobody will remember these lop sided matches and humdrum english wins!

So much for indians team debacle!

As mentioned in previous post! Indian team is totally burn out having paid non stop cricket for last 2 years now!

To put the loss at Edgbaston 2011 in perspective, it was not as heavy a defeat as Adelaide 2006 was for England. Imagine how much better it could have been, with Laxman and Tendulkar both scoring double centuries, declaring for six hundred odd and losing.

Just look at the SO CALLED "England" team comprising Straus, Cook, Bell, Trott, Pieterson, Morgan, Bopara, Prior, Tremlett, Broad, Bresnan, Swann, Anderson. Now let's see 3 imports from South Africa and 1 from Ireland and 1 ethnic Indian - that's 5 out of the 11. So what stops India from importing services of Ravi Bopara (Daredevils), Owais Shah (Rajasthan Royals), Monty Panesar ( oh-c'mon-just-recruit-him- Kings Xi PUNJAB),make them Overseas Citizens of India with an assured place in the playing XI on all England tours ? But seriously, can this ENGLAND team really be called that ? It's more like a Colonial XI ! .. add to that XI underprepared Indians = recipe for disaster, ain't it ?

Dhoni having made tons of rupees so far does not care any more for the game. He has been playing so recklessly these days and has in no way motivated young talented players and aspirators to play the game with the sole aim of winning each and every match. A strong reason for this callousness is because, we the Indians worship these players next to God and they thereby become the most lethargic guys in the world. This attitude should stop and each player must be given the warning that he will not be required the time he gives a poor performance. The rules should be strict on this and only then the game will be played with fighting spirit.

Guys! The flaw remains in our system. England thrashed India neat and square. I accept it..Well..What else do you expect? Look at the team.. The fastest bowler can hardly reach 140kph. Is this all I can expect from a country with 1.1 bil people? If you cant have a true paceman in domestic circuit, how do you expect the youngsters to play against them and be prepared for the real deal. I dont believe that IPL is a talent hunt. We need to go to the schools like they do in US footbal and Basketbal.Even when India reigned the No.1 spot, I didn't expect them to stay there for ever. Believe me gentlemen, I am a true follower of Indian Cricket and I always cherished bowling fast and intimidating the batsmen. So, what about Spin.. I am not seeing any quality in our spinners. What bites me most is an English (no offense) reigning the top spinner spot and not an Asian.

I am just a neutral cricket fan. I was looking to forward to India's very talented cricketers strut their stuff, but they never really turned up. The only exception was Rahul Dravid who was superb and few flashes of brilliance from Tendulkar and Lakshman other than that India didn't turn up for this test series, a real disappointment.Its hard to believe the Indian team with a good mix of truly great batsman and good youngsters lost the test series 4-0. The only explanation I can come up with is the Indian players lost their motivation to play test cricket after the second test match was lost and were simply thinking of returning back home as soon as possible.

I think that England will lose the one-day series. England, (as do India), always seem to subconsciously 'empathize with the vanquished'. Unfortunately, cricket is too much about nationalism in our modern world. Instead of indulging ourselves in 'bargain counter nationalism', I feel we should be looking to strengthen ideas like the IPL; make it more universal. (The purist will hate me.) How long can it go on -- this endless war between a mere 10 nations -- of whom only 8 are seriously worth considering? This has been going on for almost a hundred years now and it's become an unhealthy anachronism. It's high time the whole game was restructured.