London, July 26: In scathing criticism of India's performance in the opening Test loss to England, former English captain Nasser Hussain said Mahendra Singh Dhoni's men don't seem to value their number one status given how underprepared they looked in the match.
”I am so pleased that England won because they set the perfect template on how you should prepare for and then perform in a very important game of Test cricket.
”India were exactly the opposite. They just turned up with totally inadequate preparation and expected everything to be alright on the night. Do they not value their status as the best Test team in the world? They did not seem to here,” Hussain wrote in the ‘Daily Mail'.
Hussain said England have had the best possible preparation for the series and it is now showing in their performance.
“Everything that England have done this summer has been geared towards making sure their players are as ready as possible for this Test series, including Andrew Strauss playing at Taunton and Stuart Broad playing for Notts,” he said.
”In contrast, India expected their top strike bowler in Zaheer Khan and their premier batsman in Sachin Tendulkar to rock up without playing a Test since January and just have a bit of a hit and giggle against Somerset before the big one. They did not help themselves,” he added.
Hussain said the English team is in such fine form that India were perhaps not ready for them.
”India simply were not ready for them in this game. India have real issues. Zaheer is injured, quite probably because his body was not right for this game, and it is difficult to see how he can play in the second Test,” he said.
”After that match India just have a two-day game at Northants to get ready for the third Test, when they will again have little opportunity to get themselves right for the second half of the series. What's going on with them?” he asked.
Hussain also criticised the Indian Cricket Board's insistence on not having the LBWs covered under the Decision Review System.
”For us to have a halfway house, mish-mash of a decision review system in this series has been driven by India and frankly it's confusing and pathetic. Either we have the full system or we don't use it at all. Let's not say we can have HotSpot because India like it but we can't have Hawk-Eye because they don't,” he said. PTI
