Among a certain section of Indian cricket fans, there is the temptation to see the upcoming three-Test series against New Zealand as the appetiser for the main courses to follow against England (five Tests) and Australia (four).
But if you run through the squads, and especially the quality of the spin bowling, New Zealand have perhaps the best chance of inflicting a first home defeat on India since England triumphed 2-1 in 2012.
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As much as the vital runs made by Alastair Cook and Kevin Pietersen, that success was underpinned by the immaculate offspin of Graeme Swann, ably supported by the left-arm wiles of Monty Panesar. Swann has since retired, while Panesar is battling the gremlins in his mind. England’s spin larder is now so bare that Gareth Batty has earned a recall 11 years after playing his last Test.
You cannot say the same of New Zealand. Ish Sodhi, Mitchell Santner and Mark Craig may not have imposing statistics early on in their careers, but between them, they tick off every requirement – legspin, left-arm spin and offspin. When India played them on a spin-friendly surface in Nagpur during the World Twenty20 last March, Santner and Sodhi were instrumental in sending the tournament favourites hurtling to a heavy defeat.
The spinners will be under additional scrutiny now that Tim Southee’s ankle-ligament strain has ruled him out of the Test series. The last time New Zealand toured, in 2012, Southee took 7 for 64 in the first innings in Bangalore, and then dismissed Sachin Tendulkar in the second in a tightly contested game that India edged by just four wickets.
Trent Boult had a poor series then, and the pressure will be on him and Neil Wagner, the bustling left-armer born in Pretoria, to do some early damage against an Indian line-up that struggled for runs even while routing South Africa 3-0 last season. The portents were not good during the warm-up game against Mumbai in Delhi, as Kaustubh Pawar and Suryakumar Yadav took hundreds off them. Yadav, in particular, gave them a caning, scoring 103 from just 86 balls.
The main headline from the warm-up game, however, concerned another Mumbai batsman. Rohit Sharma was drafted in for the third Test against West Indies last month, and scored 9 and 41 before watching the rainfall in the fourth and final Test in Trinidad. Cheteshwar Pujara was one of those dropped to accommodate Rohit, and when both were asked to play in the Duleep Trophy this month, it was seen by many as a duke-off to see who would take the last middle-order spot in the XI.
It turned out to be no contest. Pujara made 166, 31 and 256 not out in three innings. Rohit managed just 30 and 32 not out. Against New Zealand in Delhi, he made a patchy 18 before being stumped off Sodhi’s bowling. It will take an extraordinary leap of faith from the selectors for him to retain his place at Pujara’s expense.
India will also depend heavily on their spinners to ask questions of a New Zealand line-up with very little experience of such conditions. Ravichandran Ashwin is the unquestioned leader of the bowling pack, while Ravindra Jadeja’s quick-and-flat left-arm spin can be devilishly hard to confront on helpful surfaces. Amit Mishra, with his old-style loop, provides the leg-spin threat.
If Murali Vijay, Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane bat as they have over the past couple of seasons, with timely support from Pujara and the likes of Lokesh Rahul, India should win with something to spare.
You have to go back to November 1988 for New Zealand’s last Test win in India – they have won just two of 31 matches – and it will need a Nagpur-style meltdown from the home side for that statistic to change.
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10 tips for entry-level job seekers
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Will the pound fall to parity with the dollar?
The idea of pound parity now seems less far-fetched as the risk grows that Britain may split away from the European Union without a deal.
Rupert Harrison, a fund manager at BlackRock, sees the risk of it falling to trade level with the dollar on a no-deal Brexit. The view echoes Morgan Stanley’s recent forecast that the currency can plunge toward $1 (Dh3.67) on such an outcome. That isn’t the majority view yet – a Bloomberg survey this month estimated the pound will slide to $1.10 should the UK exit the bloc without an agreement.
New Prime Minister Boris Johnson has repeatedly said that Britain will leave the EU on the October 31 deadline with or without an agreement, fuelling concern the nation is headed for a disorderly departure and fanning pessimism toward the pound. Sterling has fallen more than 7 per cent in the past three months, the worst performance among major developed-market currencies.
“The pound is at a much lower level now but I still think a no-deal exit would lead to significant volatility and we could be testing parity on a really bad outcome,” said Mr Harrison, who manages more than $10 billion in assets at BlackRock. “We will see this game of chicken continue through August and that’s likely negative for sterling,” he said about the deadlocked Brexit talks.
The pound fell 0.8 per cent to $1.2033 on Friday, its weakest closing level since the 1980s, after a report on the second quarter showed the UK economy shrank for the first time in six years. The data means it is likely the Bank of England will cut interest rates, according to Mizuho Bank.
The BOE said in November that the currency could fall even below $1 in an analysis on possible worst-case Brexit scenarios. Options-based calculations showed around a 6.4 per cent chance of pound-dollar parity in the next one year, markedly higher than 0.2 per cent in early March when prospects of a no-deal outcome were seemingly off the table.
Bloomberg
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