Jimmy Anderson booed at Trent Bridge and the "unselectable" Steven Finn

While England were demonstrating their ineptitude in the one day match at Trent Bridge, and India were completing a fairly clinical win, a couple of weird things caught my attention during the match.

A large partisan crowd at the stadium, mostly of Indian origin, roundly booed James Anderson throughout the match. Anderson was involved in an ugly on and off the field brawl with India's Ravindra Jadeja at Trent Bridge a few weeks ago. Amidst a volley of charges and counter-charges from both sides, the inquest by the ICC found no evidence to punish or reprimand either player, though there was general consensus that Anderson stepped over the line and got away with one, primarily because a CCTV camera at the site of the incident wasn't working. It follows therefore that Indian supporters would hurl a lot of abuse at James Anderson, right? So far so good.

The weird thing was that most of the folks abusing Anderson were Brits of Indian origin, watching the match being played in Britain. These people have Indian roots, so it is perfectly natural for them to support the Indian team against Australia, South Africa, Pakistan and so on. But when the Indian team is playing against England, THEIR national team, in England, it is a slightly different situation. Or so it seems to me. Therefore I found it very surprising that Anderson was booed so heavily, at his home ground, by his own compatriots. I hate Anderson's guts, but felt sorry for him yesterday and wouldn't be surprised if he, and many Brits who watched the spectacle, feel antagonistic towards the Indian community in Britain.

The other weird thing I heard during the match was about Steven Finn being sent back from the last tour to Australia because he was deemed "unselectable". Think about it for a moment - "unselectable" conjures up a lot of images in our minds, none of them very complimentary to the player being spoken about. The first thing that occurred to me when I heard this was, perhaps Finn suffered from a mental breakdown or depression - we have had a few of these in the recent past with blokes like Jonathan Trott. The other possibility, I figured, was that he had punched someone in a bar, called an "escort" to his room, or did something equally stupid to become "unselectable" after making the trip with the team. I don't know why I have this impression about Finn, but I do - that he is a somewhat sensitive and fragile bloke. The ECB could have discreetly called him back from Australia with an announcement that he is unable to take further part on the tour due to an injury, or a personal matter. To publicly hang the tag of "unselectable" on him as they did, was not the smartest thing to do. They have perhaps destroyed a promising career.

It is the wives and girlfriends stupid!

I was quite amused by an article I saw in yesterday's print edition of The Indian Express. It quoted a BCCI official who said that the board has determined that the England Test series disaster was a result of too much time being spent by the players with their wives and girlfriends and that in the future such interaction would need to be severely curtailed.

There has obviously been a lot of noise in India about the sorry capitulation of the team, and it is necessary to nail a person for the disaster or at the very least find a reason that is plausible, and that keeps all the important officials free of blame so they may continue unhindered in their cosy positions.

So the theory behind the disaster is slowly emerging. Duncan Fletcher and his support staff are the primary villains, and swift action has been taken to clip Fletcher's wings, and make his position untenable and humiliating. The other major reason is the wives and girlfriend angle. Sounds very plausible, and (even better) it is juicy as hell! Whether a clear causal relationship can be established between cause and effect is irrelevant. Causes have been identified and swift action taken. The patient has cancer and is running low grade fever. We believe the fever is the cause of the cancer. Let us give the patient a paracetamol tablet every 6 hours, and the cancer should clear up in a few days. Case closed.

I am really in awe of our brilliant cricket administrators.

A perfect Test series

India concluded a near perfect Test series against England. Just about the only desirable thing missing was a few umpiring howlers going against the Indians, howlers that would have been obvious on TV, and could have been overturned by the use of DRS, but would not have been because India's cricket establishment is the only one enlightened enough to know that DRS is bullshit.

Other than that everything else was just about perfect. Sample this:

• Someone needed to tell the selectors how incredibly stupid it was to pick Gautam Gambhir and Stuart Binny for this tour. The series could not have provided a clearer message. Gambhir's pedigree (or lack thereof) as a Test batsman in seamer friendly conditions is well known, but he was selected on the strength of a few decent, but less than stellar domestic performances. His dismissals in the final Test have (hopefully) provided enough embarrassment to his supporters in the cricket establishment to leave him alone now. Poor Binny was picked on the basis of one outlandish bowling spell in a ODI in seamer friendly conditions against the might of the Bangladeshi batting line up! Talk about dumb decisions.

• I couldn't have scripted a better way to expose the folly of playing Ravindra Jadeja as our only spinner and number 7 batsman in these conditions. It was unfortunate that he scored a highly unlikely 68 at Lords that helped us win, but everything was back to normal in the next two Test matches, and the batting exploits of Bhuvaneshwar and Ashwin further exposed the limitations of Jadeja as a lower order batsman.

• Before the last Test match Dhoni made a very insightful statement - "Process is more important that the result. We have to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the last Test". Lo and behold, Dhoni's team followed the same process, and achieved the same result, which didn't matter of course. As long as you follow the same process, it doesn't matter if you get bundled out for 148 and 94 while your opposition clobbers you for 486 in their only innings. It was heartening to see the captain of the Indian team make such an important statement and live by it - so what if the rest of the world thought it was not a very smart thing to say?

• Confidence and humility are strange bedfellows, but they are both important for success in sports, as long as they are deployed in the right proportion. Kohli had to understand that his precocious talent in the limited overs game did not guarantee him automatic success in Tests, and there could not have been a better lesson for him than an average of 13 over 5 Tests. Kohli is as mentally tough as they come, and he is sure to bounce back from his disastrous performance which will be good for India in the long term.

• The series has provided further evidence, if there was any required, that a serious rethink is needed on how the game should be run in the country to fundamentally change our ability to compete with the toughest teams in all conditions around the world. This is a tough one. I expect to see the familiar outrage but no tangible long term action. We will have to pray for several more debacles of this magnitude to take place, in order to see useful action on the ground.

• Finally it is clear that Dhoni has outlived his role as the Test leader. India's astonishing collapse and lack of spine will perhaps force some thinking on a change of leadership, which would not have happened with a 1-1, or even a 1-2 result.

All in all I am delighted with how this series went. You can't have everything, but if only the umpires had made some costly blunders negatively affecting the Indian team, I would have been in heaven...