England Tour Of India: The England team is going to visit India soon. The 5-match test series between the two teams will start from January 25. Team India has not lost any Test series on its home grounds in the last 10 years. In such a situation, this tour is not going to be easy for England. Especially for the English fast bowlers, the biggest difficulties are going to arise here. Actually, Indian pitches are a bit slow and foreign fast bowlers have been seen successful here on very few occasions.
Spinners play an important role on Indian wickets. But at present England does not have any spinner who can create problems for the Indian batsmen. This means that the entire bowling attack of England is going to be the responsibility of the fasts. In such a situation, South African legend Allan Donald has come forward to help the fast bowlers of England. He has told what kind of bowling can be successful on Indian pitches.
Allan Donald was a member of the South African team that won the Test series on Indian grounds in 1999–2000. In this series, he played an important role in the Test series victory of the Proteas team by taking important wickets of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar.
‘Keep the ball on the stumps and the length should be full’
Speaking to PTI on the sidelines of South Africa’s T20 league, Allan Donald said, ‘When Hansie Cronje was our captain, our mindset was always aggressive. Our then coach Bob Woolmer also had good experience of Indian conditions. He was also well aware of the mentality and mindset of the Indian players. The first thing we always talked about was the first 25-30 overs with the new ball. There we always kept the ball at slightly full length. Our balls were on the stumps and the fielding was also decided accordingly.
‘No need to set negative fields’
Alan Donald says, ‘We knew that the ball would not get much movement on the pitch there, so it was necessary to keep every ball on the stumps. In such a situation, if there is even a little swing then the work can be done. This is the only thing that can be done there. After this, when the ball becomes old, you do not need to set a negative field. You can field extra fielders at cover.
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