With only five home Tests against England in the last decade, my picks for India's best XI of the past forty years is short of players likely to feature in the forthcoming series. No Dhoni, Zaheer Khan, Gambhir or Sehwag. However, it's a formidable line-up in anyone's book.
Legendary opener Sunil Gavaskar played 22 times in these fixtures but only in 1982 did he really show his true talent. His average of 36 was well short of his Test career figure of 51 but his aggregate of 1331 runs makes him an automatic choice. No other opener has scored particularly highly, so I'm making Sunil's partner his 1970s team-mate Farokh Engineer. A wicket-keeper who usually batted at six or seven, his highest score in five-day cricket came at the top of the order at Bombay in February 1973. He was a fine 'keeper, too, and he needed to be when standing up to India's spin quartet of that era.
The middle-order is so hard to pick. Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar didn't disappoint against England, scoring over 1400 runs between them. The Little Master has aggregated 848 in eleven games at more than 60. So what about Ganguly and Laxman? Well, they don't make it. Neither does Duleep Vengsarkar, the elegant strokeplayer from an earlier age. Instead, disgraced former captain Mohammad Azharuddin is my number five. He is the only man in the past four decades to have notched four centuries in the India vs England series, peakng with 182 at Eden Gardens in 1993, and averaging 93 in only six Tests. Creeping in at number six is another regular from the '70s, Gundappa Viswanath. More squat than Vengsarkar, he nonetheless compiled more than 1000 runs and struck by far his top Test score, 222, in the 1982 draw at Chennai towards the end of his career.
Kapil Dev outstrips Ravi Shastri in the all-rounder stakes, averaging almost 48 with the bat and capturing 42 wickets at 35 apiece. In any case, there are so many other fabulous spinners to choose from. The most prolific wicket-taker in these series is also one of the highest wicket-takers in Test history: Anil Kumble. He played only nine Tests at home to England yet snaffled 56 victims at only 23 apiece, utterly dominant in both 1993 and 2001 in particular.
I've already mentioned the Fab Four spinners from the '60s and '70s and three of them could easily join this particular fantasy XI. However, poor Kapil Dev can't be expected to shoulder the pace burden alone, so I'm pairing him on the new ball with Madan Lal. Maybe not an all-time great, and he looked very ordinary on English pitches, but he proved to be an admirable foil for his more illustrious compatriots in 1981-2. That leaves only two more places. Harbhajan Singh was in the frame, as was Prasanna, but the line-up is completed by Bishan Bedi and Bhagwath Chandrasekhar. Both took more than 50 wickets at home to England at averages below 25. They bowled so many overs they often simply ground down visiting batsmen into submission. Were Indian pitches in those days realy prepared for spinners? Bedi, Venkat, Chandra and Prasanna reigned supreme together in the Indian attack for more than a decade but their longevity also owes much to the dearth of seam talent at the time. After all, English fast men were also quite successful on those same strips, as I shall elaborate upon next time....
A recap on my India vs England Eleven:-
Gavaskar, Engineer (+), Dravid, Tendulkar, Azharuddin (*), Viswanath, Kapil Dev, Kumble, Madan Lal, Bedi, Chandrasehkar.
