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India will be locking horns against England for a five-match Test series which is set to begin from June 20 with the first game set to take place at Headingley in Leeds. This will be a highly important series for both the sides as it will also mark the beginning of the new World Test Championship (WTC) cycle.
3 England speedsters were unavailiable for selection for the first Test
However, England were hit with major blows even before the commencement of the series as three of their pacers ended up sustaining injuries that will keep them out of action for the first match at the very least. The likes of Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson and Mark Wood were all unavailable for selection and thus, the Three Lions had to go with an inexperienced bowling attack for the first Test, comprising of Sam Cook, Josh Tongue and Shoaib Bashir.
They also picked multiple fast-bowling all-rounders in their squad with skipper Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Jamie Overton and Brydon Carse. However, despite England's injury woes in the bowling department, former India cricketer WV Raman believes that the not-so solid India batting order cannot afford to take the hosts lightly.
"See, let's not take the other seamers lightly, because they have played all their cricket under those conditions, and they know what to do. They may not have really picked up a lot of wickets in international cricket or in Test cricket. But they know what it takes to pick up wickets in English conditions, and let's not underestimate Chris Woakes. He is a good bowler and (Jamie) Overton can be good as well on his day," Raman told IANS.
"They also have (Brydon) Carse, who is also a handful when the conditions are right. So if the conditions are right and if the English batters put enough runs on the board, I think they do have the wherewithal to challenge the Indian batters. Let's not forget that the Indian batting is also not really very solid. Yes, there is a lot of talent, but it remains to be seen how they handle tougher conditions," Raman added.
"That is something that will give even the current England bowling attack a lot of encouragement. To back all these fast bowlers, you always have the skipper, Ben Stokes, who has the knack of picking up wickets at the right time, and that's another thing they will be banking on," he concluded.
Following the Test retirements of veteran cricketers Ravichandran Ashwin, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, India also went for multiple new faces in their 18-member squad for the England Test series. They gave maiden call-ups to Arshdeep Singh and Sai Sudharsan while also bringing back veteran batter Karun Nair into the Test set-up after an absence of eight long years.
India squad for England Tests: Shubman Gill (c), Rishabh Pant (vc, wk), Yashasvi Jaiswal, KL Rahul, Sai Sudarshan, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Karun Nair, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ravindra Jadeja, Dhruv Jurel, Washington Sundar, Shardul Thakur, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna, Akash Deep, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav.
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