When it was never a 'payback' series

I never agreed upon the wisdom of having a cricket series titled 'payback'. Marketing evangelists would agree that whatever branding you may choose to do at the end of the day if products are not of equal value then it loses its shine.  This is why I disagree the labelling of the recently concluded series as 'payback' because the circumstances in which the games were played were entirely different.

India went under the hammer recently when they lost everything they could. MS Dhoni even lost all the tosses. They played in cold weather conditions that they are not bred in, icy cold weather where the players had hands under the trousers more than they had with the cricket balls.

The age old dictum of naive playing seam bowling came to haunt them as they struggled against the English quicks and made Anderson a superhero. But in comes England to India with the hope of a series victory. And they get hot and humid summers. The ball turns viciously and the same players who were recently awarding comments to the likes of Tendulkar and Laxman were mystified by spinners. To make it worse in the last one-day at Kolkata Dhoni brought Manoj Tiwari as spinner and he got a wicket too. It just makes the sides so different.

Here is Alstair Cook who has a batting, bowling and fielding coach travelling with him but he could not make them do anything. Swan who was titled as the next spinning legend was played with so much ease that it made Samit Patel cry. But lets face it- English were overconfident.

It was a disappointing series for the English should have played the spinners well but they did not. India failed to adapt to the seaming conditions recently so I sense unless English comes and play 4 tests in India and India beats them convincingly we should refrain from using that word.