Oh, you watched India playing in SA, Eng, and NZ and yet think that they were equally poor in those 3 places. Glad that you cleared it up.
I've tried arguing with Amjid but he seems to be riled up by Mamoon's posts more than anything else lol. Otherwise he wouldn't miss the obvious difference, if he indeed has watched all the series as he claims.
We are in an era of home dominant teams where touring teams throw in the towel at the first sign of adversity. If a series is indeed close and competitive, forget about the fans who will be biased, the commentators and pundits would be singing praises about the series like the last Border Gavaskar trophy or India's last tour of England when a lot of english commentators were calling it as a highly entertaining and watchable series, as was the reaction during India's tour of South Africa. This was not the case in India's previous tour of England in 2014 when India got flattened after the Lord's victory in the 2nd test and it was all one way traffic.
To me, to know if a series is competitive or not, I would look at the state of the match before the commencement of the last innings of the match. If the visiting team is not out of the match by then and still with a chance of winning or drawing the match, then it means the visitors have competed well into the final days of the match and therefore it's a very close match.
Take India's tour of South Africa in 2017:
1st test at Cape Town: India were set a target of 205 to win. They were still with a chance of winning that test.
2nd test at Centurion: India were set a target of 245. Slightly stiffer target but by no means an impossible one to chase. Most people would give 60-40 or 55-45 to the bowling team with a chance of defending that total.
And in India's tour of England in 2018:
1st test at Edgbaston: India were set a target of 194 to win the match. India were with a good chance of winning that match before the 4th innings started.
4th test at Southampton: India were set a target of 245. Again, same chances as the Centurion test. India were not out of the match before the 4th innings started.
There's no point in saying the Indian batting failed in this juncture and the Indian bowling failed in this juncture of the match. Of course, that's obvious because if they hadn't failed, they would have won the match. That's common sense. But the fact of the matter is that, despite the Indian bowling failing to bowl out England's lower order batsmen cheaply, India were still not out of the match and were in fact with a good chance of winning the tests in Edgbaston and Cape Town. That tells you how close those matches were.
Now take India's tour of New Zealand in 2019:
Before the commencement of the last innings of each test in that series, this was the state of the match -
In the 1st test at Wellington: New Zealand had to score 9 runs to win the test.
In the 2nd test at Christchurch: New Zealand had to chase 132 runs to win the test.
India were well out of the match even before the last innings started, India got comprehensively outplayed by NZ in that series unlike the ones in South Africa and England where India competed hard till the last day, but ultimately fell short due to some shortcomings.
If one cannot see the difference between the two scenarios, I mean I know this is Pakpassion and all, but surely you must dial down some of that passion to bring some objectivity to the discussion.
