Former South Africa pacer Dale Steyn believes England will win the upcoming five-match series against India, beginning June 20 in Headingley, Leeds. India will begin the new World Test Championship (WTC) cycle when they take on Ben Stokes and Co. The visitors are without their three senior-most pros—Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Ravichandran Ashwin—following their retirements from the longest format of the game.
Shubman Gill will lead India in the upcoming five-match series, which will be played across Headingley, Birmingham, Lord’s Cricket Ground, Manchester, and the Oval. Rishabh Pant will serve as his deputy. The 18-member squad also includes Sai Sudharsan, Karun Nair, and Abhimanyu Easwaran.
Chairman of selectors Ajit Agarkar has already confirmed that pacer Jasprit Bumrah will not play all five Tests. He is expected to play just three matches. How the management figures out the speedster’s workload remains to be seen.
Steyn believes all five matches will be close, but in the end, England will come out on top to win the series 3-2. He also stated that there will be no easy games for either India or England, and it will go down to the wire.
“All games will be close. But all will have a result. I think it will be 3-2 in favour of England. There will be a result in every Test match. There will be no run away win for any team, all five games will be very close,” Steyn told JioHotstar.
Under Brendon McCullum, England have played 20 Tests in the UK, winning 15 while losing four. Of all the games, only 1 has ended in a draw. England have adopted an aggressive brand of cricket and under ‘Bazball’, the batters have been going hell for leather from Ball No.1. However, this approach is yet to earn positive results for England outside the UK.
Currently, the Shubman Gill-led Indian team is playing an intra-squad match against India A in Beckenham. India scored 459 runs in the first innings, owing to half-centuries by Shubman Gill and KL Rahul on Day 1.
On the second day, Jasprit Bumrah went wicketless, while Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna each took two wickets. For India, Sarfaraz Khan scored 101 runs off 76 balls, including 15 fours and 2 sixes.
At stumps on Day 2, India A reached the score of 299/6 with Shardul Thakur and Ishan Kishan at the crease. Sarfaraz had retired out after scoring 101 runs.
Sai Sudharsan and Abhimanyu Easwaran also impressed with the bat. However, the duo failed to reach half-centuries.
