Having been pestered throughout the Bazball era by the question of whether their punchy method might continue to work, England ought to draw fresh conviction from the fact that when it comes to breaching Fortress India, nothing else has.
Since losing to Sir Alastair Cook’s England at the end of 2012, India have been imperious on home soil, sweeping aside all-comers to win 16 series without blemish, and losing just three of 46 Tests.
Assuming two banker predictions hold — that neither the visiting gameplan nor home surfaces have been concocted with five-day slow-burners in mind — to claim victory this time around, England will have to double that tally by mid-March.
In the various assessments of Ben Stokes and his side’s chances of triumphing across the five-Test series that starts in Hyderabad on Thursday morning, the only deviance has been one of scale: is this simply the toughest away assignment in cricket, or in all of sport?
Not many teams come here and win, fast bowler Mark Wood said. If we give it a good go, we could go down in flames.
It is not simply for taking on India’s superstars — the mastery of Virat Kohli, albeit he is missing for the first two Tests, and Rohit Sharma, the smiling violence of Jasprit Bumrah and the spin torture inflicted by the Ravis, Jadeja and Ashwin — that visiting teams so easily, and often so dramatically, come unstuck.
India’s skipper and the out-and-out senior man in a batting lineup that will be without Virat Kohli for the first two Tests. Has a point to prove, having resigned the ODI captaincy following the failure to win last year’s home World Cup. Brilliant in this series three years ago, making a century in Chennai and then firing when no one else could on a rancid Ahmedabad deck.
Repeatedly overlooked in away series of late, but the world’s best spinner in home conditions. Player of the series when taking 32 wickets in four Tests during England’s last visit and will sail past the 500 career landmark during this series so long as he stays fit. Has five Test hundreds, too — a huge advantage for the home side in light of England’s weakened tail.
The best all-format bowler on the planet has looked as good as ever since returning from a lengthy injury layoff last year. For all the focus on spin, the reverse-swinging ball in his hand could prove to be the most potent weapon of the series.
The 22-year-old enjoyed a sensational IPL last year, opening the batting for Rajasthan Royals alongside Jos Buttler. Followed that with a century on Test bow in the West Indies, and while he suffered a reality check on the recent tour of South Africa, a debut home series has the stage set for another breakthrough.
Tours of such a cricket-frenzied nation are renowned as intense, gruelling affairs, and already adversity has struck in the form of Harry Brook and Shoaib Bashir returning home.
The former’s absence for personal reasons will deny the series one of its most watchable players, though with Kohli missing under similar circumstances it does not for now skew the balance any further the home side’s way.
Bashir’s grounding over a visa delay, though, is a farce; a young British Muslim of Pakistani descent denied entry to a country where he will still hope to make his Test debut.
Already, England’s early tones of diplomacy, when a swift conclusion looked on the cards at the start of the week, have been replaced by outward frustration, the tour off to a sour — and political — start before we even get to the inevitable row over extreme home pitch bias that will rear its head at some stage.
Both Sunil Gavaskar and Rohit have warned the English media off the kind of grumbling that followed the previous tour’s two-day Test on a snake-pit in Ahmedabad, which feels very much like pinning a no-entry sign to a door in a horror film.
England’s players, though, have adopted a no-excuse policy.
If the pitches spin from ball one, we won’t be complaining, the fit-again vice-captain Ollie Pope said in an interview with The Guardian last week. It’s about finding a method to combat it.
The one England have landed on this week is bold, their team named this morning to include three specialist spinners as well as Joe Root, with Wood as the sole seamer. That may prove spin overkill, but from first look at the Hyderabad deck that seems unlikely, and too often England’s opening gambit on overseas tours has been one of hedging bets.
With Mohammed Shami as well as Kohli missing, India’s lineup at both ends is a fraction unsettled, and this will be the hosts’ most high-profile home assignment since their damaging final hurdle fall in a Cricket World Cup they dominated from first to second-last.
If there is a way into the series on offer, England must be ready to grasp it now.
What would success look like by its end? Precedent is against the tourists, but a record of successive imploding Ashes tours tell you that one hammering does not tend to breed any greater forgiveness for the next, and nor do the travails of others.
A Test win or even two would be a decent return. But to emulate the heroes of 2012? Now that would be something to hang your bucket hat on.
