Even before the India-England Test series began, Indian players have been vocal about exploiting home conditions and dishing out rank-turners in order to counter England.

And as expected, India did get a pitch laid to their liking and Indian spin twin of Pragyan Ojha and Ravichandran Ashwin blew away the visitors in tandem in the first Test at Ahmedabad. The pitch offered a lot of assistance to spinners, but as the match progressed the wicket became flat and was difficult to bowl on.

Even though India won the match by a comprehensive nine-wicket margin, Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni criticized the Motera pitch saying that he does not want to play on a pitch like this again and wants love a pitch that offers turn from the first ball itself so that the toss does not become vital.

There have been a lot of talks about the pitches and the conditions that the England team will have to cope-up with. Some of the Indian players have made it clear that they are treating this series as a revenge battle and won’t like to give England an inch.

British media criticized the Indian board for not picking any spinner for the India A team so that the English batsmen don’t get a chance to play the spinners. And it did reflect on their performance. They found it very tough to play the likes of Ashiwn and Ojha. English batsmen were found wanting against them and as a result crashed to a huge defeat.

Meanwhile, Dhoni with his statement has made it clear that he wants to gain upper-hand in the series using spinner friendly tracks. But then what he has forgotten is that England also possesses one of the best spinners (Graeme Swann) in world cricket in their team. They even have Monty Panesar who did not play in the last match, but is likely from the next match onwards.

Swann did well in the first innings of the last match picking up a five wickets and it does show that he can trouble Indian batting attack.

Swann has the ability to win matches and he has shown it in the past. A performance like that in the first match of the tour will give him a lot of confidence in the series and he will look to create problems for Indian team.

Talking about Panesar, he also has a decent record against India and can trap Indian batsmen in his spin web.

It is good to exploit home conditions but then excess of nothing is good. It is obvious that England have a weakness against spinners, but then even if a pitch offers too much turn then even Indian batters will have difficulty on the track as was seen in the last match.

So Dhoni should vouch for a classical Test track which will allow advantage to both the teams and the series should be an evenly poised rather than a lop-sided affair.

By Indian Sports News Network