Batting till eleven, and that man Stokes

Define the India-England series. Fifteen men who have spent the majority of their lives playing cricket in conditions that twelve of the opposition have never ever faced in a Test.

Alastair Cook's side didn't even get the time for a practice game. Meanwhile, Virat Kohli's took an international team, New Zealand, and broke them over the course of two months. Perhaps that is why the experts were calling it early.

Michael Vaughan feared a 5-0 whitewash of England. Graeme Swann couldn't see them improve at facing and bowling spin when their slow bowlers were treated as "third-class citizens" back home. Capsizing to Bangladesh didn't help. If the 18-year old Mehedi Hasan, in only his second Test, could make them lose all ten wickets in a session, R Ashwin could hypnotize them into bashing their own stumps and walking off to the pavilion.

And now that India's batsmen have begun to score big runs on turning pitches again, it is almost tempting to think the schedule - which packs five Tests into seven weeks - may worry the hosts more. Many of their first-choice players are already injured and a series this unforgiving may well put even more on that list.

But much like how you never run off a misfield or throw jellybeans at a batsman, you should not write off an opponent who is hurting. They can gain a ruthless kind of motivation.

Joe Root has shown that already. Dissatisfied at throwing his wicket away cheaply to Pakistan at Lord's, he went to Manchester, refused to fish outside the off stump, kept his pulls and hooks down, and generally avoided risk to make 254. He won't find India anything like Old Trafford, but runs and the memories of scoring them are beyond vital to a batsman. He can use them to confront alien conditions and snuff out the doubts in his mind. Better yet, he can shove those doubts somewhere else. The bowler tends to be nearest.

England have another thing going for them. He has red hair. Freckles all over. Swears. Biffs. Swings the ball. Reverse-swings it even better. And does basically anything England want. Ben Stokes is 100% charisma and cricket can't help but gravitate towards personalities like that.

He withstood Mitchell Johnson at the WACA. He demolished South Africa in their backyard. He broke down at the World T20, but is back in India again, with better confidence in his ability to play spin. And if it is strong enough, Stokes could possibly act as a renegade, coming in at No. 6, with the license to attack no matter what the scoreboard says. He has the power to do so, but he has to make it last if England are to unsettle India.

Stokes' threat to India may be far greater when he has ball in hand because he can produce reverse-swing. Besides runs and spin, that is the one thing that wins Test matches in the subcontinent and that England were able to harness it in Bangladesh, where the weather is hot and humid, means they know how to keep sweat off the rough side of the ball. James Anderson's return, at some point during the series, will give them another exponent of the art. New Zealand struggled in this aspect and it played a part in their defeat.

That still leaves the question of Ashwin. A man who is so much on top of his game that he has repeatedly said he can put the ball where he wants to. He is not a mystery spinner. Reading him off the hand shouldn't be a problem. Reacting to him, though, clearly is. Right-handers have lunged forward only to be bowled past the outside edge because of the drift he gets in the air. Left-handers have tried to meet the delivery where it pitches but have nicked off because of the dip that adds inches to his turn. Even Root, a man largely thought the equal of Kohli, and Cook, quietly creeping up on Tendulkar's records, will be tested, let alone Haseeb Hameed, the 19-year old uncapped opener, or Gary Ballance, who made 1, 9, 9 and 5 in Bangladesh.

So it should come in handy that England may, in all likelihood, field an XI in which everyone has a first-class fifty. The only man in their 17 - now that Anderson might be back in action sooner than expected - who doesn't have one is Jake Ball; his best first-class score is 49 not out. India would have noted this. But they have to be ready to react to it when out in the field. If their luck with the toss runs out that may happen sooner than expected. They've been frustrated by the tail so many times. They nearly gave Anderson a Test century in 2014.

India have a job to do to get down that far, though, because having England five down for a hundred may not be enough. The fragility of their top order has meant they've often been reduced to that score often and still managed to recover.

Jonny Bairstow is this year's highest run-getter and he's done that batting at Nos. 5 and 6. He stole a match from Pakistan by taking the second-innings score from 282 for 5 to 445 for 6, declared. This was in Birmingham, where his partner Moeen Ali overcame bad form and dismantled Yasir Shah late on the fourth day. Until then England had lost every session of the game and had conceded a first-innings lead of 103. That sixth-wicket stand of 152 at more than five an over was essentially the equivalent of Tweety bird turning into Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The same magnitude of contributions may be unlikely from a team that features 12 men who have never played Tests in India. But every little run - especially down the order - counts for so much in the subcontinent. England would have understood that in Mirpur when Chris Woakes and Adil Rashid added 99 for the ninth wicket. They would have understood it better had they not lost.

India are ranked No. 1 in the world. The most promising thing about the team they have now is that they have most bases covered. England are the underdogs, and have a squad full of inexperience and a spin attack that their own captain does not always trust. They do, however, have a few things going their way, and with a bit of luck could make this contest a lot more competitive than anyone might expect.