The posterboy of India’s surrender
On evidence of his performance on the first day of the Oval Test, RP Singh's selection was a disaster and painted "the perfect picture of all that has gone wrong for India on this tour," writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express .
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
On evidence of his performance on the first day of the Oval Test, RP Singh's selection was a disaster and painted "the perfect picture of all that has gone wrong for India on this tour," writes Sandeep Dwivedi in the Indian Express.
His presence in the tour party has exposed India’s bench strength, and his presence in the playing XI, ahead of the regular squad member Munaf Patel, has put a question mark on the team management’s judgement. Giving RP the new ball was just another one of Dhoni’s many puzzling decisions of the tour.
It took only one ball to lay bare India’s hopelessness. RP began with one way down the leg side, which reached Dhoni’s gloves after bouncing a couple of times. RP, who hasn’t played a Test since mid-2008, and whose last first class game was eight months ago, improved somewhat with his third ball — down the same line, but this time only one-bounce to the keeper.
In the Independent, James Lawton says this about RP Singh's first over: " ... when it was over you weren't so much concerned about the commitment of one 25-year-old international sportsman as the entire future of the most superior form of a great game."
This, you had to believe, was a near perfect reflection of India's calamitous surrender to the point where they came here with only the slimmest possibility of avoiding a humiliating 4-0 whitewash. Singh made such an idea not much more than a fantasy. His first delivery came in at 77.5mph, trailing down the leg side. England's captain, Andrew Strauss, looked a little bemused. He then played Singh's second delivery off his pads with such nonchalance he might have been away on some distant beach amusing his children with a little beach cricket.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo