‘Jadeja limited. There’s no Hardik or Axar': India given stark reminder of looming danger amid Champions Trophy high

India go into a break from international cricket after having won the 2025 Champions Trophy with the 18th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) coming up. After the T20 league, however, the Indian players will be faced with a challenge of an entirely different sort as they embark on a five-match Test tour of England. Former batter and commentator Navjot Singh Sidhu said that India would need to start preparing for the tour as early as possible, especially considering the team's recent struggles in red-ball cricket. India have won the last two ICC trophies they have competed for.(PTI)

“The thing to be worried about is that the IPL is now coming up next. No one is ready to sit out the IPL,” said Sidhu on Sports Tak. "They will play the league and then all of a sudden comes the England tour. Conditions will shift from North Pole to South Pole. Completely different. Moreover, India's last Test series in England had started on August 4. This time, it is ending on August 2. The matches are in June and July. There will be grass and moisture and the air will be so heavy that the ball will gain ample movement. And then it will move more off the seam.

“England are sitting ready at home in their conditions and they are like wounded tigers. They have been beaten and defeated.”

While India won the 2024 T20 World Cup and the 2025 Champions Trophy within just under nine months of each other, they suffered an embarrassing 3-0 defeat to New Zealand in a Test series at home. This, coupled with a 3-1 loss to Australia away, resulted in India failing to qualify for the World Test Championship final for the first time.

Sidhu rues absence of Pandya, Axar in India's Test side

Sidhu said one of India's biggest challenges will be to fill the gap of all-rounders Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel in the Test XI.

“India's biggest problem is that in the middle order there are no all-rounders the way you see in white ball cricket. Is there a Ravindra Jadeja, or Hardik Pandya or Axar Patel? There is only Jadeja among these three and even he will be limited there. Will he take 4-5 wickets in an innings there? No,” said Sidhu.

The former batter said that India will have to make decisions about their bowling lineup while not compromising on depth in batting. “For that you have to depend on someone like Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, maybe Arshdeep Singh. You will have to bring a mystery spinner with all of them, that is England's weakness. But India won't expose Varun Chakravarthy. Or else they will play Kuldeep. So if these are your four bowlers, none of them bat. Then there is the problem of how to strengthen the batting order. These are the questions standing in front of India,” he said.

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