England always considered Ashes as their biggest challenge, defeating Australia was always the biggest achievement for the England players. But things are changing now, the England team also believes that India is the best team of International Cricket. After creating history at Gabba, Twitter was flooded with the appraisal of the Indian team.
The former England spinner Graeme Swann said beating India in India would now be the biggest achievement considering their performance in recent times, and also added that England should come up with a strategy to face Indian spinner bowlers. He believes that Australia is no more world’s best team, and England should prove themselves by defeating India at their home ground.
“England always saying ‘well the Ashes are coming up’. B***ocks to that. If you want to be the best team in the world, let’s be the best team all over the planet, not just trying to beat Australia away. We have to move away from looking forward to the Ashes series. It’s a mentality ingrained in this country. Australia is not the best team in the world anymore. They used to be, by miles, and they were the benchmark to strive for,” Swann told The Sun.
“They’re not now, but we’re obsessed with this. I think beating India in India is a far higher thing to strive for right now. They’re virtually unbeatable in India since we beat them in 2012. Why isn’t that the whole thing? Why aren’t people saying ‘right, this is a chance to get this team with good players of spin, use their feet, change the whole way we face spin bowling, and then we can beat India’.”
The offspinner reckoned England needed quality spinners and someone of the class of Pietersen to beat a formidable Indian side at home.
“We’re not going to beat India unless spinners are taking wickets, and then we’ve got someone batting as we had with Kevin Pietersen. He changed the way England had ever played against spin. He was ultra-aggressive. Let’s face it KP was a brilliant player and he batted unbelievably well there. We haven’t done it since we haven’t learned from how Kev batted on that trip and haven’t gone on and used that as the blueprint,” said Swann.
