Birmingham Is the Biggest Nightmare of Team India

After the limited over series has ended, it is now time for the gruelling five-match Test series between India and England which will begin from August 1 at Edgbaston in Birmingham.

Cricket news: It was only in 1986 that India managed to escape a defeat on this venue

However it is one of the worst venue for India in Test cricket. This is because India has played as many as six Tests here, and did not even manage to win a single game out of the lot.

In fact they lost five matches out of those six and their loss percentage in Birmingham counts up to 83.33 percentage.

Among the venues where India has played more than five Tests, their worst performance has been the highest in Birmingham and at the Gabba in Brisbane. On both these venues they lost five out of six games and had drawn one.

Barbados (9), Manchester (9) and Lahore (7) are the venues where the team has played more than six Tests without a win thus far.

Another important fact in these losses is that the team has always managed to lose the game by huge margins.

In 1974 and 1979 Test series, they were defeated by an innings margin while in 2011, Alastair Cook scored 294 which resulted in England’s score of 710/7 and later they bundled the visitors twice under 250 and led to a defeat of an innings and 242-run.

In 1967 India went down chasing a 400+ total while in 1996 they again lost by eight wickets despite of a fighting century from Sachin Tendulkar.

It was in 1986 victorious tour, the only time when India managed to escape a defeat. India had won the first two matches in the 3-match Test series and final match was in Birmingham.

England’s skipper Mike Gatting scored an unbeaten 183 and took his team’s total to 390 in the first innings. All the players from the visiting team contributed and also ended exactly on 390 for their first innings.

At that time it was just the 5th Test where both teams had scored the same amount of runs in their first innings. After that match this feat has been replicated thrice in 32 years.

In second innings England were bowled out for 235 and India got a target of 236. Sunil Gavaskar (54) and Kris Srikkanth (23) gave a good start but England’s Phil Edmonds struck back and reduce the visitors to 105/5 from 101/1.

Mohammad Azharuddin (29 from 106 balls) and Kiran More (31 from 125 balls) decided to play out the game as going for the win would have been risky. However when the game was declared draw, India were just 46 runs away, which was pretty much in the picture had they decided to go for it.