Zaheer and co must fire for India to triumph

CHENNAI: Not long ago, England would unblinkingly greet India with juiced-up green-tops. Then, not long ago did India have donned a pace attack so diverse in its garb.

In its assiduous perch to the helm of Test rankings, India has metamorphosed into a unit adept at not only adapting to conditions alien, or surviving it, but also manipulating it to suit their means. Hence, if the conditions are bowler-friendly in England, Zaheer Khan and Co might not just be a stray, passing cloud on a sun-lit canvas, but a cluster looming to patter down in torrents.

As evidenced, some of India's feted coup'de grace has been engineered on tracks reputed to favour bowlers and previously their theatre of nightmares, be it Headingley, Cape Town, Perth, Durban, Trent Bridge or Kingston, and on the back of masterly seam and swing bowling. Hence, it could be foolhardy on the English curators to pay heed to Chris Tremlett's suggestion of excessively lively, bouncy strips.

With the return of Zaheer and Santhakumaran Sreesanth, Indians would be least frazzled by conditions. Zaheer would fondly recollect his last trip to England, where he rediscovered his self.

Among the various intangibles Zaheer has shed since the memorable jugular at the Trent Bridge in 2007, was the acrimonious tag, 'poor man's Wasim Akram'. Not that he has overgrown the Pakistani legend, neither his grandee nor his grace, but over the last few years he has evolved as deceptive an operator as Wasim in his fag years, subtle and cunning, measured and menacing.

Dismissals are built, nurtured over time, over by over, session by session, with nip n' tuck, then put away, zealously guarded in his head until the next encounter. And that probably accounts for Zaheer's hunter-hunted rapport with many openers, and worryingly for Andrew Strauss is a tenant in his bunny-brigade (has dimmissed him five times). And Strauss's vulnerability against left-handers has only aggravated (Chanaka Welegedara, Wahab Riaz, Wayne Parnell and Doug Bollinger have all had success against him).

Unlike in the past, Zaheer isn't a challenge in isolation. Ishant Sharma and Sreesanth have stood up in Tests. Ishant's regaining his muse was timely ' his 22 wickets cost just 16 apiece and he was once again thudding the ball into the bat splice and angling it in to the right-handers. Like Zaheer in 2007, Ishant has realised his strength ' pace and bounce, allied with that vicious break-backer and the newly-developed leg-cutter, making him an ideal foil for Zaheer.

For all his histrionics, Sreesanth is hugely talented but erratic, glimpses of the sublime being reduced to sporadic than sustained bursts. But in South Africa he signalled his coming-of-age as the tour progressed, though the process was slightly retarded by an indifferent World Cup. His ability to procure swing irrespective of conditions might see him replace Praveen Kumar.

Both Praveen and Munaf Patel would lend considerable depth, as no other Indian touring party had. For all his understated efficacy and discipline, Patel is much skiddier than the speedo's math and can brood on the Englishmen's patience. Though patience is an English virtue, isn't England too much in a hurry to dismantle India from its lofty perch?