Former Australia opener Matthew Hayden and former South Africa captain Graeme Smith feel that the inexperienced Indian side will struggle in the seaming conditions in England in the absence of batting greats Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.

“I feel India are really going to struggle. Shubman Gill is a young captain coming to this hostile environment with seaming and bouncing conditions. It’s going to be a real challenge, a litmus test as a touring team,” Hayden said. Talking to the ICC, he said, “It is polar opposite conditions to what you are used to fundamentally as a player. I predict that England are going to have a pretty good party at the end of the series.”

Maintaining that the upcoming series would be a challenge for Shubman and his team, considering that England “really do play well at home and get the best out of the conditions”, Graeme Smith said India’s frontline pacer Jasprit Bumrah would be overburdened in conditions too familiar to England. “I think Bumrah is going to carry a huge amount of the bowling attack. So I think England will have the better of India in these conditions,” he said.

It was way back in 2007 that India had last won a Test series in England. Since the start of bilateral series between the two countries in 1932, India have won a Test series against the hosts only two times before — in 1971 and 1986.