Moeen Ali, the retired England veteran now in India to play for Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2025, puts his money on Ben Stokes & Co to win the five-Test series against India after a close contest. The much hyped series gets underway soon after IPL with the first Test beginning at Leeds on June 20.
Ali, the Utility Man of English cricket who quit all forms of international cricket in September last year, said: "I think England will win a tight series".
India are a brilliant team, but there are a number of them who will be visiting England for the first time. It may look easy but actually, you need to go to England a few times to do well…it has been the case with Virat (Kohli) also.
It will be a test of character for India, whose red ball prowess will again be tested away from home after they were walloped by Australia in the last Border-Gavaskar Trophy.
Reflecting on India’s last series in England in 2021-22, Ali said the final result could have been different if India had not abandoned the series with the last match left because of the pandemic.
We were playing some terrible cricket in the first four Test matches but when the decider took place after the gap of quite a few months, England looked a different team.
The England white ball teams, meanwhile, received a pounding at India’s hands when they visited for a ODI and T20I tour ahead of the ICC Champions Trophy earlier this year.
After riding high till their World T20 success Down Under, the England team had looked a vulnerable one in both the 2023 ODI World Cup in India and the last T20 World Cup in the US and Caribbean.
Breaking it down, Ali felt a major factor behind this had been the constant chopping and changing with the team in the post-Eoin Morgan era.
The mindset has changed after Morgan’s departure. He had stuck by us through the rough and the smooth and someone like (Trevor) Bayliss also helped a lot. See, people often don’t realise how good a player a (Jason) Roy, (Jonny) or Morgan was.
"During that period, it was very difficult to make a change in the squad. You don’t throw in youngsters just like that – unless they are players like Harry Brook who is brilliant. This creates an atmosphere of insecurity in the team and it reflects on the performance as well,’’ said Ali, for whom KKR is the third IPL franchise after Royal Challengers Bangalore and Chennai Super Kings.
While Ali says there are no regrets following an international career which saw him pile up five Test hundreds and 200-plus wickets, the future for the 37-year-old lies in franchise cricket. While KKR is his new port of call, Ali still savours his four seasons with Chennai under Mahendra Singh Dhoni the most.
I have played for them for four seasons, three under MSD and one when we had (Ravindra) Jadeja starting as captain before he again took over. I could bat regularly at No.3 and was lucky to be a part of the winning squad twice.
Talk about Ali, the cricket fraternity in England acknowledges him as cult figure in Birmingham – where he was born in a family of Pakistan descent.
I come from from an inner city in Birmingham and hence, people there can relate to me a bit more. Whether I am playing for Birmingham Phoenix or England there, I have always got a great reception. I wanted to inspire people from different backgrounds and would like to believe that I have done my two bits.
