For a tour that began with one of England’s greatest and unlikeliest victories, things have unravelled very quickly for the tourists, as they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the 4th test.
It was all going so well. Joe Root, England’s best player, had been shockingly short of runs in the series up to this point, especially by his own standards, but he had rescued England on day one with a stunning unbeaten century, returning to his natural game and producing one of the finest knocks of a glittering career. His ability to rotate the strike with wristy guile was something to behold, even making good deliveries from one of the world’s finest attacks on a tricky pitch into run-scoring options.
Having rescued England from 112-5, he eventually guided his team to 353 all out, a promising start on a challenging surface. India then struggled against a brilliant display of spin from Shoaib Bashir, who took his maiden First Class five-for, and only made it above 300 thanks to a gutsy 90 from keeper Dhruv Jurel, playing just his second test match.
With India having to bat last, England were now well ahead of the 8 ball. And with Zak Crawley continuing his fine series, scoring another 50, this became even clearer. Then came the event that seasoned watchers of England’s overseas tours were dreading; the collapse. England fell from 110-4 to 120-6, ending up all out for just 145.
This left India under 200 to chase and, with the wicket not doing as much as the England batters made it appear, they duly won by 5 wickets.
While Bairstow’s dismissal was the most embarrassing, Stokes’ wicket was also frustrating because he inexplicably didn’t get forward. India proved they were deserving series winners, not only because of their superior spinners, but also their superior players of spin.
This was evident before the series, but it has still been enormously frustrating, as England have been in winning positions in the last two tests and thrown it away. If anything, the one match they had no right to win,190 behind after the first innings, was the one they did, evidence of the contradictions of Bazball.
Before this current series, the last two multi-test series England have competed in have been draws and one could argue that both of those were thrown away by England (New Zealand was a particularly egregious example) and now with this lost series in India, Bazball has its first series defeat. While there has been a marked improvement in England since the start of the Stokes-McCullum regime, this trend is worrying and its development needs arresting this summer.
“Playing Cricket by Taj Mahal, Agra India” by AdamCohn is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.