England supporters flocked to the ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium, believing for the first time that the City of Destiny could live up to its name, but by 12:50 noon local time, Ben Stokes returned to the venue breathless. Breathlessly complaining about a grave error of judgment, the thoughts faded away like morning sea fog.
England were already struggling by this time and were chasing a record 399-run victory at 220 for 6 after repeated punctures in India’s hull before lunch. However, while Stokes remained in the middle, with a string of such feats behind him, his side also got an outside chance.
But then Ben Foakes hit a single down the leg side, only for his partner to slowly get out. It was Shreyas Iyer’s frictionless direct strike at mid-wicket – the kind of sneaky intervention usually associated with the absent Ravindra Jadeja – and Stokes was inches from the line when a dive might have saved him.
In fact, the England captain had to wear a bucket hat at the venue to watch as India eventually took the last three wickets to register a 106-run victory and a 1-1 scoreline after two Tests. There was good value for the home side too, with Yashasvi Jaiswal hitting a double hundred in the first innings and Shubman Gill’s 104 in the second, two outliers in a middle-scoring game. . The youngster’s rise to prominence will be a boon for a side that is missing Virat Kohli.
But there’s no denying that Jasprit Bumrah’s six-wicket reverse swing burst on Day 2 will likely be talked about for years to come, especially by the pace-seeking yorker, He had a couple of Ollie Pope’s stumps tumbling. There were three more incidents on the final day, with Tom Hartley’s pole position being the last to be detonated and Bumrah fittingly delivering the coup de grace. England were bowled out for a total of 292 in 69.2 overs and were simply unable to deal with India’s greatest ever fast bowler.
With nine days to go before the third Test in Rajkot, the England team will fly back to Abu Dhabi where they will be reunited with their families. However, it is unlikely that a major investigation will take place and they will take the series score at the start of the tour, and this is a Test match in which there has been a lot of good work. Brendon McCallum had told his troops that they would even try to pursue 600 men, but he was not the type to change tactics.
There is no doubt that England will resume their chase at 67 runs, which is how they have been (mostly successfully) over the past two years. But while it was clear to most – the controlling attack was not out of place on a pitch that was still playing well – Joe Root’s innings was a potentially clouded one.
Root, who has been the leading chaser under Stokes, has produced nothing but a wild 10-ball 16. After a couple of reverse-sweep fours and an extra cover for a six, the match ended with an ugly charge from around the wicket to Ravichandran Ashwin’s angle, converting a Simple catch deflected to a backward point.
Newsletter Promotion Post
Understanding this could be on Stokes and McCullum’s to-do list during the break. Root did have a broken right little finger, which may partially explain that. But before that, he scored 29, 2 and 5 (two of which Bumrah trained on him), which was a low-key start for a player of his stature. Of course, the extra burden of bowling in this series is something he has dutifully shouldered, but also looked increasingly tired.
Zak Crawley, by contrast, seemed unhindered and while questions about his greed cropped up in England’s first innings, scores of 76 and 73 showed his How far the game has come since the last tour. The match continued on the 29th with Crawley hitting some nice straight balls against Bumrah and looking quite comfortable against the spinners until Kuleep Yadav caught him The LBW is overwhelming around the No. 1 ball. To the naked eye it looked like it was missing a leg – or so referee Marais Erasmus thought – but the Hawkeyes followed with three reds.
It was the first of two killer knocks in the space of four balls before lunch, with Jonny Bairstow the second when he hit a powerful 26lb Hits a diagonal ball from Bumrah. England could have adapted to the loss of Rehan Ahmed first – Nighthawks posted a naughty 23 after six wickets in the match – while Pope ambitiously dropped Ashwin to Slipped on 23 and caught a sparkling reflex catch by Rohit Sharma. But the deficit of 3-5 from 194 at the break was too great, especially in Bumrah’s form.
