Anderson the record breaker but Ashwin spins England to defeat
India v England, 9th March 2024.
ENGLAND 218 all out and 195 all out
INDIA 477 all out
India win by an Innings and 64 runs
My winter odyssey is over. No more shrills from an alarm clock at 3.30am to shake me from a dreamworld that seems more real than our upside down world with every passing day. The revolutionaries from England have been well and truly humbled and dare I say that I predicted the eventual series score of 4–1 to India? Perhaps not or more accurately not again and certainly not in the raw aftermath of yet another comprehensive defeat in the Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum reinvention of English cricket. As ever, there will be no overall criticism of the absurd media moniker of “Bazball” as the cold, hard truth is that England faced the toughest touring assignment in Test Match cricket and were thoroughly bested and beaten by an Indian team who rarely if ever lose a series on home soil. The lasting worry as a fan and obsessive writer on this grandest of all games is the margin of the 4 individual defeats and how they’ve escalated from a tight English victory in the first Test to defeats by 106 runs, an incredible 434 runs, 5 wickets and today a thumping innings and 64 runs.
Thankfully for all concerned this isn’t a worry I have to carry for long and will soon become the sole preserve of Messrs Stokes and McCullum and in their safe hands the future of English Test Match cricket will continue to be curated in their revolutionary grasp. From Pakistan to New Zealand, the drawn Ashes battle with Australia through to this new year tour of India, it’s been a hell of a ride and as with the drawn series with the two down under nations they’ve had major opportunities in India to exploit dominating positions into winning Test Matches. Please don’t mistake this for my saying that England could have won this series. That would be absurd considering the 4–1 score line. But individual and team mistakes have cost them yet again and during these past weeks of an Indian Summer, they’ve proven far more costly than a one run defeat to New Zealand this time last year and the agony of a drawn series with their neighbours Australia this past Summer that should have seen Stokes and McCullum’s charges triumphant in a come from behind Ashes win for the ages.
During today’s immediate post-match TV interview Stokes was honest enough to admit his team had been “outplayed by the better team over the series” and expressed his excitement to “drive the team forward” through their home Summer encounters with both the West Indies and Sri Lanka as well as lamenting that his team needed to be more “relentless” in key moments to turn series draws and defeats into the ultimate destination of Test Match wins. He was effusive in his praise of the opening batting partnership of Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett before being unable to hide his glowing admiration for his three youthful spin bowlers in the guise of Rehan Ahmed, Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley as well as lavishing praise on record breaker James Anderson who in his words is the role model for every aspiring fast bowler to “look up to” and “as fit as I’ve ever seen him” and determined to continue playing as he approaches his frankly astounding quarter of a century of continuous play at the highest level his sport has to offer.
The Stokes and McCullum revolution still has a long way to go as they strive relentlessly forward for the consistency of performance that will surely see their team secure future series wins. They have a settled and successful opening partnership of Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett with Crawley the team’s top run scorer on the tour with 407 runs and the partnership enjoying 5 opening stands of 50+ runs or more. Despite his match winning century in Hyderabad it’s been a rather sketchy tour for number 3 and vice-captain Ollie Pope but he remains a mainstay of this team ahead of Joe Root at number 4 with the Yorkshireman ending the tour in fine form with a century in Ranchi, a combined 110 runs here in Dharamshala and 320 runs across the 5 match series. The number 5 batting position is a contentious affair with Jonny Bairstow getting several starts but no big scores and with fellow Yorkshireman Harry Brook waiting in the wings and sure to return, either Bairstow calls time on his Test Match career having reached a century of matches or he replaces the continually unlucky and under pressure Ben Foakes at number 7 and the other side of his captain in the batting order. This leaves Stokes and McCullum with the juggling act of finding a place in their team for their number one spin bowler Jack Leach with three young spin bowlers breathing down his neck, and a possible return to the fold of Chris Woakes in a fast bowling attack seemingly to contain the evergreen 41 year old record breaker James Anderson and one other. Mark Wood, a personal favourite of mine, is 34 years old but as fast as ever and whilst Ollie Robinson is never going to be the answer due to injury and a complete lack of enthusiasm for the toil of Test Match cricket, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue might be.
As mentioned above, thankfully for all concerned these worries and decisions are not mine, but the Stokes and McCullum revolution will always have me in their corner come what may.
Winning captain Rohit Sharma and coach Rahul Dravid have a similar if vastly more positive selection headache ahead of their mouth watering encounter with Australia later in the year as through circumstance, injury and pure sporting desire, they have a nailed on opening batting partner for Rohit Sharma in the guise of “Man of the Series” Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill has surely cemented his place in the team at number 3, Ravi Jadeja has equally made his case to be a permanent number 5 going forward and Sarfaraz Khan is a brilliantly talented all-rounder surely destined to bat at number 6. Before we confirm Dhruv Jurel as the team’s new wicket-keeper at number 7 we must address the pleasing headaches for captain and coach alike as crowd darling Virat Kohli must surely return at number 4 and therefore a team so cruelly decimated at the beginning of this tour with his absence and that of Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul must now endeavour to find a place in a successful and winning team for them, let alone a returning Mohammed Shami in a team already full to the brim with Jasprit Bumrah and three world class spinners. As I say, quite the pleasing headache to have!
In his post-match TV interview Rohit Sharma addressed this pleasing quandary as “people are going to go and people are going to come” before extolling the virtues of an ever changing squad and starting XI with “guys that responded well under pressure”. He somewhat reiterated his comments from the end of the 4th Test Match: of players needing to want and desire to play this longer form of the game, to “make a difference”, and although runs on the board was imperative it was also “important to take 20 wickets in Test Match cricket”. He noted the importance of Kuldeep Yadav whilst also recognising that he was a very individual personality in a team game, Yashasvi Jaiswal has a “long way to go” yet also a “tough guy” for someone so young and he beamed with pride at now being able to fully talk openly about the 22 year old star of the series and top run scorer with a phenomenal 712 runs to his name and already over 1,000 Test Match runs in the bank after just 2 series of the red ball game.
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"Kuldeep Yadav spins England out of control in Dharamshala"
"India are over the Himalayan Mountains and far, far away"
Following the conclusion of this Test series India now sit top of the World Test Championship standings and will remain so irrespective of the final result in the two match series between New Zealand and Australia with which I’ll conclude today’s daily journal. But first, a return to the field of play today in Dharamshala and for 15 minutes, England had the perfect start to a day that would end so quickly and indeed so imperfectly. For it took the visitors just a quarter of an hour and the cost of just 2 runs to snag the final 2 wickets of India’s 1st Innings and for 2 distinctly different milestones for 2 England bowlers separated by an entire adult generation and still less years than James “Jimmy” Anderson’s storied Test Match playing career. In the space of 3 balls and just as many minutes, first 41 year old James Anderson snagged the edge of Kuldeep Yadav’s bat and into the safe gloved hands of Ben Foakes behind the stumps for his 700th all-time Test Match wicket to become only the third player in the entire history of the game to reach this incredible milestone and then 20 year old Shoaib Bashir grabbed the final wicket of the innings to secure a 5 wicket haul or a “Michelle”, or “Pfeiffer” or “5 fer”, and the old stager and young buck led their team from the field of play with a very real sense of a job well done.
England trailed India on 1st innings by a mammoth 257 runs and as a first port of call they had to bat for the remainder of the day to draw level on runs with India before setting their hosts any kind of total to chase on day 4.
Sadly, they didn’t even manage to bat until Tea time.
Aside from Ben Duckett’s incredibly reckless and badly judged rush down the wicket just 11 balls into the innings (only to hear the “death rattle” of his stumps shattering behind him), the rest of his teammates were either out-thought or out-skilled by the entire rainbow of the Indian bowling attack led brilliantly once more by Ravi Ashwin in his 100th Test Match. The 37 year old veteran had 4 wickets to his name even before the players left the field for the Lunch Break as he followed the gift of Duckett’s self-inflicted demise by brilliantly spinning out Zak Crawley for a “duck”, out-thinking Ollie Pope and dismantling Ben Stokes’ “castle” of stumps. At 103–5 at Lunch, England were ripe for the easily predictable collapse that soon followed as Ashwin bowled Ben Foakes before he left the stage clear for Jasprit Bumrah to “york” Tom Hartley and Mark Wood in 3 devastatingly brilliant deliveries, Ravi Jadeja ended the stout defiance of Tom Hartley before the bowling rainbow was completed by Kuldeep Yadav as he secured the match winning wicket of Joe Root. Before running out of partners, the ex skipper was the only England batsman to provide any meaningful resistance with a well played 84, but the team around him had collapsed to 195 all out in less than 50 overs and in under 2 sessions of play.
England had been thoroughly and comprehensively outplayed once more.
As promised in yesterday’s journal entry I’ll conclude with the antipodean contest at the beautiful “Hagley Oval” in Christchurch, New Zealand and pleasingly and very much against the run of play, the hosts have turned the tables on their visitors from the other side of the Tasman Sea and after 2 days of this Test Match, we may have a competitive game on our hands. Commencing day 2 on 124–4 and trailing New Zealand by just 38 1st Innings runs, Australia dominated the early exchanges with overnight “Night Watchman” Nathan Lyon granted a “life” just 8 deliveries into the day with Daryl Mitchell dropping a tough chance at 2nd Slip before snagging an almost exact replica 30 minutes and 19 runs to the emergency batsman later. Mitchell Marsh soon followed for a 4 ball “duck” (Matt Henry’s 5th wicket of the innings) before the “Golden Arm” of part-time bowler Glenn Phillips snagged a loose shot from Alex Carey with his very first delivery. Australia had matched and surpassed New Zealand’s 1st innings total to lead by 27 runs at the fall of Carey’s wicket and would extend this lead by a further 32 runs when, right on the cusp of the Lunch Break, Glenn Phillips was back in the action with as spectacular a catch as you could wish to see, flying to his right goalkeeper style to snag a quite wonderful one-handed catch to see the back of Aussie danger man and top scorer Marnus Labuschagne 10 runs short of a deserved Test Match century.
New Zealand needed just 35 minutes of the afternoon session to wrap up the remainder of the Australian innings and had it not been for a blistering run-a-ball 23 from Aussie captain Pat Cummins, they would have done so much sooner and with a far lesser deficit on 1st innings than the eventual 94 runs behind they found themselves with starting their 2nd Innings. Both of the final 2 wickets to fall were snagged by Matt Henry who took his pre-Lunch tally of 5 wickets to 7 and a second best personal bowling figures of his Test Match career of 7–67.
I continued watching live until turning my undivided attention to Dharamshala, leaving New Zealand on 79–1, 15 runs behind their visitors, and with opening batsman Tom Latham 38 not out and all around Kiwi sporting hero Kane Williamson 36 not out. Highlights of the 90 minutes or so of live play missed show Latham receiving a “life” when inexplicably dropped by the gloved hands of wicket-keeper Alex Carey when on 59 (he remains 65 not out) before the sell-out Christchurch crowd cried out in anguish with the departure of Kane Williamson for 51 as he “played on” to his own stumps from the bowling of Pat Cummins. Rachin Ravindra (11 not out) joined Tom Latham until the day ending “Stumps” minutes later, and New Zealand will resume in the morning to another sell-out Sunday crowd in the Christchurch sunshine on 134–2 and with a lead of 40 runs.
So my attention now turns permanently to New Zealand for hopefully an exciting and competitive final chapter to my winter odyssey and if I’m lucky, and because I adore this grandest of all games so much, maybe two final chapters.
Time will tell.
It always does.