20 wickets or lower order runs? India’s Birmingham dilemma

We’ve been here before. A touring Indian cricket team down 0-1 in the first of a Test series in England with batting, bowling and fielding problems and looking at ways to make a comeback in the second match. 

But the current team’s predicament under a rookie Test captain in 25-year-old Shubman Gill has less with the fact that this is a transitional and somewhat inexperienced team and more to do with its own failings rather than any other in recent imagination. India scored 835 runs during the first Test in Leeds and had five centurions but failed to defend 371 in the fourth innings. Six catches were dropped and barring Jasprit Bumrah, who might not play the second Test starting tomorrow in Birmingham, the bowling was just not threatening. 

After overhauling a stiff target of 371 for the loss of five wickets at 4.5 runs per over with 14 overs remaining, England reaffirmed their commitment to bowling first and chasing down 250-plus scores in the fourth innings. India’s challenge is to puncture that belief – which they did in spurts during the first Test – and not allow Bazball back into the game when they’ve got them sweating. 

Make no mistake, it is Ben Stokes’ team that walked away from Leeds with their belief in pulling off the remarkable reinvigorated. They twice survived India’s batting when it looked like 500 would be crossed with ease and were also the beneficiary of plenty of dropped catches as well as a Bumrah no-ball that helped Harry Brook score 99. 

Yes, the Headingley pitch stayed true right until the end but England, and not India, had the belief in victory. 

The challenge for Gill and his team-mates is to forget the errors of the first Test and move on. That starts with team selection. Looking at shambolic collapses of 7/41 and 6/31 in which the lower order was either disinterested or abjectly inadequate, India have to pick their four best wicket-taking bowlers and hope that Ravindra Jadeja puts in a better all-round show than he did in Leeds. 

Before the series started, Gill stressed on the need to take 20 wickets. India, in hindsight, picked an inadequate bowling attack for the Headingley Test and once again run the risk of doing so at Edgbaston, one of the best venues for visiting teams. 

If India go for two spinners, it is a toss-up between Kuldeep Yadav and Washington Sundar. They played Washington in Australia, but his bowling contribution was limited, and looking at the number of sweep-happy batsmen in the England lineup, conventional wisdom says pick the wrist-spinner. But are Gill and Gautam Gambhir bold enough? 

If they swap Shardul for Nitish Kumar Reddy, in hopes of lower middle order runs, it could prove a mistake because the bigger cost for India during the first Test was taking 15 of 20 wickets, not leaving runs out there due to lower-order collapses. 

The team management also needs to decide quickly if B Sai Sudarshan, with a first-class batting average of under 39, is really a Test one-down. Or if Karun Nair, whose comeback to the squad after seven years is a wonderful story, should bat at No 6 ahead of Dhruv Jurel, who in a career of four Tests has shown a steeliness which this team could really use. 

And after all this, they must pray that catches are held. Because hard work between match hours clearly did not help the team at Headingley. 

England have resisted the urge to fast-track Jofra Archer into their 11, instead keeping faith in the same bowlers that did the job in Leeds. Josh Tongue was the most successful England bowler with a match haul of 7/158, Brydon Carse took four, Stokes five and Chris Woakes just one. You could look at Woakes’ match figures of 1/148 and assume him to be the man to swap out Archer for, but the 36-year-old was also playing his first Test since December and missed much of the ongoing domestic season. And Woakes also contributed a vital 38 in England’s first innings while seeing off the second new ball. 

India likely 11: 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 KL Rahul, 3 B Sai Sudarshan, 4 Shubman Gill (capt), 5 Rishabh Pant (wk), 6 Karun Nair, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Washington Sundar/Kuldeep Yadav, 9 Arshdeep Singh, 10 Mohammed Siraj, 11 Prasidh Krishna