Familiar batting problems to the fore as India lose first Test to England

 

Well, well, well … who saw this one coming? Ben Stokes’ England team taking the first Test match into a fourth day, having been all out for 246 on day one, and then wrapping up victory over India during the extended half hour on that same fourth day for a 1-0 lead. Hats off to Stokes and his band of merry men.

Sunday’s result in Hyderabad – an England win by 28 runs, despite at one stage trailing by 190 runs – stands as just India’s fourth loss in a home Test match since 2012, the last time a visiting cricket team landed in the country and managed to win a series.

The nature of England’s win, and one founded on the basic belief in Bazball, owes to several factors across the four days witnessed in Hyderabad. Some inspired captaincy from Ben Stokes, despite the bizarre burning of all three reviews inside 14 overs on day two; India’s reckless batting on day two, when they gifted all six wickets to fall; an innings for the ages from Ollie Pope, whose 196 must surely be ranked alongside Kevin Pietersen’s 186 back in 2012; some feeble captaincy from Rohit Sharma on day three, made worse by India’s ineffectiveness with the ball; and the resounding reply that debutant left-arm spinner Tom Hartley gave on day four with seven wickets.

But, most tellingly, at the heart of India’s unforeseen loss to England in the first of five Test matches was the very evident problem this team has against spin bowling. This is not to exonerate Rohit’s captaincy – which saw him deploy very defensive field settings and make a mess of some DRS review – or the way the trio of Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel bowled on day three, but to this writer’s mind the biggest reason for India losing this Test match, after taking a lead of 190, was the batting. In particular, playing unknown spin bowlers.

On day one, after England had been kept to 246, in the remaining time before stumps, Rohit played arguably the worst shot of his Test career. Dancing out to Jack Leach, looking for a boundary in the 13th over, at which time Yashwasi Jaiswal had almost single-handedly given India a start worth 80, Rohit played an awful shot to be caught by Stokes at mid-on. Leach is not an unknown, but Rohit’s approach to a perceived weak link stung.

Then, in the first over of day two, batting on 80 off 73 deliveries, Jaiswal stepped out Joe Root and gave the part-timer a return catch. The next to go was the woefully out of form Shubman Gill, who swatted an innocuous delivery from Hartley – who had been smashed on day one by Jaiswal – to midwicket. Then, a few minutes into the afternoon session, a well set Shreyas Iyer decided to swing a legbreak from the rookie Rehan Ahmed straight to the solitary fielder manning the deep on the legside.

The over-aggressive, disdainful approach for this threadbare spin attack continued when, with India 288 and his own score 86, KL Rahul pulled a filthy long hop from Hartley to Ahmed, stationed at deep midwicket. That KS Bharat was made to look all at sea against Root during his 81-ball 41, which ended with an frustrated swipe across the line to the same bowler, says it all. And then, moments later, the shambolic run out of Ashwin left India 358 and seven wickets down. A day that should have ended with India’s score at 421/3 ended up being 421/7 thanks to India’s generosity in gifting England six wickets on day two.

India ended the day with a lead of 175 thanks chiefly to Jadeja (87) and Axar (44), but early on day three the innings was wrapped up for just 15 runs added as Root took two wickets in a hurry to end with 4/79 from 29 overs. In throwing away wickets in what looked like their own attempt to imitate Bazball, India left at least 100 runs out on the field which, a day later, was made to look critical in the overall picture.

Pope’s incredible display of how to hit India’s celebrated spinners left the home team dazed, and eventually set India a target of 231. What should have been a fairly easy chase given that Leach did not take the field in the morning session and the ineffectiveness of Ahmed and Hartley earlier in the match, was made to resemble a traffic accident as one after the other, India’s batsmen panicked against spin.

Jaiswal and Gill prodded catches off the 1.93m spinner Hartley, both gobbled up by Pope under the helmet. Rohit got to 39 before he was beaten by Hartley when playing for turn that never appeared. Axar, promoted ahead of Iyer, Jadeja and Bharat, made 17 before he drove a return catch back to the debutant. Rahul went back to Root and was given lbw. Iyer poked at Leach, back into proceedings after an injury scare, and nicked to Root at slip. Three wickets for 24 runs in 9.1 overs after tea on day four saw India’s innings spiral downwards.

Bharat and Ashwin batted admirably to take the score from 119/7 to 178 before both fell to spin as well; Bharat was beaten for turn by Hartley and Ashwin skipped out and was stumped. A familiar narrative, seen most recently during last year’s Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which has now turned into a major problem.

Since the start of the World Test Championship, due to the added value of winning points to reach the final, India have been more reliant on turning tracks owing to the value of having Ashwin, Jadeja and Axar. The approach has merit, of course, but it also comes with risks as we have seen on several occasions. That risk centres on the very evident batting problems within India’s top six against spin.

Since the WTC began in 2019, looking purely at India’s Test matches played at home, on mostly turning tracks, the most successful batsman is Rohit with 1296 which includes the most hundreds (five), fours (115) and sixes (31). His batting average of 56.34 (minimum 10 innings) is bettered only by his previous opening partner Mayank Agarwal, who averaged 69.07 from 13 innings at home.

But scratch the surface, and you will see that during the second WTC cycle (2021-23) and the ongoing one, Rohit averages 35.90 at home with just one score of 50 or more, which was his match-setting 120 on a raging turner in Nagpur to open the 2023 Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Since then, he has been dismissed on five occasions between 20 and 39 and 14 times to visiting spinners.

No point addressing Virat Kohli’s stats here since he did not play this Test and will not be there for the next one. Moving to Gill, his dipping numbers indicate clearly a very talented batsman currently out of depth at No 3 and struggling to locate the right approach, mentally and technically, to crack Test cricket. Gill averages 29.33 at home during the WTC’s existence, and during this time he has struggled to cope with spin. Eight of his 16 dismissals have been to spin. Iyer, a very fine player of spin, averages 36.76 with 10 dismissals to spin. Rahul averages 29.20, with all five of his dismissals being to spinners.

Clearly, India have a problem against spin, which this rookie England spin outfit has started to hammer away at. Make no mistake, the Hyderabad track was not a raging turner like we’ve seen over the past few years in India. So, if on such a pitch India’s batsmen were undone by a debutant and a part-time offspinner, what could happen if they resort to type and ask for square turners for the next four Test matches?