A thoroughly engrossing but progressively one-sided Test series ended, as expected, with India holding the trophy after trouncing England by an innings and 64 runs in Dharamsala. The denouement took less than three days as England, after two batting collapses, were smashed at the most scenic venue in Test cricket to make it 17 successive home series wins for India.
After beating India in the first Test match back in January, Ben Stokes’ team fought in pockets and pushed their hosts here and there, but the way their challenge was extinguished in the third match, by a record 434 runs, made the fourth and fifth fixtures one-way traffic. So abject were England by the time the fifth and final match started – how do you go from 100/1 to 218 all out in two hours? – that India hardly had to shift gears in Dharamsala.
This Test match was sealed, for all practical purposes, on day one when India’s spinners took all ten wickets – five for Kuldeep Yadav, four for Ravichandran Ashwin, in his 100th Test – to trigger an England collapse from 175/3 to 218 all out. Key to this was getting just enough from the day-one surface to wrest control of the match. The pitch did not aid turn sharply at all, and in fact resembled a batting beauty during the first session, but then that is precisely what worked for India’s spinners, in particularly Kuldeep.
Recent history is littered with examples of pitches on which spinners have been able to work wonders because there has been just enough to put doubt in batsmen’s’ minds. This was what happened to England, mainly when they failed to read Kuldeep’s googly. It was terrific bowling from the left-arm wrist-spinner, who sent England spiraling from 64/0 to 175/4 – a score at which the visitors proceeded to lose two more wickets as Ravindra Jadeja trapped Joe Root in front and Stokes, for the umpteenth time this tour, played back in his crease to Kuldeep.
Ashwin joined the fun belatedly, but in quick time had mopped up the lower order to finish with 4/51 from 11.4 overs. India ended the first day on 135/1, with Yashasvi Jaiswal having blasted 57 off 58 balls to speed past 700 runs in the series, and 1000 overall in his ninth Test, and the skipper Rohit not out on 52. The lead swelled past 250 next day, with Rohit easing to his second century of the series and Shubman Gill looking the most fluent he had so far, hitting 100 off 150 balls with minimal fuss and a few verbal jibes with James Anderson. Both set centurions were dismissed in quick succession just after the lunch interval, with Stokes bowling Rohit with his first ball in Tests in 251 days and Anderson moving to 699 when he cleaned up Gill. But the debutant Devdutt Padikkal made 65 and Sarfaraz Khan 56, before some stubborn tail-end resistance from Kuldeep (30) and Jasprit Bumrah (20) got India to 477.
England, clearly in a funk all Test match, never came close to making India bat again. Anderson’s 700th wicket became a footnote as the visitors were bowled out for 195 inside two sessions, with Ashwin taking five to end the match with 9/128.
These five Tests were the biggest test for Bazball, we were all aware. England, after going up 1-0 and winning three out of five tosses, had several chances in each subsequent match to try and close the gap on India, but each time India had an answer. Each time that England allowed India back in the game, they ended up being the ones chasing the game. Hats off to Rohit and his team-mates for not letting the Hyderabad loss get to their heads, and for improving with each match.
Kudos as well to the pitches in Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Rajkot, Ranchi and Dharamsala which have been brilliant for Test cricket. Hundreds and double-hundreds were scored, spinners and pacers alike came into each match and we were treated to five engaging Test matches. More such, please, when India return to Test cricket in October.
