The usual wear and tear aside, the pitch at the ACA-VDCA Stadium seldom misbehaved even on the penultimate day of this second Test. Bazball, though, kept India worried at times.
But in the end, India’s consistent bowling had the final say.
Since that unforgettable 2020-21 tour of Australia till the 106-run win over England on Monday to square the five-match series 1-1, bowlers have been doing their job
admirably for Team India at crucial junctures of their Test assignments over the last three years.
The architects of these crucial victories, Jasprit Bumrah and Ravichandran Ashwin — even though the latter has had a lasting impact mainly in home conditions — were at work once again as India needed them to fire against this formidable English team. This was a game where India’s batting line-up was further depleted owing to the absence of KL Rahul along with Virat Kohli. And barring the individual brilliance of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Shubman Gill, the batting continues to be a worry for India with skipper Rohit Sharma too struggling for runs.
“We were put under pressure at various times, but a couple of individual performances (that of Jaiswal and Bumrah) kept us ahead by 140-odd. Then we needed bit more of a team performance over the next two days to get over the line, so yeah, quite pleased considering going behind in the last match and losing players to injuries,” head coach Rahul Dravid said, adding: “Scoring 396 in the first innings here, I thought, was under-par.
“You win a toss, you have one guy who gets a double hundred, you should then be pushing towards 450-475 in these conditions.”
Rohit does appear to be under some sort of pressure for not being among runs, but the performances of Bumrah in particular in this Test and Ashwin on Day IV should reduce it to a certain extent.
Not that Ashwin was brilliant in this Test like Bumrah, who finished with a match-haul of nine wickets with breakthroughs in both innings without which India may not have won the game. But to dismiss Ollie Pope and Joe Root — two builders of England’s innings — in one spell isn’t the easiest job for any bowler.
One may feel both the shot selection of both Pope and Root could have been wiser as Bazball is not wild, mindless slogging, which the Englishmen themselves say. But what Ashwin succeeded in doing was testing the patience of both the batsmen, maintaining the off-stump line.
Of course, Shreyas Iyer’s direct throw that ran captain Ben Stokes out was another significant moment in terms of the Test’s outcome. But Pope and Root’s departure in just 11 balls had hit England harder, somewhat affecting the otherwise fluent Zak Crawley’s rhythm as well.
So Ashwin, just one short of 500 Test scalps now, has to be credited on this front.
Going back to Bumrah, two of the three wickets he took in the fourth innings certainly mattered a lot for India after his breathtaking spell of 6/45 in the first. At Edgbaston in July 2022, the dangerous Jonny Bairstow had nailed India with centuries in both innings.
On this occasion though, he had to bow to Bumrah for the second time in the Test. This time, Bumrah shaped the ball in and rapped Bairstow on the pads before Umpire’s Call confirmed him his first victim of England’s second innings.
When it seemed as if Ben Foakes and Tom Hartley were pinching India with their 50-plus eighth-wicket stand, Rohit turned to Bumrah again and India’s pace spearhead didn’t take much time to respond. It was another delivery targeting the stumps as Foakes couldn’t keep it down.
