England v India: 4th Test, Day 5 - Blown Away

 

England v India: 4^th Test, Day 5

Blown Away

December 12^th 2016

For all the brave talk that England had plenty of batting left and that a lead of 120 might make things interesting, the reality was brutally different. The last 4 wickets resisted just 48 balls on the final morning. When a batsman as talented as Jos Buttler finishes 6*, you know that there has barely been even token resistance by the tail.

From 180-4 and looking set to post some sort of target, possibly even a challenging one, 6 wickets fell for 15 runs in 73 balls. It is not a collapse that England will look back on with any pride. It is not even their worst collapse of the winter. In terms of the fall of the last 5 wickets, it was only the third worst collapse of the winter: a horrifically bad statistic.

The decision to play four seamers has been widely criticised, but who would have played in Jake Ball’s place, had the side been picked again with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight? Apart from the injured Stuart Broad, the options were: Batty, Dawson, Finn, Duckett and Ballance. Steve Finn is a seamer and one struggling for form so, discounted. Duckett is a good one-day batsman, who has made runs in the Second Division, which is no preparation for playing a side unbeaten at home in four years 14, 15, 7, 56, 13, 5, 0 and looking hopelessly at sea against spin seems to have ruled him out. Ballance averages 18.8 in his last 11 Tests and has been well and truly found out in Test cricket; to pick him largely on the basis of one innings against Pakistan, was no kindness as his confidence must be close to zero. Dawson is a rookie with just a handful of ODIs and  T20s to his name and was felt to be too big a risk. And Gareth Batty’s Test record is now 15 wickets @ 61 in 9 Tests: the bizarre logic of picking a 39 year old bowler who had run right out of form in the last month and a half of the season, cruelly exposed. His last 7 First Class matches since the start of August have produced combined match figures of 10-521. Undoubtedly, the selectors hoped that he would be as inspired a pick as Shaun Udal had been in 2006, but his end of season form (the last third of the season) was totally overshadowed by other bowlers such as Leach, Rayner and Crane while, in 2005, Shaun Udal had topped the Hampshire bowling averages, finishing well ahead of one Shane Warne.

After the match, Alistair Cook made some comments that sounded like an admission that it is time for Joe Root to take over from him. However, we have written Cook’s obituary before – most notably in 2014 – and he has come back from the dead. With one Test to go in the winter, there are no more games until July 6^th 2017, when England play South Africa at Lord’s. Many things may happen before then. There is then a helter-skelter of cricket with a Test series against West Indies that goes well into September (the final ODI is on September 29^th!) and then a tour of Australia.

However, another defeat in the final Test, especially if combined with other, external factors (will Jimmy Anderson want to tour Australia again? If so, when will he call it a day?) might just sway his judgement. Cook has since played down his remarks, but only he knows how much longer he wishes to continue. A further factor though, with Joe Root playing Tests, ODIs and T20 is to ask how much he needs the added burden of captaining a faltering side to be thrust on him. How much is too much for him? Do we want to find out?

Barring the 1st Test, India have been utterly irresistible in this Test series. Most pundits expected England to be hammered and have not been disapointed in their prediction. After the Bangladesh series, plenty suggested that England would be fortunate to avoid a 5-0 defeat: they have been proved right. To win, England had to play at 100% and India had to be overconfident and off-colour, as they were in that 1st Test; that match though was just the wake-up call that India needed and it has led them to putting in as dominant a performance as any series in the 1990s when whitewash followed whitewash in India and England's performances in Asia became a figure of ridicule.