England v India: 1st Test, Day 5 - Cook too Conservative to Exploit Another Indian Batting Collapse

 

England v India: 1^st Test, Day 5

Cook too Conservative to Exploit Another Indian Batting Collapse

November 13^th 2016

There was a body of opinion that suggested that with only 3 days between the 1^st and 2^nd Test England should bat out time and not even make a token declaration to rest their bowlers because there was no chance of getting a result. There was a minority view that stated that given how the two teams had handled the conditions, England had a real chance of forcing the win if their bowlers were given enough time.

It was the latter view that was proven correct.

Probably England did not deserve to win having delayed their declaration so much but, even so, had a couple of chances been snaffled – one of them not difficult – India could easily have lost. India were set a notional 310 from 49 overs on a pitch where 210 from 49 overs would have been a big challenge.

After another 75 overs of England’s batsmen scoring at their pleasure against the Indian spinners, it was a completely different match when India batted. Any thoughts that Indian fans may have had of their side chasing were rudely shattered after 12 balls when Chris Woakes left India 0-1, with the first runs not coming until the 24^th ball of the innings.

Even though the runs were accumulating, there was no sense of permanence: 22-1, Vijay was dropped by Ansari off a difficult caught and bowled; 31-1, Pujara was dropped by Broad off Ansari – a much easier chance; 43-1, Moeen Ali completed defeated Vijay’s forward push, but the ball caught his back pad; 44-1, Adil Rashid beat everything with a big leg-spinner. While Pujara can feel unfortunate that when the finger went up for LBW it was to a ball pitching outside leg, even if he was pinned bang in front (no need to say that the umpire was Dhamasena), the decision was probably given on the grounds of quality control.

By that time it was all too little, too late. Even though India lost 8 wickets in 30 overs to crash to defeat in the 3^rd Test in 2006 (Andrew Flintoff and Shaun Udal combined for 20.2-7-28-7 in that innings), there was never a sense here that the win was imminent, even when Adil Rashid and Moeen Ali took wickets in consecutive overs to leave India 71-4 with 25 overs left. That though left the obdurate Kohli and Ashwin together and they were calm and took time out of the game. When England needed to take one of the two quickly they  took the score up to 118-5 when Ashwin had a rush of blood and gifted his wicket to Ansari who, soon after, bowled a ball at Kohli that turned hugely.

Even then there was just a chance of inducing a panic, but it needed Kohli to fall. The only batsman to go though was Saha who bunted the ball gently back to Adil Rashid to make it 132-6 with 26 minutes left. At that point Rashid had 3-37 in the innings, slightly superior to Ashwin’s 3-230 in the match.

Take-aways from the match?

India were out-batted and, more seriously, out-bowled.

·         India’s three spinners took 9-521 against an inexperienced batting line-up that supposedly had no idea how to play spin.

·         England’s three spinners took 13-433 against the self-confessed masters of playing spin bowling.

·         The least successful of England’s spin trio (Moeen Ali) took 3-132 in the match.

·         The most successful of India’s spin trio (Ravi Jadeja) took 3-133 in the match.

Reports say that the pitch at Visakhapatnam will be a big turner and that the side winning the Toss is likely to win the match. On this showing, India may have more to fear than England if there is real help for the bowlers.

Either way, the series will not now end 5-0 and India’s trumpeting the draw as a demonstration of how far their side has come shows how relieved they are at not going 1-0 down.