London, Feb 26: The British media lambasted its cricket team’s abject surrender to India in the pink-ball Test, holding the much-debated rotation policy and technical failures of its batsmen responsible for the humiliation even as the Motera pitch also drew some flak.
England on Thursday suffered an embarrassing 10-wicket defeat in the third Test against India on a spin-friendly Motera track to go down 1-2 in the four-match series.
The match ended under two days with the pitch drawing flak from some former players like Michael Vaughan, who called it “not ideal” for Test cricket. But ‘The Guardian’ newspaper focussed on England’s own shoddy display.
“Inquest into England’s two-day thrashing will yield no easy answers,” read the headline of its report. “It is hard to work out what to blame for the disastrous third Test defeat against India when so many things went wrong.
The newspaper went on to pin the blame on the rotation policy, which led to resting of key players during the series, the failure to read the conditions, and “the hangover from the heavy defeat in Chennai last week.”
“Then the batsmen’s inability to press their advantage when they were 74 for two in the first innings, the systematic lack of exposure to spin bowling caused by the skewed priorities of the ECB, the pink ball, the extreme nature of the pitch and the plain fact that they were up against a better team,” the article further read.
‘The Sun’ called England “inept” and criticised the visitors’ selection policy.
“Inept England humiliated in India on an Ahmedabad bunsen-burner with one spinner and four No.11 batsmen,” the paper wrote in a column by Dave Kidd. ‘Wisden’ summed up the defeat saying: “Never in the history of Test matches in this country has English cricket been made to look quite so poor.”
But there wer a few newspapers and experts, who squarely blamed the Motera pitch for turning the Test into a two-day contest. Andy Bunn in his column in ‘The Mirror’ wrote: “India close to crossing boundaries of sportsmanship with pitch – it was NOT Test cricket” “Making the most of home advantage is fair enough but this was not a pitch fit for a blue riband, five-day match after England lost to India in the shortest Test match for nearly 90 years.”
According to renowned cricket writer Sycld Berry of ‘The Telegraph’: “This unfit pitch was no advert for Test cricket – India should be docked World Championship points.
” Berry called on the ICC to ban the newly-built Narendra Modi cricket stadium for producing, what according to him, was a sub-standard wicket. But he fears that world body would not be brave enough to do so as the ground has been re-named after India’s Prime Minister.
“By that ICC rule-book, after bureaucracy has run its course, the pitch at the Narendra Modi Stadium should be suspended from international cricket for a period between 12 to 14 months,” Berry wrote. “…why the Narendra Modi stadium will not be banned lies in the name.
The ground has just been re-named after India’s Prime Minister, who set the project in motion when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat,” he claimed. (Agencies)
List of records that fell in the third Test
It was the shortest Test match in terms of balls (842) since the Second World War.
Both sides scored a cumulative 387 runs — the lowest in a Test match in Asia, surpassing the grand total of 422 scored by Pakistan and Australia in Sharjah in 2002.
England’s second innings’ 81 is the second-lowest by any visiting team India.
England’s total of 193 runs in the two innings is the lowest ever for any team in India.
India’s 145 is the lowest first innings total since 1909 by a team that went on to win the match by 10 wickets.
Left-arm spinner Axar Patel’s match haul of 11/70 is the best match figures in a day-night Test, surpassing Australian Pat Cummins’s 10/62 against Sri Lanka in Brisbane in January 2019.
Patel’s figures are also the cheapest 10-wicket haul by an Indian in Test cricket, surpassing Ashwin’s 12 85 against New Zealand in Hyderabad in 2012.
Patel is the fourth Indian to take five-wicket hauls in three or more consecutive Test matches.
Ashwin is the fourth Indian after Anil Kumble (619), Kapil Dev (434) and Harbhajan Singh (417) to take 400 Test wickets.
Ashwin is the second fastest, in terms of matches, to reach 400 Test wickets (77 matches) after Muttiah Muralitharan (72).
England’s aggregate of 193 runs in this Test is their lowest in a Test since 175 (93 and 82) scored against New Zealand in Christchurch in 1983/84
Virat Kohli (22) overtook MS Dhoni (21) for most Test wins as Indian captain in India.
Joe Root’s 5/8 is the most economical five-wicket haul in the history of Test cricket.