BIRMINGHAM, July 5: Jonny Bairstow and Joe Root, who have made chasing tricky targets in Test matches fashionable, put famed Indian pace attack to sword with imposing hundreds as England recorded their highest ever chase of 378 runs with minimum fuss to level the five-match series 2-2.
It is fourth straight successful chase for England, having accomplished tricky fourth innings targets of 278, 299, 296 against New Zealand in the previous series.
For India, the ignominy was not being able to defend their highest fourth innings target.
When England were rattled on the fourth afternoon by stand-in skipper Jasprit Bumrah, the two-star batters didn’t waver from their game plan. The entire Indian attack, except Bumrah, looked pedestrian. All England needed was just under 20 overs to knock off the remaining 119 runs on fifth morning.
What was more embarrassing was England knocking off the runs in 76.4 overs, which isn’t even a full day’s play and at a run-rate of nearly five runs per over (4.93).
Root (142 not out), who has been in even more sublime form since relinquishing captaincy, scored his 28th century and was involved in an unbroken 269-run stand with Bairstow (114 not out), whose ton count reached a dozen after the completion of this game.
Bairstow, who is in the form of his life, topped up his first innings of 106 with an even more graceful century as Brendon McCullum’s philosophy of deflating teams on flat decks is currently working wonders.
A cursory look at a statistical nugget reveals the impact Bairstow and Root have made in England’s last four victories.
Root has scored 11, 115 not out, 176, 3, 5, 86 not out, 5 and 142 not out in his last eight innings. Bairstow has scored 1, 16, 8, 136, 162, 71 not out, 106 and 114 not out in the same set of games.
Both have played significant role in three chases in the last four games.
This is India’s third straight Test match defeat in a ‘SENA’ country (SA, England, NZ, Australia) after back-to-back defeats against South Africa but this will hurt as they had a sizeable first innings lead of 132 runs.
The defeat would also significantly dent India’s chances of finishing in top-two in the World Test Championship (WTC) table.
Bumrah in his first tryst as captain was very impressive despite the disappointing outcome but what would hurt India badly is the tactics employed by the team that had so many senior players.
A team that has set a target of 378 couldn’t have possibly started with a spread-out field, logic of which would need some explaining from head coach Rahul Dravid.
Since he has taken over, India have lost three out of four overseas Tests and for a man, who relies heavily on method and process, that’s not a great piece of stat.
Bowling with a deep extra cover, deep mid-wicket, deep fine leg only gave a negative impression about the strategy deployed on the fourth evening.
The singles and doubles were easy pickings as none of the bowlers was able to settle down. It was imperative to keep one batter at one end under a tight leash.
As pressure released, the boundaries flowed from the blades of both batters. It wasn’t a typical ‘Bazball’ approach which is going for leather but bleeding the opposition with thousand cuts, both practically and metaphorically.
The gaping holes in the field were a testimony of a hollow strategy.
Ravindra Jadeja (18.4-3-62-0), a classical left-arm spinner, bowled over the wicket throughout, negating any chance of trapping the batters in front of the wicket. Not once did he come round the wicket to pin the batters.
To make matters worse, India’s third and fourth pacers – Mohammed Siraj (15-0-98-0) and Shardul Thakur (11-0-65-0) – hardly made an impact. They either bowled too short or too full.
The Englishmen hit 50 boundaries in all – 48 fours and two sixes and ran 158 runs in singles, doubles and triples. That’s the long and short end of the story. (PTI)
