The second Test begins at Edgbaston tomorrow and India have a dilemma. How best to level a series in which their previous offering of 471 first-innings runs, along with an incredible five century-makers in the match, were not good enough to stop England trouncing them? Answers by express delivery please to Shubman Gill, India’s bewildered captain.
Get more runs is one potential solution though scores of more than 450, even in the first innings, are not routine in Test cricket. Anyway, pushing harder to exceed the exceptional brings added pressures, which in turn bring mistakes. But then spooking sides is what this England team do, especially after chasing down the 373 they needed to beat India at Headingley, their second- highest successful fourth innings run-chase ever.
Stop England, who yesterday named an unchanged side for Edgbaston, from scoring so many runs so quickly is another solution though one that becomes increasingly difficult if you rest your best bowler, as India are saying they might do with Jasprit Bumrah.
In Leeds, Bumrah was a different class to the other bowlers in the match. He took five for 83 in the first innings but faded in the second due to a lack of match fitness. He also had catches dropped off him which cost India dear.
Bumrah is a precious resource who has recently been injured, so he does need careful management. But while it is tempting to view a five-Test series like this in the round, India cannot afford to go two-nil down here, which makes resting Bumrah in Birmingham a very risky option indeed.
Many will recall England having a similar dilemma in the last Ashes series in Australia. The team’s analysts concluded James Anderson and Stuart Broad both needed to be carefully managed due to their advancing years. As such, they suggested both be saved for the pink-ball Test under lights in Adelaide (where seam movement is in theory more pronounced), which was match number two.
Meanwhile, they ignored the fact the opening Test at the Gabba was to be played on a green top upon which the pair were likely to thrive but didn’t because they were rested. England promptly lost to go 1-0 down in the series and then lost again in Adelaide, partly because Broad and Anderson were not match ready and not at their best.
India could make the same mistake which is to ignore what’s in front of them (ie doing everything they can to level the series) in favour of what might, or might not, come later on down the line.
For me, Bumrah, providing he is fully fit, should play at Edgbaston along with Mohammed Siraj, Arshdeep Singh, Kuldeep Yadav and Ravindra Jadeja; the two ‘deeps’ replacing Shardul Thakur and tall seamer Prasidh Krishna. India made some assumptions for Headingley that don’t tally now that Stokes wants hard, true pitches to suit his Bazball strokemakers.
Previously, surfaces here mostly rewarded seam bowlers, but on the batter-friendly surfaces Stokes wants for his team, a wrist-spinner like Kuldeep could prove more valuable than a workaday seamer like Krishna. Arshdeep is not a spinner but offers variation from the ‘uniform’ attack India fielded at Headingley by being tall, left-arm and a swinger.
The problem is picking Kuldeep and Arshdeep weakens the batting, not drastically, but enough for it to be a concern especially after 471 was found wanting. It did not help that India’s tail-enders were blown away twice in the match by Josh Tongue, the last four wickets going down for 17 and 15 runs respectively in the two innings. With that in mind any further compromises on batting power are bound to make India nervous.
Test cricket was once governed by simple laws. The more potent bowling attack you possessed the fewer runs needed to be competitive, while the bigger the total you scored allowed you more time to winkle out the opposition even with less-vaunted bowlers. But Stokes’ England have scrambled those conventions, making opponents question themselves as well as the old verities. But however India decide to counter, I can’t see them levelling without Bumrah. He’d be the first name on my team sheet.
Lawrence and Larkins lit up the game
It has been a sad few weeks for the cricket community losing as it has the special talents of David ‘Syd’ Lawrence and Wayne ‘Ned’ Larkins.
I played and roomed with both of them; the pair staunch team players to their very core. Superb cricketers who played for county and occasionally for country, it is probably fair to say that their talents would have been better appreciated in eras other than their own.
Syd was a big, well-muscled fast bowler who ran 35-40 yards like an express train, every ball. He did it because it was the Rolls Royce option and hard. The easy option was for others. It meant that pin-point accuracy and calculated psychology were not really his thing. And yet the experience of him charging at you, getting bigger and faster as he approached the stumps was intimidation enough. You knew it would be quick, and you knew it would be painful if you got it wrong.
Larkins also intimidated, though unlike Syd he didn’t look that fearsome what with his outlaw moustache, long wavy hair and a cricket sweater that always seemed to look like it belonged to someone six inches taller. But when he picked up that big Stuart Surridge bat and applied his silken timing to an outrageous range of shots, the boundary boards were quickly dented along with the bowlers’ confidence. Being ‘Nedded’ was the term given to the bowlers who suffered, and there were many.
These days more batters play like Ned than bowl like Syd, and not just because of the horrific injury the latter sustained in 1992 when his kneecap split in half during a Test match against New Zealand.For me, their legacy will be of two, exciting, highly watchable talents for whom the anticipation of something special was as exciting as the deed itself which, when it came, lit up the game in day-glo wonder.