Going into the 2nd Test, all the talk was how India would cope without the services of spearhead bowler, Jasprit Bumrah. Based on the performance in the 1st Test, everyone believed that India were doomed. Adding to this was India's record playing at the venue. From the previous eight encounters (prior to this match), India had lost seven and drawn one. I, too, was sceptical of India's chances. To my chagrin, I definitely went with a England win.
The Test began with England winning the toss and, surprise suprise, elected to bowl first (in the Bazball era, England will always choose to bowl first if they win the toss). India batted well in the first innings and amassed 587 all out. Captain Shubman Gill top scored with 269. Shoaib Bashir was the pick of the bowlers with figures of 3-167.
England's first innings was completely shambolic. It can best be remembered by showing a waddle of ducks. There were six scores of 0, including two golden ducks (going out on the 1st ball). It was a 303-run parternership between Harry Brook (158) and Jamie Smith (184*) that propelled the side to be bowled out for 407. Mohammed Siraj was the star bowler with figures of 6-70.
With an initial lead of 180, India went to score a further 427 (declared) for the loss of 6 wickets. Gill once again shone with 161. Josh Tongue and Shoaib Bashir each took two wickets.
England were set a daunting target of 608. Even with the kind of batting they do, it seemed even impossible for the English to reach the target. They lost wickets at regular intervals and were bowled out for 271. Jamie Smith once again stood out with 88. Akash Deep was the pick of the bowlers with figures of 6-99. India won by 336 runs. Shubman Gill was voted as Man of the Match. In the process, he broke several records (which you can check out here).
India’s thumping first-ever Test win at Edgbaston starkly exposed the lack of flexibility at the heart of Ben Stokes’ England team.
The seamers were out-bowled; the spinner was powerless; Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope’s inconsistencies re-emerged; Stokes’s own weakness against spin was evident again and his rigid pursuit of bowling first backfired.
England were challenged to bat against their instincts and hang on for 108 overs to draw. They lasted 68.1, bowled out for 271 to lose by 336 runs, a margin that would have been far worse but for Jamie Smith’s 88; his second suave innings of the match.
It was over just after 17:00 when a raucous crowd clad in the blue of India roared as Akash Deep took his 10th wicket and spread out his arms in celebration. The India fans lapped up the moment,and there is merit to the argument that they would've been cheering a 2-0 series lead had catches been held at Headingley.
Instead, it's 1-1 and the Indian fans who took over the Hollies Stand chanted, "boom, boom Bumrah" to remind England what awaits them at Lord’s this week. India will welcome back the world’s best bowler while England put their faith in Jofra Archer, who has played one first-class game in four years, to fire a jaded attack.
England need him to defy logic and be reborn because it's the Indian seamers bowling with a Dukes ball in England who look far more potent than those brought up in these conditions.
None more so than Deep, who stepped out of Bumrah’s shadow with a career best 6-99. Deep and Mohammed Siraj shared 17 wickets and it was their new-ball potency compared to England’s flatness that went a long way to levelling the series.
The Dukes ball and a bland pitch was a difficult combination for England to crack but they failed to make the most of their opportunities when it was good to bowl. They took just four wickets when the ball was less than 25 overs old while India reduced England to 84-5 (in the first innings) and 83-5 (in the second) after 21.4 and 21.3 overs, respectively.
Chris Woakes was a little unlucky with umpire calls in the first innings but was below par, his zip off the pitch is no match for Deep and with just three wickets in the series at 96 runs, he needs a good game at Lord’s.
Brydon Carse is labouring with a blistered toe and looked weary and while he bowls some outstanding spells, he has just six wickets at 52 runs in the series. Josh Tongue is leaking runs at 4.5 an over, though he is suffering for being used as just a battering ram when he can offer more than that.
Shoaib Bashir is not helped by bowling first but his economy rate of 3.96 shows India are toying with him. He has expanded his repertoire – as his carrom ball shows – but is learning his trade in Test cricket. What the team really needs is a spinner who can win a game in the here and now. With the seamers ineffective when the ball goes soft and the spinner not a wicket-taking threat, Shubman Gill dominated and England couldn't break through when they had India at 211-5 in the first innings.
India’s thumping first-ever Test win at Edgbaston starkly exposed the lack of flexibility at the heart of Ben Stokes’s England team. England had very little room for manoeuvre with their seam bowling because of injuries but as far as Bashir is concerned, there are alternatives but Stokes has backed his man.
Crawley and Pope enjoy the same steadfast loyalty. Both had good Tests at Headingley and England will say criticism is a knee-jerk reaction but their body of work is long enough to make judgments. Crawley’s average is 31 from 56 Tests and he has been out for single figures 42 times in 102 innings. When he plays well, there is always a fall waiting around the next corner.
Pope ended day one of the series 100*. Since then, he has scored 38 and been out four times. Deep has dismissed him three times in 20 balls going back to the Ranchi Test last year. Pope is now averaging 34.4 in the series, falling into a familiar pattern.
The toss is always viewed retrospectively and Gill would've bowled first too, lured in by the cloud cover before the game. England were always going to bowl first believing the pitch would be better for batting on days two and three but it was slower than they expected and batting became harder as cracks emerged on day five. Blazing sunshine is forecast for Lord’s on day one. It could be a good toss for Stokes to lose.
Even England never considered chasing 608. Starting day five with three wickets down, they were given a helping hand by the weather that delayed the start by 100 minutes and trimmed off 10 overs.
Within 25 minutes of the start, they had lost both overnight batsmen. Pope had spent 25 minutes in the morning practising getting his head over the ball and playing a forward defensive. He went forward to a ball he could've played on the back foot and was bowled off his elbow by Deep.
The pitch did turn but nothing like it usually does on day five and yet Stokes looked in trouble against Ravindra Jadeja before falling to off-spinner, Washington Sundar, his only wicket of the Test. Stokes and Smith was the last stand that could realistically repel India.
Deep was making the ball seam late both ways and produced an unplayable delivery to Harry Brook. After the previous two nipped away, he bowled an off-cutter that jagged back and whacked Brook painfully on his back leg for a nailed-on leg before.
India’s spinners have not bowled well, partly because of the lack of turn but they took their first wicket of the match between overs 25-80 when Sundar tossed one up and the drift into Stokes beat his forward defensive.
Smith’s timing was crisp and he looked completely unflustered by the situation, coasting to a 50 off 73 balls but partners were disappearing at the other end. Woakes was bounced out, not for the first time and the short ball was Smith’s undoing. He took it on, twice swiping sixes over midwicket but failed to connect properly with a slower-ball bouncer and was caught in the deep. With 40 overs to go and tail-enders at the other end, the game was already up.
England coach, Brendon McCullum, admitted Ben Stokes’ trademark policy of bowling first had badly backfired. The policy worked last week at Headingley, where England pulled off a brilliant five-wicket win. On a very flat surface in Birmingham, however, India dominated after racking up a mammoth 587 when Stokes invited them to bat first.
McCullum accepted that the decision had backfired but said England were not "rigid" in their plans. "As the game unfolded we probably looked back on that toss and said 'did we miss an opportunity there? and it’s probably fair," said the England coach. "We didn’t expect that the wicket would play quite as it did and hence we probably got it slightly wrong."
"But we did have them 200 for five and we weren’t able to capitalise on that position. When you win the toss and bowl you’re not anticipating the opposition’s going to score 580 and then from that point we’re behind the game."
"It was only a brilliant partnership from Jamie Smith and Harry Brook which gave us any balance in the game throughout the five days. We’re not rigid with our plans. It’s just we thought this pitch might get better to bat on as we went through the five days, but as we saw it didn’t."
England captain, Ben Stokes, offered an excuse for the loss. He couldn't man up and accept it. Stokes pointed to the pitch being a sub-continent pitch. He was less willing to admit a mistake had been made, instead pointing to India’s first-innings recovery and England’s slump to 84-5 on the third morning as the reason for their defeat.
"As the game got deeper it was pretty obvious that [the pitch] was not playing the way we thought it would and it was suiting the Indian team over our team," said Stokes. "But no one’s got a crystal ball, no one’s really going to know what a wicket’s going to do."
In the aftermath of England’s 336-run thrashing by India at Edgbaston, the English press have turned their attention to captain Ben Stokes’ diminishing returns with the bat.
There were many things to dissect from England’s disappointing display including their inability to fight harder with the bat to hang on for a draw, their bowling woes and Stokes’ decision to send India into bat on a flat pitch on which India became just the sixth side in Test history to score more than 1 000 runs in a match.
Despite England’s many problems, there has been a strong focus on Stokes being one of several English batters to miss out during the run fest as it heightened concerns about his two-year form slump with the bat.
The England skipper was dismissed for his first golden duck in Test cricket in the first innings, copping a brute of a delivery from Mohammed Siraj that rose sharply off the lifeless surface, caught the shoulder of the bat and flew through to gloveman Rishabh Pant.
Stokes was hardly the only problem as six English batters fell for ducks in the first innings, which was salvaged by Jamie Smith’s unbeaten 184 from 207 deliveries and Harry Brook’s 158 from 234 balls. Alarm bells began to sound on the final day as Stokes fell lbw for 33 from 73 balls to a big in-drifter from right-arm off-spinner Washington Sundar in the last over before lunch.
It came about as a result of Indian brilliance as Ravindra Jadeja raced through the previous over in roughly 90 seconds to ensure Sundar had another chance before the lunch interval and the delivery that crashed into Stokes’ front pad before his pad was emblematic of his recent struggles.
Day one of the second Test marked two years to the day since Stokes’ last Test century, a defiant hundred in a losing cause against Australia at Lord's following the carnage of the infamous Jonny Bairstow stumping. In the time since the most recent of his 13 Test centuries, the 34-year-old has scored 886 runs at 30.55 with seven half-centuries.
Those fifties include crucial first innings knocks to help set up victories against Australia in Leeds, India in Hyderabad and New Zealand in Christchurch.
They are far from disastrous numbers for a swashbuckling batter, who was a fortnight ago hailed by former England quick, Steve Harmison, as their country’s best ever captain for pioneering the Bazball philosophy alongside coach, Brendon McCullum.
In the series so far against India, Stokes has managed scores of 20, 33, 0 and 33 at the surprisingly low strike rate of 48.58 given his and his team’s desire to attack with the bat.
Making matters worse, his opposite number, Shubman Gill, smashing 269 and 161, meant he outscored Stokes by 397 runs in the match, the largest gap between two captains in the history of Test cricket.
Perhaps the figures are slightly inflated by tours of India and Pakistan but ESPN Cricinfo’s senior correspondent, Matt Roller, wrote that, "his dismissal to Sundar felt almost inevitable: 16 of his 25 Test dismissals since the start of last year have been to spinners, and he is averaging 18.43 against spin in that time. It has been a barren run."
They are numbers that may have Nathan Lyon licking his lips ahead of the Ashes, given he has dismissed Stokes nine times in Tests, second only to retired Indian off-spinner, Ravichandran Ashwin, with 13.
Former Indian batter, Mohammed Kaif, gave Stokes a big whack on social media, saying he "never understood the hype around Ben Stokes the captain." "On a flat track with sun shining he decides to bowl, today with some life in pitch edges flying but no extra slip," Kaif added.
"Batsmen took England to win in first Test but Stokes didn’t score many. Please inform if I have missed any of his hidden leadership master stroke."
The England captain has long held knee problems and injured his hamstring twice last year. He first did it playing in The Hundred in between home Test series against the West Indies and Sri Lanka, the latter which he missed as Ollie Pope took the reins. That same hamstring injury kept him out of the first Test against Pakistan and then lightning struck twice in the third Test against New Zealand in Hamilton.
Stokes hobbled away from the bowling crease in the third innings of the game after sending down 36.2 overs with the ball. The resulting surgery ruled him out for three months at the start of the year but Stokes rejected suggestions to forgo bowling in the twilight of his career to focus on his batting.
He's determined to play as a true all-rounder and his bowling has stood up so far this English summer; taking nine wickets across three Tests against India and Zimbabwe to support his misfiring attack.
"The narrative around Stokes across his two years without a hundred has centred on his bowling, and his fitness to do so, amid a chronic knee injury and two torn hamstrings," The Telegraph’s cricket news correspondent, Will Macpherson, wrote.
"He has worked outrageously hard on his physical fitness in a bid to reclaim his full status as an all-rounder and key member of England’s attack. Based on his bowling in the first three Tests of this summer, that has been achieved, which is a fine feat aged 34."
"But perhaps the focus on his bowling has come at a cost to his batting. England’s approach to rehabilitating injured bowlers – Stokes, Jofra Archer, Mark Wood – is to build them up in the nets, not in matches for their county or the Lions."
"Archer will return to Test cricket having played just one first-class game. Stokes went into the first Test of the summer against Zimbabwe without having played at all for six months, then declined a game for the Lions against India A.
"Bowling might be about physical robustness, which can be built in the gym and nets, but the other side of the Stokes package, batting, is about rhythm, which can surely be achieved only in the middle."
Jamie Smith’s excellence with the bat prompted CricViz analyst and commentator, Ben Jones, to suggest that it is "probably time to swap them in the order now." Stokes batted at seven in New Zealand to accommodate Pope’s move to six while he took the gloves in Smith’s absence.
Jacob Bethell batted at no. three on that Tour but has been unable to break back into the England XI upon Smith’s return. ESPN Cricinfo’s Cameron Ponsonby believes the struggles of off-spinner, Shoaib Bashir will result in England doing away with a specialist tweaker when they come to Australia, instead opting for the Bethell and Root to fill the void with Stokes sliding down to eight, lengthening the batting order.
Ben Stokes initially took to the Test captaincy with aplomb, averaging 39 in his first year in charge but his averages fell to 28 last year and 19 so far this year. As he is an ageing player, Stokes may benefit from a lesser load.
Geoffrey Boycott fired England and in particular, their opener, Zak Crawley and new-ball bowler Chris Woakes. So miffed was Boycott with Crawley that he wrote that, "don’t think he can change or get better" and also noted that the 36-year old Woakes is past his expiry date as a bowler.
"I don’t think he can change or get better. Batting is in the head and the brain dictates how you approach batting: what shots you attempt, what balls you leave. His faults in technique and thinking are ingrained," Boycott wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
"A leopard doesn’t change his spots, or maybe Zak does not want to change. He should be approaching his best years but in 56 Tests he has learned nothing. One sparkling innings and numerous failures, with an average of 31, is not good enough."
Boycott wrote that Crawley had seemingly changed his way in the first Test. "At Headingley, he played straight with the full face of the bat, left wide balls and let the ball come to him so he could keep his bat close to his pad."
However, he saw Crawley return to his old ways in the second Test. "The two shots he got out to at Edgbaston [in the second Test] were awful. In the first innings his feet got stuck in cement, neither forward nor back, and then he wafted at the ball to be caught at slip."
"Second innings he batted on off stump and drove at a well pitched up ball two feet wide. He did not need to play it. He was on nought, had been fielding for five sessions, and his legs were tired so should have been thinking about surviving that evening."
Boycott also had a pop at the bowler Woakes. "It is counter productive to keep the same guys in the team when they are past their sell-by date or not doing enough. Look at Chris Woakes. His pace is dropping as you would expect as a seamer gets older. He has never been a wicket-taker abroad, where his record is poor. He is good – or has been good – on English pitches, and his batting has been handy at times as a safety valve when others have failed. His job should not be to shore up bad batting. Batsmen are there to score runs and bowlers need to take wickets."
England’s opener, Zak Crawley, is the, "luckiest cricketer" that he has seen, says Michael Vaughan. "in my time watching, playing for and covering England, he is the player luckiest to have won as many caps as he has. He has to count himself fortunate to have played 56 games, whilst scoring just five hundreds, and averaging 31," Vaughan wrote in his Daily Telegraph column.
Vaughan also made crucial observations about Crawley’s changes from the first Test at Leeds to the second at Birmingham and wondered the rationale behind those changes. Vaughan observed that Crawley was a lot upright in stance and his feet were inside the off stump in the first Test. In the second, however, things changed.
"I would love to know why this week, with Bumrah not playing, he suddenly moved two inches outside off stump in his stance. If you do that, you should know that anything outside your eye-line can be left well alone. Instead, he got out in both innings driving with half a bat, with his left foot staying down the middle of the stumps," Vaughan wrote.
Vaughan noted that Crawley worries about the straight ball at the stumps trapping him lbw. "That is a mindset issue; he is so concerned about the straight ball, and being lbw or bowled, that he has got out chasing wide balls in his last three innings. It’s bizarre because in Leeds, Crawley had shown what he can do, and that he can be disciplined … Crawley is so exasperating because he has the game. He plays some glorious shots, and at times makes batting look easy. But he has to score more runs at the top of the order. It cannot be that his job is to produce a wow-factor moment once a series."
Moving beyond Crawley, Vaughan wrote that he was "worried" about this England team. "If we are honest, England have been absolutely hammered this week … It was a performance that worried me greatly. I fear they used the first match as absolute evidence of how to play Test cricket. They showed great skills in that win, but there was also a lot of fortune involved. They turned up here and thought they should do everything the same way, and it has backfired."
England have some difficult decisions to make about their team for Lord’s this week. Their three frontline seamers have shouldered a heavy burden across two Tests, with Chris Woakes taking 3 wickets in 82 overs, Josh Tongue 11 in 81 overs and Brydon Carse 6 in 77 overs, meaning all three are nursing sore bodies.
England have added the fit-again Gus Atkinson to the squad and also have the option of selecting Jofra Archer in Test cricket for the first time since February 2021. Jamie Overton and Sam Cook are the other seam-bowling options in the squad.
India have confirmed that their spearhead Jasprit Bumrah will return to the XI, probably alongside the superb Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj, who shared 17 wickets but were pipped to the man-of-the-match award on account of their captain Shubman Gill’s extraordinary haul of 430 runs in the Test.
It's interesting to note that Shubman Gill can break a few records in the remaining 3 Tests.
Gill is in line to break Don Bradman's 88-year-old record for most runs as captain in a Test series. Bradman amassed 810 runs in five Tests in the 1936-37 Ashes, averaging 90, including three hundreds. Gill is 225 runs away from Bradman's mark.
Coincidentally, that was also Bradman's first Test series as captain. Hence, Gill will also rewrite the record for most runs in a debut series as captain if he passes Bradman's tally. Bradman had a top score of 270 in that series and Gill has already scored 269 in the ongoing series in England.
The record for the most runs in a series for an Indian captain is by Sunil Gavaskar, who scored 732 in six Tests against West Indies in 1978-79. Gill needs 148 more to get past Gavaskar.
Although a little farfetched, another Bradman record is in sight for Gill. Bradman hammered 974 runs in the 1930 Ashes, which is the most by any batter in a Test series. Gill needs another 390 runs to break that record.
Gill has a head start advantage over Bradman, who scored only 394 runs in the first two Tests of that Ashes, compared to Gill's 585. The same record for India belongs to Sunil Gavaskar. He scored 774 runs playing four of the five Tests against West Indies in 1971. Gill is 189 runs behind.
The West Indies great, Clyde Walcott, made five centuries in a home series against Australia in 1955. Gill is two hundreds short of levelling that feat with three Tests to go. Like Gill, Walcott also scored three tons in the first two Tests of that series - 108 in Kingston followed by twin hundreds (scoring a hundred in both innings') in the second Test in Port-of-Spain. Walcott then scored twin hundreds again in the fifth Test in Kingston to take his century count to five.
The most hundreds in a series as captain belongs to Bradman - four centuries against India in 1947. For India, Sunil Gavaskar again holds both these records with four hundreds each against West Indies - in 1971, as a player and in 1978-79, as captain.
Another Bradman record that Gill could possibly break. Bradman took 11 innings to complete 1 000 runs. Gill needs 415 runs in six innings to topple him. The Indian record is with Sunil Gavaskar. Beginning his captaincy stint with a hundred against New Zealand in 1976, Gavaskar took 14 innings to complete 1 000 Test runs as captain. He racked up five hundreds in this span with a top score of 205. Gill has nine innings in hand to beat Gavaskar's record.
Yashasvi Jaiswal has the record for the most runs by an India batter in a series against England. He pummeled 712 runs in a five-match home series in 2024, averaging 89 with the help of two double-hundreds. Gill is in contention to get past that tally, needing 127 more.
The record for most runs in a series in England for an Indian batter belongs to Rahul Dravid who scored 602 in 2002 with three tons. Gill is in touching distance of that - only 18 runs short. Virat Kohli sits on top of the list as captain, scoring 655 runs leading India in a home series against England in 2016. Gill is 91 runs away.
India truly deserved the win. All the credit should go to the whole team, not just to a singular player. They recovered well from the 1st Test and seemingly have a brighter future. I feel it's vital that India won without Bumrah. It's always important to not rely on a singular player for victory. There should be various match winners in the team/squad.