To infinity & beyond!
A seismic win for England, as good as it gets. Playing like this, with Stokes at the wheel, this team can go . . .
ARE YOU ABLE TO PUT THAT SENSATIONAL WIN IN CONTEXT?
NASSER HUSSAIN: A deficit of 190 runs on first innings and then 163 for five when Ben Stokes got out? Not many sides would win from there in India against three top-quality spinners on a pitch that turned.
It was one of England’s great Test wins on the back of one of their great hundreds from Ollie Pope and then a complete turnaround from first innings to second by a debutant in Tom Hartley. It was an incredible comeback and shows the belief and mental toughness in this team.
DAVID LLOYD: It’s as good as it gets! Belief, organisation, method and discipline. Then all you need to add is a bit of stardust and that came with 196 from Pope which was absolutely incredible.
It was one of the great Test innings and it was followed by a lad from Ormskirk in Hartley, with absolutely nothing to back him up in terms of what he’s done in first- class cricket, winning the game for them. It was barely believable.
PAUL NEWMAN: When I think back to the great England away Test victories I’ve seen, I think of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in 2010-11 — all by an innings — and Mumbai in 2012 which featured an innings by Kevin Pietersen touched by genius.
Then there was Jamaica 1990 which I watched in awe on TV. And I’ll give you the one-run defeat in Wellington last year as a truly great Test. This is better than all of them — if the Wisden editor says it’s England’s greatest away victory, which he did in these pages yesterday, then that’s good enough for me.
LAWRENCE BOOTH: It reminded me of Brian Clough: I wouldn’t say it was England’s best Test win ever, but it’s in the top one. Between losing to Alastair Cook’s team in 2012-13 and this game in Hyderabad, India had won 36 and lost three out of 46 home Tests. And the previous biggest first-innings lead they’d given up to lose at home was 65 — England trailed by 190!
This was a seismic result, made possible by the nerveless captaincy of Ben Stokes, the brilliance of Pope and the intelligence of Hartley.
SHOULD BEN SHUFFLE HIS PACK FOR FRIDAY’S SECOND TEST?
LLOYD: It’s pitch dependent and I’m hoping that my mate Dinesh Karthik might be able to have a word in England’s ear about what to expect — it was a stroke of genius getting him involved with the Lions. Do we need a fast bowler? Mark Wood might as well have gone home rather than play in Hyderabad. But I can’t see them going all spin. I reckon we will see a similar team, with Jimmy Anderson or Ollie Robinson coming in for Wood.
BOOTH: With Joe Root bowling so skilfully — as well as taking five wickets, he went at just 2.50 an over — England don’t need a third frontline spinner at Visakhapatnam, where Anderson and Stuart Broad took nine wickets between them in 2016-17.
I’d probably leave out Rehan Ahmed, with the other spinners being Hartley and either Jack Leach (if fit) or Shoaib Bashir. Either way, I’d be tempted to rest Wood, and play both Anderson and Robinson. In a fivematch series, England will need to rotate their seamers.
HUSSAIN: England won the first Test of the last series in India and then the home side made the pitches for the last three turn big, so it will be fascinating to see what they do now.
India are already without Virat Kohli and now Ravindra Jadeja and KL Rahul have been ruled out, too. So England have to see this as a great opportunity to go two up. We know England won’t be afraid to make bold calls. They will rock up and assess the conditions in front of them — not like previous regimes who planned months ahead.
NEWMAN: Well, England shocked most of us when they went with their near all- spin attack and just Wood as a seamer. But it worked, as everything they do gloriously seems to.
I agree Root, in India, should be considered a frontline spinner. I’d bring in Anderson and Robinson in Vizag, as long as it’s not a raging turner, and leave out Wood and either Leach, if he’s not fit, or Ahmed.
THIS IS ALL SET UP FOR VIRAT KOHLI TO RETURN AND WIN INDIA THE SERIES, ISN’T IT?
NEWMAN: Virat was missed in Hyderabad, not just for his batting but also his aura in the field. He’s just such a different character to the laid-back Rohit Sharma. He would have galvanised India and probably picked a fight or two with England’s batsmen. But he’s not coming back this week and if they can win in Vizag, England can jet back to Abu Dhabi for their break knowing the series is all but theirs. And there will be very little Kohli can do about it.
HUSSAIN: Hang on, Paul! Let’s enjoy the four days England have just had before we worry about that because nobody can take that win away from them. But history tells you India will come back strong.
As far as the series is concerned, it would be great for Kohli to come back for the third Test but even without him England know this can only get tougher. The hard work has to continue. This is a five-Test series, remember, so there’s plenty of time for individual battles, like Ben Duckett against Ravichandran Ashwin and, hopefully, Anderson against Kohli, to develop.
BOOTH: Let’s see what happens in the second Test, first. If — and it’s a big if — England win that one too, Kohli would then have to enter Don Bradman territory: in 147 years of Test cricket, he’s the only man to inspire a series win from 2-0 down, against England in 1936-37. But if India square the series, you’d expect Kohli, who was in mouth-watering form at the World Cup and batted well recently in tough conditions in South Africa, to give them a shot of adrenaline.
LLOYD: True and he is one of the greatest of all players, but it’s not easy playing catch-up in Test cricket. We won’t see Kohli in the next one but even if he plays in the third it’s no given he’ll score runs straight away. And he won’t have had a good look at the bowlers he’s going to come up against either. Remember, England were missing a big player too in Harry Brook. The burning question — would Pope have played had Brook been there?
HOW FAR CAN THIS ENGLAND TEAM GO UNDER STOKES?
BOOTH: Despite everything England’s Bazballers have done since Stokes took over, the social-media doubters have continually
told them they can be properly judged by only two series: away to India and away to Australia. So far, so good.
If England can hold their nerve over the next few weeks — and that could mean a drawn series, or even a tight defeat — there’s no reason why they can’t win every Test series they play between the start of this summer and the 2025-26 Ashes. And if they can reclaim the urn, we’ll know they’ve reached for the stars. But they’ll need Stokes to stay fit.
NEWMAN: To infinity and beyond! There’s no limit to this. Bazball — sorry Australia — has been the greatest thing to happen to Test cricket in years and long may it continue. Stokes is proving an extraordinary leader. A better captain than any of us could have possibly imagined.
‘If you back someone it’s incredible what they can achieve,’ Ben said after this win. What a man-manager. What a leader. Let’s enjoy every second. LLOYD: Yep, they just don’t believe in defeat. They have an unshakeable belief. After the first two days they told us they were looking for a way to win. Meanwhile everybody else thought India would win in three days! I refer you to the new book Bazball — highly recommended — that gives an insight into when Brendon McCullum took over and told everyone: ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’ What a ride it is. We in England have always been afraid of failure — it’s a dirty word for this lot! There’s no limit to how far they can go. HUSSAIN: They’ve done unbelievably well from where they were when Stokes took over to now and they are doing exactly what they said they would and that’s make Test cricket hugely entertaining. There’s joy in their victories — they’re not grinding any of them out — and they’re pushing themselves to the limit in winning. Let’s enjoy that rather than worrying about how far they can go. It’s more how far Test cricket can go. Look at the Gabba, too, and see what Shamar Joseph did for West Indies against Australia on Sunday. Test cricket is a very special format and we have to look after it.