Potts emerges as Stokes’ giantslayer
Pace bowler adds the wicket of Kohli to an impressive array of dismissals in his debut season in Test cricket
It was the opening day of his fourth Test match – and even then it was not until five o’clock – before Matty Potts revealed to England supporters that he was not, as yet, a complete bowler.
This was the first day that England, under their new leadership of Ben Stokes and Brendon Mccullum, lost their hold on proceedings. During India’s sixth-wicket partnership between the conventional Ravi Jadeja and the utterly unconventional Rishabh Pant, a wheel or two came off while India’s run rate soared; yet Potts’s engine was still revving and racing until the close.
The first moment of naivety occurred when Potts ran in, as quick and straight as the balls he bowls, and delivered two consecutive bouncers at Pant, well ensconced. Both were leg-side bouncers, not bowled across India’s left-hander, and Pant had only to help them round the corner to pick up risk-free boundaries.
Until that moment, when he came up against Pant in the mood to prove he could out-stoke Stokes, Potts had been outstandingly mature for a 23-year-old who has taken fewer than 100 first-class wickets. New Zealand, however, in the first three
Tests of this summer, had allowed England to bowl, without seeking to dominate.
Against New Zealand, Potts had gone for only 2.59 runs per over. Many pots leak; not this one. Not until Pant pointed up the first flaw in Potts’s make-up, and made him concede five runs an over in his first sobering day of Test cricket – and four of those were overthrows.
Even this relatively chastening day for Potts had its highlight. Not halfway through his fourth Test, Potts has dismissed Kane Williamson three times; Mitchell, New Zealand’s bulwark, three times; and Virat Kohli, the recently dethroned king of Indian cricket, once.
It has been quite a week to see how former champions have dealt with the dying of the light. At Wimbledon, Serena Williams tried to turn back the clock but had to accept time’s inevitability; Andy Murray raged as intensely as ever, not prepared to make any concession to age, before bowing out.
Four years ago, when Kohli had England in his hands at Edgbaston, his energy had filled the stands. On this occasion he dragged a wide ball from Potts into his stumps and had to tuck his bat under his arm and walk. Maybe Kohli does not accept his end is nigh, and maybe it is not, but he cannot live much longer on former glories.
Potts has not been a junior partner – at least until Pant went after him. He had been the equal of James Anderson and Stuart Broad, no less in pace and wickets and knowing what to bowl. So complete for his age, so rounded, he had not even bowled a no ball until the opening day of his fourth Test.
Potts, though, does share one trait with Broad. When he pinned Hanuma Vihari leg before, with a nip-backer that struck below the knee roll, he raced through to his slip fielders to celebrate without a moment’s doubt about the verdict.
Ollie Robinson, England’s pacebowling debutant of last summer, bowled his own way: a long opening spell of eight overs; another spell in the afternoon, and a third in the evening, but diminishing in speed and impact. Robinson bowled for England on his own terms, Potts bowls for England on theirs. Like his fellow Durham bowlers, Stokes and Mark Wood, Potts steams in until the day’s last ball.
A slower ball and yorker would have been worth unleashing when Pant was plundering, but they will come in time. The future of both teams is Potts’ and Pant’s.