Stokes loses temper as he and England are punished
Keeper marks promotion to No 5 with vital innings Specialist batsmen guilty as priceless toss is wasted
Ben Stokes was reprimanded by the match referee for using abusive language on a day when England’s batsmen blew their chance to take an early grip on the third Test against India.
Stokes pleaded guilty to a level one charge and was given one disciplinary point against his record after losing his temper following his dismissal.
He was stumped for 29 as England limped to 268 for eight, with Jonny Bairstow top-scoring on 89, despite batting first as they look to level the five-match series 1-1. Stokes exchanged words with fielders celebrating his exit. Virat Kohli, the India captain, was also spoken to by the umpires after giving what looked like a verbal send-off. He escaped punishment by referee Ranjan Madugalle but Stokes was found guilty of “using language or a gesture that is obscene, offensive or insulting”.
It is the second time Stokes has landed in trouble with the International Cricket Council this winter. He was fined 15 per cent of his match fee and given one demerit point for “verbally engaging” with a Bangladesh player during the Dhaka Test in October.
He will be banned for one Test, two one-day internationals or two Twenty20s if he reaches four disciplinary points over a two-year period.
The England players are due to go on holiday after this match, with the majority of the squad flying to Dubai to sit on a beach for a few days. It will be an appropriate trip after England produced a batting performance built on sand as India took early control of the third Test.
When England board their flight they must ensure Jonny Bairstow is seated in 1A with champagne on ice, for without their wicketkeeper’s batting they would have completely blown the chance to bat first on a pitch certain to spit and turn as the match wears on.
As the month of November fades thoughts start to turn to annual awards but it will not take long to decide England’s man of the year. Bairstow has dominated 2016, scoring 1,340 runs all the way from Cape Town to the Punjab.
His captain, Alastair Cook, had warned before the match that Bairstow had a “glint in his eye” after being told he would bat at five and he carried that enthusiasm into the first innings of this Test, becoming the crutch for a limp total of 268 for eight.
Bairstow batted for more than four hours, hitting 89 off 177 balls, falling just short of becoming the first England wicketkeeper to score a century in Asia. Only four England batsmen have scored more runs than him in a calendar year and he still has five innings to go to score the 142 he needs to go past the record Michael Vaughan set 14 years ago.
Bairstow had to drag himself off the field when his lbw review came back positive but by then he had given his team a chance of posting a first-innings score that might just keep them in the game.
“We are fighting. We are in the battle,” Bairstow said. “It has been a scrappy day but we have dealt with worse in the past and we will carry on working hard in the game. I was really cheesed off to get out like that this evening. It hurt me pretty bad at the time because I thought I had played nicely throughout day.”
India dropped four catches and their outfielding was amateurish, so it could have been a lot worse for England. The hosts’ bowling was far more solid. with Ravindra Jadeja tying the batsmen down and Mohammed Shami swinging the new ball and reversing the old. But really England should have done better. Maybe it was over-exuberance at winning the toss or perhaps a determination to blast last week’s failed blockathon in Visakhapatnam out of the system. Whatever the reason, stumbling to lunch at 92 for four felt like a match-losing session.
Haseeb Hameed was the only specialist batsmen to be got out, a nasty lifter from Umesh Yadav taking his glove and looping to gully. Joe Root’s first scoring shot was a glorious cut through point for four and he rattled to 15, but he made a complete mess of the first ball after morning drinks, and his first from a spinner, misjudging the length to one that did not turn.
Cook was dropped twice, one a complete sitter by Ravi Ashwin at midwicket that had Virat Kohli staring at the sky in disbelief. In Rajkot, Cook punished such generosity but here he never really looked in good touch and chased Ashwin’s first ball, a wide long hop which he feathered behind.
Moeen Ali continued the positive approach and was caught hooking 10 minutes before lunch with two fielders placed on the leg-side boundary for that kind of naivety.
Ben Stokes rallied as he and Bairstow joined forces again, putting on 57 for the sixth wicket. Bairstow calls it the “ginger bond” and the two have been England’s glue this year. While Bairstow keeps the scoreboard moving with his brilliant running between the wickets, Stokes is happier to block before waiting for the bad ball to hit. The problem was that India stopped bowling bad balls.
Stokes raced to 22 off as many balls, but then Jadeja strangled him. The Durham man scored just three singles from 30 deliveries off the left-arm spinner and his patience eventually snapped. He ran past a straight ball and was stumped by a country mile as England again took two steps backwards and Stokes reverted to his old self.
India knew this was a crucial phase in the innings. Kohli took the exuberance too far, earning a warning form the umpires for giving Stokes a sendoff. Earlier he had thrown the ball at Bairstow, who was struck on the forearm as Kohli aimed to throw at the stumps. Bairstow has an ability to shut out the distractions these days and bat with tunnel vision. “It is about finding a method and mindset of staying out there,” he said.
He needed support and it came from Jos Buttler, recalled to the side in place of Ben Duckett. At first he looked every inch the man who had not batted in the middle for more than a month and just once in a year against a red ball. He seemed to adopt the Kevin Pietersen squat, flexing his knees before the bowler’s point of delivery to help his balance. He got off the mark, too, with a quick scamper to mid-off – a Red Bull run as it was called in Pietersen’s time.
The afternoon session was England’s as the pair of wicketkeepers batted sensibly. Buttler played just one trademark reverse sweep, and not until he had been at the crease for 33 balls. He drove fours off pace and spin and a patient partnership of 69 followed, with Buttler looking composed until he drove Jadeja to extra cover.
Bairstow was dropped on 54 off Ashwin by wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel, playing his first Test for eight years, and the Yorkshireman had to dig deep as the boundaries dried up after tea. At one stage he went 96 balls without a four, the longest spell of his career.
Patel dropped Bairstow again on 89 but it did not matter as Jayant Yadav produced a beauty bowling round the wicket. The ball pitched on middle and straightened enough for Hawk-Eye to rule it would have hit leg stump. Umesh Yadav confirmed it was India’s day by hitting Chris Woakes’s off stump with the second new ball.