Cricket: England under the cosh in India

“At least when England start to collapse they do not prolong the agony,” said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. They started the final day of the second Test, in Visakhapatnam, on 87 for two; by 12.30pm, they had crashed to 158 all out, as India “rammed home their superiority” to win by 246 runs. It was, in many ways, an unavoidable loss: Ravichandran Ashwin showed that, “when conditions are in his favour, there is no better bowler in the world”; the pitch deteriorated to the point where batting was nearly impossible. And it had looked “inevitable” since England’s indifferent start. They actually played very well on the third and fourth days of the Test, but by then they were doomed to failure. Winning this five-test series will now take a “monumental effort”, said Mike Atherton in The Times. England are 1-0 down; only two touring teams in history have come from behind to win in India. If they are to prevail, the visitors will have to find a way to stifle India’s captain, Virat Kohli, whose batting performance was “touched with genius”: he scored a combined 248 runs in his two innings; no England batsman managed more than 87. Still, it was an encouraging performance by England’s seam bowlers, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. On a pitch designed to suit India’s spinners, both Stuart Broad and James Anderson impressed: Broad, in particular, has never played better in India, taking four wickets for 33 runs in the second innings. The seamers would be even better if they were more consistently aggressive, said Michael Vaughan in The Sunday Telegraph. And that goes for their teammates, too. On this tour, this team’s tactics have been far too timid – not to mention confused. England have the potential to become a fantastic team, but they must first figure out “what style of cricket they want to play”.