Cricket: England fail the ultimate “trial by spin”
England began their fourth and final Test against India needing a win to tie the series, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. In the challenging conditions of the subcontinent, that would have been an impressive achievement. Yet in the event, Joe Root’s side never looked like winning. Instead, they slumped to their third crushing defeat in as many Tests – this time by an innings and 25 runs. On an Ahmedabad pitch that was perhaps the most benign of the series, England’s batsmen again offered feeble resistance, said Ali Martin in The Observer. In their first innings, they managed 205, to which India responded with 365, thanks to an “audacious century” by their young keeperbatsman Rishabh Pant (who is emerging as the “modern heir to Adam Gilchrist”). Batting again, England simply unravelled, losing all ten wickets for 135 runs to the “devilishly accurate spin duo of Axar Patel and Ravichandran Ashwin”.
Patel and Ashwin have been England’s tormentors this series, sharing 59 wickets between them, said Simon Hughes in The Times. And though they exposed severe limitations on the part of England’s batsmen, the challenge their bowling poses shouldn’t be underestimated. In the modern game, there is no sterner test than a “trial by spin in the subcontinent”. Top-class spin bowling – unlike, say, Australia’s pace attack – doesn’t present any “physical danger”. What it offers, instead, is an unrivalled mental interrogation – one that brutally punishes any loss of concentration. “The dust dries your throat, the intensity fries your brain. The bowlers retreat a few yards, then come again. There’s no time to collect your thoughts or clear your head.” It’s no wonder that India are almost invincible at home: they last lost a Test series there in 2012.
Nonetheless, the tour exposed some real worries for England, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. This is a team far too reliant on its captain: both in India and before that in Sri Lanka, England only did well when Root scored heavily. It’s especially concerning that younger players, such as Zak Crawley and Ollie Pope, failed to rise to the occasion when their captain faltered. England’s job was made harder by some woeful selections, said Geoffrey Boycott in The Daily Telegraph. They picked three seamers for the third Test, even though the pitch proved ideal for spinners. Jos Buttler, “our best keeper-batsman”, was sent home after the first Test to rest, and Jonny Bairstow was rotated “when he was in good form”. (On returning to the side, he promptly made three ducks in four innings.) Decisions such as these suggest that England’s chair of selectors, Ed Smith, failed to appreciate “how tough it is to beat India in India”. He needs to “hold his hand up and admit he got things badly wrong”.