Hosts left rattled by barrage of pace and aggression
Batsmen simply had no answer to India’s seam attack who fed off a number of on-field confrontations
At 2.15pm at Lord’s, an unseasonal wind blew through the ground – enough, certainly, to make those who had come in shorts to regret their choice of attire. To Haseeb Hameed, it must have felt like a gale.
Hameed, playing in his first Test for five years, came out to bat for the fourth ball of England’s second innings. On a king pair, he would scarcely have been reassured by the sight of the big screens replaying his first-innings dismissal.
Hameed took his guard with meticulous care. As he looked up he saw Jasprit Bumrah already into his run-up; not ready for what he was about to face, Hameed pulled out, making the bowler start again.
It was in keeping with the final innings of the match: England were utterly unready for what India would throw at them. As they showed when chasing 328 in the final innings to clinch a series triumph in Australia in January, India embrace the “Theatre of the Absurd”. And so where others saw a docile Lord’s pitch that had produced only 28 wickets in 363 overs in the Test, India plotted how they would snare 10 wickets in 60.
Like “People’s Sunday” at Wimbledon, a fifth day at Lord’s has a different mood, the grand country estate opening its gates for a day only. Compared to the controlled merriment of the first four days, there are fewer champagne corks on the outfield stopping play and more Mexican waves. Together, it adds up to a sense of bedlam that Lord’s normally prefers to do without.
From the first ball of England’s innings, India’s approach was to ride the sense of chaos, trying to channel it to their own ends. If it can be a little too easy to say that India play in the spirit of their captain Virat Kohli – Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara are more reserved characters – the aggression was certainly running through their demeanour on the field, as it had in their batting when Mohammed Shami and Bumrah had been involved in altercations with Jos Buttler.
The gesticulating between deliveries was incessant. Several players, most obviously Kohli, repeatedly got into the space of England’s batsmen between balls. England might have been at home, but India were dictating the terms of engagement.
Yet all the vigour in the field, all the aggression and all the self-belief, can only count for so much. Only one other team in Test history had ever declared after lunch on the final day and forced a victory.
It is often said that bowling attacks comprising four right-arm seamers lack variety, but India attest to how much variety an ostensibly samey attack can contain. That Bumrah, Shami, Ishant Sharma and Mohammed Siraj are all right-armers disguises their contrasting – and complementary – gifts. Like the best quartets, they add up to far more than their individual parts.
With his unique action – no quick bowler in Test cricket today delivers the ball from wider of the crease – Bumrah combines pace approaching 90mph with wondrous versatility and intuition. His three wickets – arguably the three most crucial of the innings – each illustrated a different skill. First, Burns succumbed to a bouncer third ball, before Joe Root was snared pushing forward at a devilish delivery which angled in, kissing the edge.
Yet most brilliant of all was his ploy to Ollie Robinson: pushed back by a series of bouncers from round the wicket, Bumrah flummoxed Robinson with a slower-ball of stunning execution.
Shami blends pace, a penchant for nasty deliveries just short of a length, with prodigious seam movement. The ball that snared Dom Sibley in England’s second over was essentially an 85mph leg-cutter.
Sharma combines extra height and mastery bowling to left-handers, with the most swing movement of the quartet; two inswingers accounted for both Hameed and Jonny Bairstow.
Siraj has a skiddy action and aggressive length, and is unusual in how much he targets the stumps. It fell to Siraj to deliver the denouement to this magnificent victory: another of those vicious straight deliveries uprooting James Anderson’s off stump. All that was left for India’s jubilant players was to fight to claim their stumps, racing for them with the same vim that they had directed at England’s batsmen.