Moving day, they call the third day, and here in Ranchi, as in Rajkot, it moved all right. If the unpredictability of sport requires caution where projections are concerned, there was no question which way the needle jolted: after six hours of fascinating, sometimes error-strewn cricket, when 13 wickets fell, the upshot was this: India, who had started the day 134 runs in arrears, finished it requiring only another 152 to win.
India failed to chase 231 in the opening Test in Hyderabad, which was the kind of minimum target England would have wanted to set here on an unpredictable surface, but they fell short of that, having lost their last seven wickets for 35 runs. This was a dramatic, and ill-timed, collapse, brought on by the excellence of India’s spinners, who bowled all but three overs in the innings and who shared all ten wickets to fall.
There is always pressure on fourth innings, the more so, perhaps, here in India, where the home team players carry such expectation and are asked to perform under such scrutiny, but there was little sign of nerves as Rohit Sharma and Yashasvi Jaiswal knocked off 40 runs from the target in the final eight overs. Thus ended the most difficult of days for England, which offered few redeeming features.
If they finished strongly, India also played with character, and no little skill, in adding 88 precious runs in the morning for their final three wickets, reducing the first-innings deficit to a wafer-thin margin, before bowling England out for 145. Dhruv Jurel’s highest Test score was the stand-out feature of the first session, followed by the wizardry of Ravichandran Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav, who shared nine wickets, with only Zak Crawley offering resistance after an easy-on-the-eye half-century.
Despite passing the 500-wicket mark in Rajkot, Ashwin has not been at his best in this series and at 37 years old, one wondered whether age was catching up with him. He remains the fiercest of competitors, though. With the match on the line, he took the new ball and in an opening 12-over spell, he got Ben Duckett defending to short leg, and dismissed Ollie Pope and Joe Root leg-before, the former for a golden duck and a pair, his first in first-class cricket.
Advertisement
Unlike in other parts of the world, the new ball can be the hardest time to face spin in India, with some balls skidding on and some turning, but Ashwin is a master at altering the position of the seam as well, to confuse and confound. The way he dismissed Pope was a case in point, with the seam spinning horizontally on its axis, going straight on to beat the outside edge. A change of angle, from round the wicket did for Root, who seemed needlessly puzzled, given the full length of the ball, by the DRS result.
Ashwin came back to wrap up the innings, then, after an intervention from the left-arm wrist-spinner, Kuldeep, who took the key wicket of Crawley and caused some panic in the ranks either side of tea. When Ben Foakes chipped a return catch and Jimmy Anderson, registering his own pair, was brilliantly caught by Jurel, Ashwin had completed his 35th five-wicket haul in Tests, and reminded everyone of his brilliance, especially in home conditions.
Only Crawley looked at ease. He took four boundaries in five balls in the ninth and tenth overs, each of them driven through the off side. There was a time when Crawley would strangle the bat so hard with his bottom hand that his off-side game could be severely limited. Now, though, he was playing with such freedom in that area, it suggested a much more relaxed grip on the bat, reflecting a much more relaxed state of mind.
After a half-century that came in 71 balls, Crawley’s innings was curtailed by the introduction of Kuldeep and a cute piece of captaincy from Rohit. Leaving cover open, bowler and captain encouraged Crawley to play through the area that had been so productive for him and, duly enticed, he aimed a back-foot shot there and was beaten by some sharp spin.
After that, a procession of wickets followed. Ben Stokes endured a challenging start, saved by the umpire’s call protocol he so detests, as Ravindra Jadeja found enough spin to beat his forward push, and was reprieved two balls later by India’s failure to appeal for a leg-before call that was closer still. Then he was beaten by Kuldeep from a ball that spun, kept low and, via the back pad, went on to the stumps.
Advertisement
Jonny Bairstow, having played comfortably enough, chipped the first ball after tea to cover, one of the few dismissals that was self-inflicted and a blow from which there was no recovery. Kuldeep picked off Tom Hartley to a smart catch by Sarfaraz Khan at mid-on, and won a leg-before decision against Ollie Robinson who endured a bad day. Robinson bowled ineffectively in the morning and put down a sharp chance off Jurel that proved to be very costly.
Powered by Jurel’s Test-best 90, India added crucial runs in the morning session. A largely event-free opening led into the second new ball, marked only by Robinson’s propensity to overstep the front line; a third in as many overs took his no-ball count beyond his tally of Test wickets. When the new ball was taken, Anderson replaced him and ran in with more vigour and bowled with more pace, despite the 11-year age gap.
Kuldeep’s longest first-class innings helped Jurel to negotiate the first hour, until Anderson crept one under Kuldeep’s defence, via a bottom edge and boot, for wicket No 698. Jurel went to his first Test half-century in 96 balls, celebrated with a salute to the dressing room, as India chiselled away at the deficit. He was then reprieved on 59 by Robinson at mid-wicket as he clipped Shoaib Bashir into the leg side.
Robinson was immediately moved into a less exposed position, but the miss was a costly one, and not only because it denied Bashir a fifth wicket at that moment: Bashir’s next 16 balls were taken for 24, including three sixes; Jurel added 31 more, before being bowled by Hartley, by which time India had added 41 more to whittle down the first-innings lead to 46. A bigger lead would have made the third innings a less pressurised affair.
Before then, Bashir had curled one past Akash Deep’s forward push to win a leg-before decision and pick up his first five-wicket haul in Test and first-class cricket. The young man immediately went to his knees, kissed the turf and then the ball held the ball high in celebration, once the decision had been confirmed.
Advertisement
He and Hartley were magnificent, sharing eight wickets in 71.2 overs, and Bashir became England’s second youngest bowler to take a five-wicket haul in Tests, after Rehan Ahmed in Pakistan last winter. Despite what happened after that, this was a moment to cherish — a wonderful story as well as a wonderful selection and a rare shaft of light on a gloomy day.
