Kevin Pietersen, the grand entertainer, saw it coming. On the morning of the final day of the first Test, he wrote on social media: “350 in the good old days was too big a chase in the fourth innings of a Test match. But, with zero fear in the modern cricketer, born out of a T20 mindset, that landscape has changed. Headingley could be in for something great again.”
There is no doubt that the landscape has changed. Although the balance between bat and ball measured by runs per wicket has remained remarkably constant since the turn of the 20th century — one of the miracles of Test cricket — the ability of teams to chase big fourth-innings totals has improved. It is why few who turned up on the fifth day at Headingley discounted England, when, previously, no one would have given them a chance.
All told, there have been 37 successful fourth-innings run chases of more than 300 since Test cricket’s inception. Only two of them came before the Second World War; eight came between then and the end of the 1980s; six came in the 1990s alone; nine came in the decade after that and 12 have come since then. Targets once thought of as out of range are more gettable and that has changed the dynamic for captains, as well as for batsmen and bowlers.
For why that is the case you have to look at a combination of factors. Clearly, in England, conditions are markedly different now, with covered pitches and hard loam soils that break up less readily, compared with the decades after the Second World War. Pitches deteriorated more then, offering spinners far more to play with off the main part of the pitch than was the case, say, at Headingley this week. It was noticeable how little Ravindra Jadeja turned the ball when he pitched it in line with the stumps.
Jadeja posed little threat in conceding more than four an over and struggled to turn the ball off the straight
CRAIG BROUGH/REUTERS
It was also noticeable how generally true the pitch remained, compared with the Headingley surface of old. When Bob Willis famously ran through Australia in 1981, the pitch was capricious — and known for it. More recently, there has been no better ground to chase a target: twin hundreds for Shai Hope in 2017 brought West Indies victory (322 for five on fourth innings); Stokes’s famous 135 not out in 2019 was part of a fourth innings 362 for nine; England chased 296, for three, against New Zealand in the first year of Bazball in 2022, and now this. The pitch seems to get better (or remains as good).
With these more favourable conditions late in the game, has come the critical shift in mindset that Pietersen referenced, surely the most important reason of all. In all walks of life, we are constrained to an extent by history and tradition, by what has gone before and what we think is possible — until we are shown what can be done by those who break the mould. Stokes’s team are now powered by their own history as well.
Jamie Smith and Joe Root guided England to their 371 target on the final day with 14 overs to spare
DANNY LAWSON/PA
How many is enough against them? Until 2022, England had chased 250 successfully a dozen times in their history, and one of those was because of Stokes the batsman. Under his leadership, his team have now chased that target successfully on six occasions alone. They know they can do it; India’s bowlers knew that too at Headingley: four of them — Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Shardul Thakur and Jadeja — had played at Edgbaston in 2022 when England chased their highest ever target (378).
Stokes’s contempt for the draw, and determination to play for the win, is a huge part of it. It is not so long ago (2021), remember, that England spurned an opportunity to chase 273 in 75 overs at Lord’s against New Zealand. On a perfectly good pitch that day, England crawled to 170 for three in 70 overs, without even considering the opportunity before them. At Headingley, they were 308 for five after 70 overs and running towards danger, happy to embrace the risk of losing for the chance of winning.
Mind you, it is clear that Ben Duckett and Zak Crawley, in particular, also refined their approach to something less manic than before. It was a mature, perfectly paced chase, with Duckett admitting that he was happy to play the percentages, for example, against Bumrah, in order to take advantage of the weaker links in India’s line-up; that he was “trying to see him [Bumrah] off, knowing it would get easier”. Smart cricket.
The pace at which the game is played has been transformed in recent years. While runs per wicket has remained fairly constant over time, runs per over has increased because of one-day cricket, and T20 cricket in particular. This has had a number of consequences: the draw has, by and large, been taken out of the equation. It also meant at Headingley that the second new ball was irrelevant — there were only 22 runs needed when it became available and the match was effectively over.
The skills adapted from T20 prevent captains and spinners, especially, shutting down the game as they once did. Previously, spinners could bowl into rough patches and be certain that a batsman would think mainly of defence, because many of the shots now thought of as commonplace were hardly played. Reverse-sweeps and switch-hits have changed the dynamic; bowlers are challenged in ways they weren’t before, and captains need more fielders at their disposal.
Duckett used the reverse-sweep expertly against Jadeja — it is a shot that would not have been contemplated a few years ago
ANDREW BOYERS/ACTION IMAGES VIA REUTERS
Duckett hit 31 runs off Jadeja, including five fours and a six, with reverse-sweeps: Jadeja simply could not find a way to stop him scoring; Shubman Gill had to protect the off-side boundary as well as leg side, and there were far more gaps elsewhere as a consequence. Thirty years ago, say, if he wasn’t getting wickets, Jadeja would have been able to at least bowl economically from one end, increasing the chances of a draw, but he conceded more than four runs an over on the final day.
All these factors have resulted in a psychological shift. Captains are far more nervous now setting a target — how many is enough? — and are put under far more pressure on last innings than before. For Gill, this was a chastening first match as India’s captain. No team has lost a Test having scored five individual hundreds before, and now he has that record on his CV in his first Test in charge.
Outside of the subcontinent, Stokes has been eager to embrace the chase. In 39 Tests as England captain, Mike Brearley won the toss on 13 occasions, and batted first on 11 occasions, 85 per cent of the time. Stokes has won the toss 19 times and batted first eight times, 42 per cent of the time, and mostly in Asia. Since taking over the job permanently, Stokes has opted to bowl first on all but one occasion in England.
Fifty years ago, Mike Denness resigned as England captain after the first Ashes Test in 1975 after opting to bowl first in defeat. No sooner had England begun their reply than a thunderstorm arrived and they were whistled out twice cheaply on an uncovered, wet pitch. You bowled first and chased at your peril, then. In England, no longer.